Pictured above: The glorious cohort from The Widest Net Retreat.
There is not much more essential, worthwhile or challenging than building community.
It combines the feel-good pheromones of sharing space, hugs and conversation with the endless days and nights thinking about and engaging with people in hundreds of tiny ways.
Having just completed a chapter of my body of work hosting a community center for 8 years, to resounding success, communing with thousands of BIPOC entrepreneurs, local residents, non-profit and government leaders, here are some of the most important lessons I will be carrying into everything I do:
1. You don’t build community, you discover and nurture it
Contrary to the title of my article (!), we don’t actually build community, we discover where community exists, and we nurture it.
If you are new on a block or a corner of the Internet, I guarantee you that there are already communities and community builders all around you. It is your job to find where folks are, build warm and collaborative relationships, and then care for those who show up in your spaces.
If you are the only thing holding your community together, it is not a community it is a dictatorship.
2. Before building, Listen First
Before you build huge plans or programs for a community you are passionate about working with, spend lots and lots of time listening to them.
Ask questions like:
-How are you doing?
-What do you need?
-What are you thinking about these days?
-What’s a missing link from activating your big plans?
-What do you dream about doing?
-What frustrates you?
Most people don’t have the patience for the level of listening required to build true connection and alignment. Which is why most community models fail.
3. Physical environment matters
If we had to choose just one thing that made the biggest difference in making our space a flourishing part of our downtown Mesa community, it was investing in a beautiful, colorful and comfortable physical space.
Art adorned the walls, beckoning people from the street to wander in.
Colorful and comfortable furniture made the space warm and inviting.
Cold water was at the ready for anyone who came in the door.
Live plants adorned the space.
Yodas were sprinkled through the windows, delighting kids and adults alike.
Safe, bland and “neutral” colors are not actually neutral. They are boring to everyone.
Take a risk and make your physical (and virtual) space beautiful.
4. Bureaucracy stifles creativity
When new people show up at your door, they are taking a risk to trust their physical and emotional selves in your space.
If the first thing you hit them with is a bunch of questions, paperwork or requirements, they are not likely to stick around.
When you are running a physical space, design for the minimum viable amount of bureaucracy, process or regulations possible.
Too much bureaucracy will send people away.
5. Behavior builds trust
No matter how many fancy words are on your walls or website, people build trust based on the behavior that they see.
If you say you care about and want to support community, make time for people.
Answer your emails.
Follow through on your commitments.
Don’t commit to something you cannot deliver.
When you screw up, apologize.
6. Study intersectionality
If you are doing community work, it is essential that you have both training and understanding about intersectionality (definition from my amazing client Dr. Lisa Bowleg, Founder and President of the Intersectionality Training Institute):
“Intersectionality is a critical theoretical framework that highlights how multiple and intersecting systems of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism) shape social, economic, and health inequities for groups historically marginalized at multiple intersections (e.g., people who are racial/ethnic minority, cisgender girls and women, sexual and gender minority, have a disability, and/or are poor).”
There is no community work without a lens of intersectionality. The Intersectionality Training Institute mentioned above is a great source of information and education.
7. Remember who you are
As much as you learn about and nurture community, you must also learn about and nurture yourself.
“Selfless” community building is not healthy, it is saviorism and is guaranteed to lead to patronizing behavior, resentment and burnout.
Your identity and well-being matters just as much as the community you love interacting with.
When you give yourself totally to the cause, you cease to be an effective support of it.
It also puts you in a self-appointed martyr role which is yucky to everyone, including you.
8. Part of healthy community work is stepping back and even stepping away
We have all been that person who stays too long at a party.
The host is awkwardly yawning, eyeing the door then eyeing you while trying to stay polite.
No one is meant to stay at a party forever.
Where is there is true community built, it is never reliant on you to physically be there for it to flourish.
That is, indeed, the whole point!
While we will forever be grateful for the time we spent nurturing K’é Community Lab, our greatest joy is knowing that this strong community will continue, in better and stronger ways that we ever could have imagined.
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(I happen to have written a whole book about the community building process including stories from K’é — check out The Widest Net if you haven’t already!)
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