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Tag Archives: Building Community

May 21, 2025 Building Community

Photo by Mourizal Zativa on Unsplash

Practically speaking, we’re more connected than ever. With email, video chats, messaging apps, social media, and more, we’re just a click away from communicating with just about anyone. Why, then, is there so much talk about a nation-wide loneliness epidemic? Why are so many families out of touch with each other? Why are more and more people (from teens to the elderly) feeling isolated? And why do so many people not know their neighbors?

If technology built community, we would be a thriving network of individuals. Instead, many of us sit inside, scrolling through social media and “liking” others’ posts, without making any true connections. It seems we would rather have a million surface-level contacts than sit down with someone and have a conversation. This stark reality is unfortunate, because community is vital, and we need it more than ever.

How to Create Community

There is not, of course, a catch-all answer when it comes to building community. This is something that takes time and looks different in different circumstances. A person’s work community will look different from their community of family and friends, which will look different from their faith, volunteer, or special interest community. We may be more casual or more formal in certain communities. Or, we might feel like some topics are taboo in certain circles. Despite how different our communities can be, I do think some approaches to building community are universal. These include:

Be Genuine

We’ve probably all encountered people who strike us disingenuous or even “fake.” These types of people might be prone to exaggeration, or they might completely change their demeanor when they’re around certain people. While it’s fine to moderate your behavior around certain groups, there’s a big difference between editing your speech and becoming a completely different person. There’s also a difference between being a little more casual/formal in some situations and completely compromising your values. A genuine person will remain steadfast to their values and who they are, at their core.

Reach Out

Building community takes active work and participation. Extend invitations to others, be inclusive, and keep at. Sometimes it takes time for people to warm to you and feel as if they are part of your community. At the same time, if you sense that someone is truly not interested, there are other fish in the sea! Find those who seem interested in a reciprocal relationship—those who are willing to contribute and be a part of something.

Engage

In my book, The Ten-Minute Leadership Challenge, I devote an entire chapter to Building Community (focused on the workplace). Though this book was published a decade ago and parts of it are outdated (nothing about working remotely, for instance!), much of it is still relevant. In the community chapter, I discuss forming an authentic, respectful relationship with others by asking good questions and truly listening to the responses. The book puts forth a challenge related to this on page 119: “Test your listening skills. Challenge yourself to remember three important details from every conversation you have this week. Jot down those details immediately and then try to recall them two or three hours later. Can you do it?”

The purpose of this exercise is to 1) test your listening skills (are you truly paying attention?) and 2) help you learn something new about those around you. Healthy communities involve respectful and reciprocal relationships. It’s important to learn about each other, so we know how best to support and interact with one another.

If you’re feeling the isolation of our modern, social-media-dominated world, I suggest having the courage to put yourself out there, extend invitations to others, and start engaging in meaningful conversations. These are great first steps, but keep in mind: building community takes time and effort. If you genuinely care about your fellow community members, you will periodically check in with them and offer them support. And, if you surround yourself with caring and authentic individuals, they will do the same for you.

MARGARET SMITH IS A CAREER COACH, AUTHOR, INSIGHTS® DISCOVERY (AND DEEPER DISCOVERY) LICENSED PRACTITIONER, AND FOUNDER OF UXL. SHE HOSTS WORKSHOPS FOR PEOPLE WHO NEED CAREER OR PERSONAL GUIDANCE. 
CHECK OUT MARGARET’S ONLINE LEADERSHIP COURSE. 

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May 18, 2022 Why Foster Community?

That old saying “no man is an island” still rings true today. We are all connected with others in myriad ways, and we all depend on a large network of people to do our work, enjoy life, and, frankly, to survive. The CEO of a company might receive most of the fame and recognition, but that person’s success is intrinsically linked to others—their mid-level managers, the company custodians, the IT support team, the customers who believed in the company and its offerings.

This interconnectedness extends to our personal lives as well. We rely on the farmer to harvest food, the construction crew to repair our roads, the teacher to educate our children. I often see this community and interconnectedness at play with my grandson. He and his parents rely on care from a network of people. It truly “takes a village” to raise a child.

It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of community.

A strong community offers support, resources, and guidance. It not only provides us with necessities, but uplifts us and motivates us to keep going.

Today, we might find a sense of community and belonging in a variety of places—through work, family, online forums, volunteering. However, while it’s possible to be more interconnected than ever before, people are now lonelier and more depressed than ever. In the U.S., loneliness has been steadily increasing since 2015 (especially among younger generations), and that trend has been noted across the globe, as well.

Why is that? Why is our highly networked world lonely?

From my observations and research, I believe this has to do with the quality of our connections, rather than the quantity. One of your Twitters posts might be liked by 5,000 people, but do you really know any of them? You might engage in a webinar with 200 other individuals, but are you really talking to each other and getting to know one another on a deeper level?

At this point, you may be wondering, “So what? Why does it matter if people are lonely?”

Aside from the mental and emotion toll loneliness can cause, it has been linked to many physical side effects such as an “increased risk of mental health issues, heart disease and even death.” The Campaign to End Loneliness reports that, “Research shows that the impact of poor social relationships on mortality is comparable to the impact of smoking 15 cigarettes a day and consuming alcohol, and exceeds the impact of physical activity and obesity. Lonely individuals are at higher risk of hypertension, poor sleep, and the onset of disability.

So, what do we do?

I challenge you to seek out meaningful, real-world connections. Get to know your neighbors, host a barbeque, volunteer in your community, join an in-person networking or hobby group. If you are already connected with a number of other people, I challenge you to strengthen those connections by making an effort to be in touch, sending the occasional greeting card, or arranging a lunch or coffee date. You can also go the extra mile by reaching out to those who you suspect to be socially isolated (elderly friends, those who have limited access to reliable transportation, new parents!) and offer your support.

Community is created through conscious connections, not just through liking someone’s social media post in passing. It’s made by asking others about themselves and reciprocating by opening up and being a little vulnerable. Let’s dare to strike up conversations and make connections! Let’s strive to consciously foster community.

MARGARET SMITH IS A CAREER COACH, AUTHOR, INSIGHTS® DISCOVERY (AND DEEPER DISCOVERY) LICENSED PRACTITIONER, AND FOUNDER OF UXL. SHE HOSTS WORKSHOPS FOR PEOPLE WHO NEED CAREER OR PERSONAL GUIDANCE. 

Her new eBook is called A Quick Guide to Courage
CHECK OUT MARGARET’S ONLINE LEADERSHIP COURSE.

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January 9, 2013 Empathy: The “Glue” to Any Good Community

Last week I talked about the importance of community, tracing it all the way back to our first ancestors. This week I’d like to follow up on the topic and focus in particular on how empathy is the “glue” that binds all successful communities together.

Empathy itself is great, but it is empathetic action that makes all the difference. A team of psychologists and researchers recently came out with a book titled, “The Compassion Instinct.” Among many other interesting insights, they lay out some active steps to making a community truly grow:

1. Plug in! 

“People who give to others give healthier, happier lives to themselves.”

Service is key to any successful community. Join a cause you believe in, volunteer at a food shelter or be a mentor to young people. Don’t just send checks in the mail to a charity. You need to actually get out and get your hands dirty in order to cultivate strong bonds between other people. Community is based on this type of service, and you will feel more alive when you take part in other people’s lives in your neighborhood, your church and your workplace. And, speaking of workplaces…

2. Break the rule of leaving your personal problems out of the workplace.

“Many workers assume that they are supposed to check their personal problems at the door when they enter the office.” 

The book mentions how employer-employee relations have steadily declined since the 1980s due to increased globalization and competition between companies, which led to more lay-offs across the board. Thus, it’s common to be suspicious and distrustful of your boss nowadays, and you certainly don’t want to bring your own baggage into the office, lest you want to risk appearing unprofessional.

However, the research shows that companies do better when their employees feel connected, cared for and appreciated. Therefore, it is not only healthy for you to become close with your co-workers, it also will make a difference in productivity and innovation. The challenge is the risk you take by attempting to create community at work: for it to be successful, you must let your guard down. Which leads to the final point…

3. Trust in others!

“Trust is an intrinsic part of human nature…most simply defined as the expectation that other people’s future actions will safeguard our interests.”

It’s easy to see why trust has declined in the country for some time now. We are skeptical of politics, companies, advertisements, banks, and even our neighbors. And for good reason, I might add. How many Watergate-type scandals, corporate fraud news headlines and stories of mild-mannered folks becoming violent are we expected to endure and still put our faith in others?

Yet the solution to these problems, horrible and scary as they are, is not to shield ourselves even more. Quite the opposite, actually. We need to put faith in our peers enthusiastically, not reluctantly. We won’t think they’ll pull through, we’ll expect them to! Trust is the one ingredient above all others that enables us to thrive in our communities. And it starts at a person-to-person level.

Keltner, Dacher, Marsh, Jason and Jeremy Adam Smith, eds., The Compassion Instinct (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010)

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