Ten Commitments for Purposeful Community Gathering
Gathering matters.
If you read something here that vibes with you, please click the ♥️.
“Communities feel magical, but they do not come together by magic.” Bailey Richardson of Substack
The past decade has shifted our focus towards the necessity of community not as a physical location or business strategy, but a way of life.1 Healthy communities are part of all good ventures. We have been reminded in the last few years that our communities are even essential to our survival.
I am grateful that the concept has risen in status. But the term “community” is a fuzzy term, and how to be purposeful in building our communities even fuzzier. If it’s fuzzy, it starts to be misappropriated.2
In this time of expanding the definition of community, it’s important to ask …how do we gather with intention to build true community?
The Big Idea
First, it’s important to define what we mean. Here’s a definition from Bailey Richardson , who authored the book Get Together about people organizing, and who builds community here on Substack.
True communities are simply groups of people who keep coming together over what they care about.
Our health and happiness are linked with our true connections. Community is not a mailing list, an online service, or people who receive reward points from a brand. Community is active, not passive. We come together, and keep coming together - and not just to shop at Trader Joe’s.3
School of Thought has been working incrementally, a relationship at a time, to co-create authentic community. From blogging, to online gatherings and now, real life connected learning experiences.
Connection to ideas and people is what matters most. School of Thought provides opportunities for individuals to come together for transformational, cross school, cross sector, cross generational learning experiences… and then grow these ideas, resources and projects further in their own ways.
Our community gathering, virtually or in person, needs to be intentional.
Making Big Ideas Usable
In light of this intentionality around community, inspired by my gathering author/mentors Priya Parker, Charles Vogl, Bailey Richardson the crew Substack and community building guides Rosie Sherry and David Spinks , I’ve created a list of 10 ways School of Thought is putting gathering with purpose into practice as we grow.
These suggestions are as relevant to communities focused on remaking school as they are to those involved in social justice, building business, or changing minds.
1. Co-Create Moments of Belonging
From the start, ensuring co-creators are involved in the development of the plans, the agenda, and even activities that might happen before meeting as a community.
Consider who is gathering, what their goals are, how they connect. 4
To do: We recorded pre-conversations using the prompt, “Tell us about a time you felt heard,” Before our gathering on human listening and machine learning. A team partner from Cortico excerpted portions which were shared as a medley during the gathering. 👂I LOVE THIS MEDLEY 👆 (listen here.)
2. Build Community, Not Events
Conferences, workshops, even zoom meetings are all really experiences in gathering. And they are all experiments in connecting people and ideas. Members of durable communities have a sense of purpose when they come together. People’s roles have meaning that contribute to the vision and individuals see how their work adds value to the whole.5
“As members of community, people don’t just want to lay bricks, they want to build a cathedral.” Tracy Bower, author of Bringing Work to Life.
3. Script the first essential move (to start)
Advice from research is that calls to action should follow three simple rules:
They should be specific.
People should understand how the action will help THEM solve a problem.
The action should be something people know how to do, and something they can easily work into their daily lives.
Make sure the call is clearly understood. This can be the first step.
4. Give members a chance to participate
A change to participate could be asking what the passion points are of those joining, and finding ways we can leave fingerprints in each other’s work.
This could be something like #3 👆,OR take a traditional format and invert it.
Collect stories on a conference theme and create a book by conference goers.
Host an Unconference - co-creators decide what they want to learn from each other. Note: in my experience, this works best with some facilitation.
Create a workshop to start of a long term project where everyone contributes.
To do: At School of Thought, we are building a virtual mentorship program for our extended projects in Philadelphia. If you might have interest, please click here to complete the form. Please note: I will follow up with those interested!
4. Communicate in visuals
Abstract concepts like education access and equality, climate justice, and innovation mean different things to different people. If your community is gathering around a cause, instead of words, an effective way encourage connection on topics and issues is to use visual language.
Visuals can aid in inclusivity, durability, emotion and action. People will be more likely to both remember your message and care about it.6
More in this post: 👇
5. Tell real stories
Storytelling is not new. The advice is not to “tell stories,” but “tell real stories.”
In co-design, we understand — especially if we’re working on social challenges — that we want to be in close proximity and honor the lived expertise of people who are experiencing the challenges or opportunity that we’re trying to work on.
What if participants tell stories in a separate space (say a recording or video) and those stories show up in some way in a physical space? How does that create belonging and engagement?
To do: Check this out:👇
6. Imagine the scenario
In a community gathering, challenge participants to truly imagine with whom and how they might practice what they have learned.
With our recent gathering on human listening and machine learning, we asked our community to commit to conversation projects. Our first cohort are engaging in conversation projects that mean something to them, and practicing the listening skills we are learning together, with AI as a tool in sensemaking.
7. Develop implementation intentions
People who create implementation intentions (sometimes called action triggers) are far more likely to take action. An implementation intention is a mental plan you make about when and where you will do something.
So something like,
“On ____________(a date or days), at ___________(time) I will _____________________( commit to something) so that ________________(for a purpose).
8. One step at a time
Community does not build all at once. And it happens in different ways. There are many measures of success, impact and commitment of a community.
I like thinking of a spectrum of commitment. It can start small, like subscribing to show up to read a blog, joining a webinar, giving a webinar, participating in person and committing to a project. Here is a spectrum I’ve been thinking about.
9. Cultivate Leaders
This one is essential. In order for communities to live, breathe and grow we need to all reach beyond our capacity.
Strategically, as we root ourselves in people and ideas we care about, we take the idea of co-ownership seriously. This means co-ownership of the projects and plans, co-authorship here on the blog, co-hosting gatherings, or finding others in the community to be stewards, expanding ideas past the boundaries of what any one of us can do.
Want to join us?
10. Join our blog, join our gatherings, and commit with us.
This is a call to action to if these ideas hold resonance for you. A first step can be to subscribe now.
For much of the 20th century, if you asked someone to define “community,” they’d very likely give you an answer that involved a physical location. One’s community derived from one’s place—one’s literal place—in the world: one’s school, one’s neighborhood, one’s town. In the 21st century, though, that primary notion of “community” has changed. The word as used today tends to involve something at once farther from and more intimate than one’s home: one’s identity, purpose, or passion.
Mark Zuckerberg talks about “the Facebook community.” I heard someone at the grocery store the other day refer to the “Trader Joe’s community.” Whaaa??? What about people calling it an “online community?” I don’t think so.
See the above footnote.
Research findings published in the Journal of Neuroscience found people made better decisions when they considered others.
Below are some questions to ask ourselves when gathering:
Envision: What is your purpose for coming together?
Entice: How are you priming people before you even meet in person?
Enter: How will you usher them in to the experience?
Engage: What will feel memorable, purposeful, enticing?
Extend: How can they take this experience back into their world?
Visuals transcend text.
This was a thoughtful read, thank you for sharing.