4 ways leaders can transform groups of people into strong communities

Communities are everywhere. Home, large families, commuting in a crowded train, visiting a favourite coffee shop are all communities. At work, you might not get a sense of community while talking to your boss. But at the same time, you might get a sense of community while talking or gossiping with members of your team.

I have seen some teams and task forces generate a profound sense of community whereas others become completely dysfunctional.  As leaders, how can we transform the groups or teams we lead into positive communities? What is the common thread between building online and offline communities?

David McMillan and David Chavis of Vanderbilt University defined the sense of community as “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together.”

With this definition, a marriage might or might not be a community. A school, a school students union, a Teachers Union or a Parent Teachers Association may or may not evolve into a sense of community.

Let’s understand community through a fire drill exercise. A fire drill is a great way to learn about communities. Let me use this real life example.

1. MEMBERSHIP: Feeling of belonging

One afternoon, the alarm rang to signal a fire. A deadline of fifteen minutes was given to evacuate the entire office. The evacuation started.

a) Setting boundaries: Boundaries define a community. In this case, the entire company became one unit. Other boundaries of rank, status, power and designation were dissolved. Within that boundary, everyone was welcomed and valued. People made space for each other.

b) Emotional safety: Everyone listened to the warden who was a junior but was trained to execute the fire-drill. Being part of a community gives you a right to speak up and say your truth without the fear of ridicule. When you can speak the truth, you feel that you belong.

c) Personal investment: To become a member, the person needs to feel that they a) earned the membership and b) that the membership is of value.

d) Symbols and identification: It is a sense of belief that you fit into the group, that you have a place in the group, and that you are accepted by the group. People refer to the community as my group, my college, my team, my office, my coffee shop, and at a broader level, my country. Teams use legends, myths, rituals, ceremonies, language, codes, flags, logos, dress and signals to create boundaries and a sense of identification.

Membership has a lot of implications in the way we run our businesses. Think about how new joinees in a company are treated and eased into membership. Think about how newly minted managers are eased into the managerial community. How do we coach senior leaders who join their companies to understand and adapt to cultural norms?

The downside of membership

The challenge is that boundaries create an “us” and “them”. We tend to listen more to “us” and less to “them”. Sometimes, membership is restricted to very strong rites of passage. How do we manage deviants in the system? While ostracism would be the natural response, it might not be the appropriate one.

Therefore, the core question for business leaders is this— like the seamless fire drill, how do we make our people feel that they belong?

2. INFLUENCE: Every member matters

Let’s go back to the fire drill. Every member knew that they mattered and felt protected. Everyone walked at a common pace. Some leaders knew a short-cut. It worked great till they reached the final exit door which was locked. The 15-minute deadline was at risk. The choice was to wait to make a few phone calls and get the door opened or to admit you took the wrong exit and walk back. A part of the group was tired by the walk down and was loathe to climb all the way back. The community was getting ready to split. Ultimately, the enthusiasm of the team took over and everyone decided to trudge back. We were the last group out and because of us the company clocked a time of 20 minutes.

a) Members allowed equal opportunity to influence the group: Everyone in the team mattered and there was added respect for people who had either the knowledge or expertise. The person who suggested the alternate “short-cut” was no ridicule.

b) Personal investment or sacrifice: There was a personal sacrifice to walk at a common pace and push someone out of the way. A sense of personal sacrifice pushes you towards more value. When you sacrifice a Sunday morning rest to go to church or a temple ritual, it increases the value. When you are willing to sacrifice for a group, your sense of belonging towards it increases.

c) Community norms: You gain influence when you can form cohesiveness. You lose influence when you try and dominate by asserting status or muscle. Cohesiveness is not about keeping your personal choice away. It is about knowing what is expected of you and what you can expect from others. When people can live up to each other’s expectation, there is trust in the system and this triggers an exponential growth in the system.

At work, strong communities are those, who can welcome, appreciate and encourage differing views.

Therefore, the key question to building communities would be how leaders bring a sense of influence to every member of the group by bringing both cohesiveness and curiosity to excel?

This is a good time for me to introduce you to Rudy. Rudy is a B-Team football player who only participates in practice games. On the day before the last game of the season, he pleads to the coach to let him play. There is a tradition that only the players who are selected will wear the jersey. The coach refuses to let Rudy in the A team. The members of the A-team decide to stand up for Rudy and this is how they relay their protest.

The A-team players are willing to give up their place for a B-team player. What a hallmark of a community looking out for each other.

3. Reinforcement, Integration and Fulfilment of needs

A shared faith that members’ needs will be met. My “fire-drill community” was disheartened at the loss. Now the drillmaster was a true master. He announced the results that we had failed, but with great skill he took away our loser status. He explained how the entire objective of a fire drill was to find flaws and that we had discovered a major flaw in the drill evacuation plan. The drillmaster integrated us and reinforced the need to work together. Even in our failure we felt wanted and valued.

Each member has to bring value to the community and the community has to bring value to the individual member.

a) Reinforcement is about the competence, success, and status of the community. It is about how members feel that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. It is how about you can add value to yourself and the community.

b) Integration is about how you can use group success and even failure to reinforce your status and importance. It is about using shared values of the group members into an integral whole.

c) Fulfilment of needs is about demonstrating and providing adequate rewards and feedback to provide faith that the community will continue to have their needs met. It is a situation when group members can learn from each other.

Now the core question that arises is, once a community is formed, to prevent a culture of “each man for himself”, how do members continue to remain confident about personal and team aspirations?

That brings me to the final pillar—making an emotional connect with each other.

4. Shared emotional connect: Commitment to be together

When I look back at Rudy or even the fire-drill, everyone had an instant connect because there was a crisis to resolve. There was a clearly defined start and end. Nobody was to be left behind.

So how do we create an emotional connect?

a) Contact hypothesis: The more we talk to each other, the more we will begin to get a sense of community. When people interact with each other, it creates familiarity and ultimately more trust between members.

In highly polarised situations, mere contact does not work. You need to look at the quality of the interaction.

b) Quality of interaction: How members are made to feel

Shared event: Nothing brings together people more than a crisis. We witnessed the formation of a community in the recent Chennai floods and a few years ago during the floods in Mumbai.

Closure time:  Each event should have a closure.That is why rituals in places of worship have clearly set timings. An unending crisis or trauma will not help the formation of a community.

Honour and humiliation: In the interactions, is there unconditional honour for each other? The more we honour members, the higher the sense of community. When people feel humiliated or their voice is unheard, the sense of community vanishes. We witness strife between members of online communities and WhatsApp groups. Some people block other members or “exit” the groups.

c) Tell stories to become symbols: Over time, you tell stories of the communities. Each success story gets repeated till it becomes a legend.

In this interesting article, Fred Smith describes how his career in the military influenced his management style. It transformed his small firm into the global courier service we know as FedEx today.

Traditions and communities: The song called 'Tradition' from Fiddler on the Roof talks about communities and how not being a part of a community, might make you feel as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.

To conclude, in today’s uncertain and unstable work environments, we need to go back into building positive organisations by building a sense of positive communities. We need to go back into honouring the value of every individual in our community.

The author is the Founder of The Positivity Company where he helps business leaders become more positive and productive. Birender can be reached on birender.ahluwalia@gmail.com.