Creating an environment full of purpose and hope, where others are able to find meaning and a strong sense of belonging, is crucial in today’s distributed organizations. Building community is not just a nice side benefit of a good work environment; it is a critical and primary activity of leadership. In this article, we will examine the leadership attribute of building community and describe a process you can practice in your mentoring relationship to help you develop this skill.

Community Leadership Defined
Community exists when a group of people come together to share a common purpose or interest. Leaders who build community are able to inspire others to share, support, collaborate and communicate with one another in a voluntary fashion in order to achieve something meaningful.

All great communities have similar characteristics that inspire commitment and dedication from their constituents. A short list of these enabling characteristics includes: mutual care and support, trust that others are fulfilling commitments despite challenging circumstances, supportive relationships where there is genuine respect and affection for one another, high expectations for achievement, courage to stand in the face of opposition, and faith that they are working for something important. In a large way, community leaders create an environment where each individual gains a sense of identity and connection with others by laboring for common objectives. To be effective, leaders must understand how their ability to build community directly impacts the following leadership domains.

Leadership Domains and Community

Building Community Model
Community can be built around any endeavor large enough to involve more than one concerned person. Those who fail to build a sense of community end up creating less than productive work environments, as shown in the previous table. Effective leaders aspire to build community as an extension of their leadership efforts. They merge their concerns for others with an appropriate level of relational cohesion to form a sound foundation for building community. The Building Community Model shown here illustrates how your concern and relational cohesion affect your ability to build productive communities.
 

• Your focus of concern can swing from self to others. To build productive community, your primary concern has to be centered on the betterment of others over service to self.
• A moderate amount of relational cohesion is essential to building a productive and engaged community. If you separate yourself from the community and practice an independent form of leadership, you are apt to be viewed as aloof and distant. At the other extreme, if you lead from consensus and practice a dependent form of leadership, you are apt to be viewed as enmeshed and entangled.

Each of the three regions displayed in the model has distinct attributes that affect how productive the community you build will be.

Aloof
Leaders who appear aloof tend to be concerned about themselves and operate in an independent manner. On the surface, these leaders can demonstrate leadership traits that seem desirable, such as extreme vision, high powered charisma, and commanding power, but ultimately they suffer because they build communities that spur internal competition rather than collaboration. Aloof leaders are always treated with suspicion by peers and followers. They are never really integrated into the community and appear to distance themselves from the community’s core concerns. Communities led by aloof leaders can feel hostile, aggressive, anxious, sycophantic, and overly busy.

Enmeshed
Leaders who appear enmeshed tend to operate in a dependent mode while keeping the focus of their concern on themselves. On the surface, these leaders can show leadership traits that seem desirable, such as consensus building, group processing, and appeasement, but they ultimately suffer because they build communities that encourage mediocrity rather than excellence. Enmeshed leaders are never truly respected as leaders by their peers or followers. Because they are so entwined with the emotional needs of the community, they are unable to give authentic guidance and correction. Therefore, the community will not grant them true power to lead above a consensus level. Communities led by enmeshed leaders can feel placid, uninspired, routine, cloistered, and apathetic.

Engaged
Leaders who appear engaged tend to be concerned with others and operate in an interdependent manner. These leaders embody leadership traits that are desirable, such as empathy, courage, and authenticity. Because of the symbiotic relationship they have created with the community, there is implicit trust and respect. They connect with the emotional needs of the community, but remain in a leadership role by challenging and correcting disruptive behavior. Because of the high levels of mutual respect between the leader and the community, they are given a large amount of latitude to act on behalf of the community. Communities led by engaged leaders can feel encouraging, supportive, cooperative, challenging, and destined for greatness.