3 keys to encouraging community

I met a woman who had recently moved from an African nation.  She bemoaned her lack of community here in Australia.  She said – all that we do here in our new life is work to live, live to work, work work work, we have no time for community, for the things that matter.

This got me thinking - given so many of us are spending so much time at our work, could the organisations we are working in provide a sense of community? What kind of organisation?

When Harley-Davidson turned 100 in 2003 it celebrated over 14 months culminating in “a million bikers” roaring into the company’s headquarters.  Despite their diversity, Harley riders have something in common: a fanatical dedication to their Harleys.  Is this a community?

The more I have worked with and researched what a community is, I believe it comes down to 3 keys.

These keys can be applied to any community that forms around any shared focus – cultural, theme, geographical, organisational.  For an inclusive community to grow and flourish these 3 things are paramount:

{disclaimer: not a definitive list, simply a place to begin the conversation.}

Empathy

Being able to ‘walk in another’s shoes’ is basically impossible.  Knowing what it is like to be say brought up in another faith, another socio-economic group or race is nigh on impossible.  Being able to actively imagine what that must feel like, to be in a state of openness to stand under (understand) another person’s experience holds the beginning of a truly compassionate community.

Take a moment to imagine how it is for another person – whether that be the CEO, or whether you are the CEO.  I wrote about the power of imagination in empathy in a previous article HERE.

Empathy is the key to building great relationships and is the cornerstone of any community.

Communication

Stories are a key medium for communicating corporate myths. (Boleman, Deal 2008)

I wonder if you could be a fly on the wall in any conversation happening around your organisation or community; what is the theme, underlying vernacular or energy of the discussion?  What are the mythical stories of the organisation that creates the tradition, the loyalty or lack of it?

To be of value, communication by its nature needs to imply honesty.  It needs to be trusted.  It needs to be imbued with empathy as an overarching force, and it needs to be communal, shared and reciprocated. 

Here is a bit of a list of what ‘good’ story-telling might look like in a community that is an organisation:

• Communicating who you are – everyone within the community feels safe and secure to be ‘seen’ truthfully and as they really are
  
• Communicating who the company is
  
• Transmitting values – do my values match what the organisation ‘stands for’?  Can everyone in the organisation align with the values of the organisation?
  
• Fostering collaboration
  
• Stopping the gossip – when stories are actively communicated, less Chinese whispers are possible
  
• Sharing the knowledge – what works, what doesn’t, what’s been tried, what’s been successful
  

Participation

Communities are not inactive.  They require the action of participation, or active participation.  Good communication and empathy by themselves will not engage employees as members of a community. It’s probably one of the topics that have created the most rhetoric in management theory.  How do I create a culture of ownership, engagement and participation? We know that participation is a powerful tool to increase both morale and productivity…but how do we foster it? If we look at other communities we might be able to get a bit of a clue.  Effective communities are groups of people motivated around a shared passion. At work, are we motivated by the pay check or are we motivated to make a difference.  I think its got to be a combination. It is not real to think that we can foster participation by passion alone.  The reality is that most people are motivated to work to keep a roof over their heads.  (see another article here) Topics I believe work to foster active participation are things like egalitarianism, diversity, team focus, job enrichment, values alignment (real not tokenistic)…among many others I am sure….again not a definitive list but a beginning of a conversation.

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