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.

 

Building Productive Community

Community offers the larger context for creating meaning and provides shared ownership of work results. Given the high strategic value of community, it is important to know how one forms and how to lead the development of community. With this in mind, consider the following four-step process for improving your ability to build community.

 

1. Define Shared Values
The values of the community inspire trust and engender a core identity for the work of the community. The values should describe the reason that the community exists and should serve as a guideline for the type and quality of your work. The right set of values becomes a unifying agent by providing a personal connection between the individuals and the overall purpose of the community. Establishing shared values goes well beyond just creating a list and posting them; as the leader, you need to embody the values of the community. This means living them out and explaining how major decisions are being made in alignment with the values.

 

2. Set Guiding Principles
Guiding principles provide operational guidelines for the type of work product you want to produce and the interpersonal behavior you expect. They describe in theory how we should treat each other as we go about our work. These principles help community members know when to work on their own and when they need to involve others. The better your guiding principles are, the more unified autonomy you can have in your community (i.e., individual effort that is connected to the overall effort). These principles also serve as expected norms for personal behavior. They stabilize a work environment and provide a measure of comfort and familiarity. Once guiding principles have been established, they must be adhered to; and when challenged, they must be defended.

 

3. Establish Practices
The established practices of a community are the time-honored customs that express significant value or accomplishment. Practices are habitual patterns of behavior that express the values of the community. These practices can range from the way new community members are indoctrinated to authorized protocols and methodologies. Established practices provide a toolkit of repeatable actions that will produce results that foster the development of the community. They also serve as a point of communal pride and tradition. Unlike the values and principles of the community, practices are open to change. Practices need to be refined and honed constantly by all the members of the community.

 

4. Foster Open Discourse
Open discourse is essential to creating a productive community. The community must feel that it has a voice and that it can express its full range of thought and emotion. Most members of any community want to know that they matter and that they can contribute to the betterment of the community. The leader must be secure enough to hear the criticisms and value the input from all members of the community. That does not mean that leaders have to act on everything they hear, but they must acknowledge that they heard it. Leaders must also understand that this is where innovation and improvement will come from. The members of the community are usually more in touch with the emerging needs and threats than the leader is. Great leadership has a lot to do with patient listening and filtering the profitable advice from the unprofitable.

 

Building community is more art than science and can take a lifetime to truly master. Each and every community is unique and will need to have its own specially crafted set of values, principles and practices. Given these realities, mentorship is the ideal type of trusting developmental relationship in which to work on the practice of building community. Your mentoring partner can help you consider the various options and decisions that you need to make in order to build productive communities and can act as a sounding board as you filter through your ideas.

Practice Exercise

The following exercise can help you discuss with your mentoring partner how to become more productive in building community.

1. Use the following self-evaluation to assess your ability to build community.

Self-Evaluation
Recall a recent time when you had to bring a group of people together to accomplish a large objective that required cooperative action. With this memory in mind, rate how closely you agree with the following statements.

 

Aloof Tendencies (low score is desirable)	Low				High
I felt that I kept myself at a distance from the group.	1	2	3	4	5
I used the power of my position to get the work done.	1	2	3	4	5
I did not feel fully accepted by the group.	1	2	3	4	5

 

Enmeshed Tendencies (low score is desirable)	Low				High
I felt that I got too close to the group.	1	2	3	4	5
I felt I had to gain consensus for most decisions.	1	2	3	4	5
I did not feel free to correct the group.	1	2	3	4	5

 

Engaged Tendencies (high score is desirable)	Low				High
I felt that I was moderately connected to the group.	1	2	3	4	5
I felt empowered by the group to lead.	1	2	3	4	5
I felt a high level of mutual respect with the group.	1	2	3	4	5

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Summary Results
Based on the results above and the understanding you have into your own behavior, which leadership tendency do you lean toward? (circle the most likely choice)

 

Aloof

Enmeshed

Engaged

 

Give a brief explanation of your choice:

 

 

 

 

 

2. Discuss your self-evaluation results with your mentoring partner and solicit his/her perspective of your results.

3. If you have determined that you need to strengthen your community building skills, determine what new actions you are going to take.

4. Set up a time to review your progress with your mentoring partner.

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