What's Missing in Your Community Building Efforts?
"Community" and "Community Building" are entering our vernacular more and more these days but do we really understand what Community is and if we don't, how can we know how to build it?
Community is the highest bar you can set for group dynamics, interpersonal relationships, and culture itself. But until you've experienced it, how can you aspire to it? And if you don't aspire to it, where are you setting that bar?
Not every group is a Community, much as we might wish it were. Just as not every house is a home. You can't tell by looking at houses from the outside. A home is a place where a spirit of camaraderie, support, and love dwells. A house is simply a building that may or may not contain such a spirit.
Something has to happen within the group to form it into a community. We try, but after a lifetime of effort and nine years of intensive study, I can tell you what that something is. Community building.
Yet, Community building is more complicated than event planning or hospitality, as illustrated in the following passages from my blog...
Hosting social events like parties, barbecues, etc. is NOT Community building.?This action is an aid to community building but in effect, it is simply event planning.?????
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Leaving a gift for a new tenant in an empty apartment or flowers on the desk of a new employee is NOT community building. ?It's a welcoming gesture and can be the prelude to community building but in effect, it is simply hospitality.
Hosting events and offering hospitality is not sufficient if you want to build a genuine culture of Community.? What happens on day two of your residence in the apartment, or on the second day at work; what happens the day after the Holiday party?? ?
While offered with good intentions, these actions omit the most important part of community building; conscious, committed action on the part of the members of the group to build themselves into Community together.?
All over social media, and particularly here on LinkedIn, people post about the importance of culture, but exactly how do you convert that conviction into action?
Converting that conviction into action is what I do. Talk to me!
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