Tactics for community building
We hear about the importance of community all the time, but how do we make it happen?
As someone who’s lived in many different countries and settled in the UK as an expat, I think a lot about living across borders. Much of my family life and work structure is dispersed across countries. Thinking back to my university days, this has been a running theme for me: I used to chair my university's 1600-strong international students association, and I had to try to build a network of people whose only trait in common was that they were away from home and seeking belonging.
The more things change, the more they stay the same! I'm still trying to help clients and employers connect with volunteers and supporters in a deep and authentic way. It's part of my job to understand how communities can form around an issue, and to know how to strengthen and sustain them. So, like everyone else I've been immersed in conversations over the past months about the respective strengths and weaknesses of building and maintaining connections virtually and in person.
I see a lot of commonalities in building community online and offline. Unlike many commenters on this topic, I don't feel the need to place one above the other or set up a false dichotomy. Connecting virtually has been part of my life for a long time—COVID changed less than you’d think for those of us who rely on the internet to sustain vital relationships. I think we seek connection in consistent and predictable ways regardless of setting. For those of us in the business of community-building, it means we can apply my favourite thing: tactics!
Tactic 1: Find out what motivates people to join a community
In his book Drive, Daniel Pink suggests that people are motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose. As humans, we want to learn and grow, and join together with others to achieve meaningful goals. When you’re working to build a community, think through ways that you can offer your early volunteers and supporters a sense of purpose. Consider your mission and vision and how you will turn it into a set of projects and actions for change. Develop multiple ways for people to participate, learn skills and take on leadership roles. Encourage new ideas and reward people who keep showing up, day after day and week after week. Many people get their start in politics and campaigning through volunteer work, so make sure they have the opportunity to develop some real and lasting skills.
Tactic 2: Use the right tools for the job
Your job as a community builder is to create shared experiences. You’ve attracted people to show up by tapping into their desire for autonomy, mastery and purpose. Now you need to facilitate their work. We’ve never had a wider range of tools and strategies for organising people, so get creative with your events. Consider how traditional, in-person events can be adapted or run alongside a virtual version to maximise participation.
For example, you can run phone banks in person. Volunteers can show up, socialise, bond with one another and keep each other motivated and accountable through working in the same room. You could also run a virtual phone banking event, where you start with a social group hosted through software like Gatheround and pair new volunteers with experienced ones to assist with learning and motivation.
(See my recent post, too, for alternatives and upgrades to door-to-door canvassing!)
Tactic 3: Think of communities as sets of teams
Community health takes ongoing work. You can’t just put someone to work and assume everything will work out now that you have bodies in chairs. To keep people engaged and feeling supported, make sure you’re creating the conditions for positive experiences. One way of thinking about ongoing community management is to take the approach outlined in Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lencioni has identified five of the most damaging dysfunctions for work teams: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to objectives. Our first two tactics help build commitment and accountability.
You can help keep people invested in your community goals by coaching your volunteer leads and staff to initiate conversations with volunteers about what your community is doing and why it matters. It could manifest differently for each person; make space to listen and learn from the people who are giving their time and energy to your cause. A fatal error is to assume that volunteers and supporters will always be there because they care about the cause. Take their concerns and their experience as seriously as you would those of an employee, and build mutual trust and respect.
Tactic 4: Get comfortable with disagreement
In healthy communities, there’s space to disagree and to work through that disagreement. If there’s no mechanism to bring up and discuss problems, then there’s no avenue to improve. You’re probably familiar with Bruce Tuckman’s catchy phrase about small group development: forming, storming and norming. Without a storm—some adversity or external challenge—it’s hard to build a really tight and effective group. Don’t think of disagreements as problems. Hear them, hold space open for people to discuss, and resolve to take a healthy approach to conflict.
As Lencioni says, conflict is a natural and necessary part of growth for a team or community, and running away from it just leaves problems to fester. Besides, conflict and critique are important growth tools. Our community members have experiences and knowledge that could meaningfully contribute to our shared goals.
Tactic 5: Harness the power of story
We relate to one another through shared visions and values. We can also build relationships through our personal stories and lived experiences. I work in London, but my managers are in the US and my clients are all over the world. Something that brings us together is finding commonalities with one another and making time to appreciate what we have in common.
Asking your team to share their stories of how they got to where they are today, can be an incredibly effective way of making them feel connected (more to come in a future blog post).
Alternatively, some prompts for your volunteer groups could be:
How did you end up living or working where you are?
Did you study or live abroad?
Talk about your family or siblings - what experiences are common? How did your family shape who you are and what you’re doing today?
Have you ever made a career change? What was it, and how did you do it?
Why did you choose to volunteer here? Where else have you volunteered, and what were those experiences like?
These common topics are places we can find relatability and points of intersection. Listening to others share their experiences and offering our own in return creates a sense of community that is hard to force.
Community-building is a conversation
We create community by identifying our shared values and mission, making space for people to show up and help out, and collectively working out our disagreements. It’s a reciprocal process that benefits everyone involved. Networks of families, networks of international students, of volunteers and supporters and colleagues: they’re all built and sustained in similar ways.
When it works, we win together. When it doesn’t—well, nobody could say it better than Toby Ziegler in The West Wing:
We're a group. We're a team. From the President and Leo on through, we're a team. We win together, we lose together. We celebrate and we mourn together. And defeats are softened and victories sweeter because we did them together... You're my guys and I'm yours... and there's nothing I wouldn't do for you.