The power of turning your team into your community
usustatesman.com
Sometime in the late summer of 2003, I was a 20 year-old volunteer missionary and I found myself riding my bike along an anonymous road in the dirty factory town in Taiwan that I had been assigned to. It was yet another in an endless string of oppressively hot, muggy, grey-sky days as we wove between factories on our way to an appointment.
But on this day, I had an extremely simple yet eternally profound experience that has shaped the way I think about the role of a leader and team effectiveness. It was so impactful, I can still see the exact spot on that anonymous road in my mind (it was the only spot in town that had a small, green-space clearing in between the factories).
One interesting element is that the particular situation that I found myself in at that moment was a far cry from the mountain-ranged, blue sky, crystal-clear water-filled environment of my upbringing.
I remember looking around and in a moment of clarity being very aware of both the down-trodden and the foreign nature of my surroundings. But almost immediately a genuine feeling washed over me that totally surprised me: “These are my people, and I love them. Few will ever understand, but this is my place.”
This was a particularly poor area with little physical beauty, yet I felt a part of it. Alongside me were my fellow volunteers for whom I was responsible, and they were giving their all for our cause. I worked with an amazing group of local leaders and members who all were united in their efforts.
I had numerous friends and acquaintances in town, everyone from the little old lady who cut my hair for US$3 every other week, to the staff/owners of the same few restaurants from whom we bought our daily cheap bowls of fried rice or noodles for lunch and dinner, to the group of teenagers who befriended us and told us all about their girlfriends, to small factory owners who were thrilled to tell us the latest joke. From that experience I realized a profound truth: humans are meant to be part of something, we are meant to belong. And when we belong, great things can be accomplished.
While at the time I didn’t realize it, the phenomenon I was experiencing was that of being part of a community. David McMillan & David Chavis define a 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." (1)
Humans have an innate desire to be a part of a community. This has been one of the many devastating effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic: an eroding of community. Social distancing, work-from-home, the halting or canceling of sports seasons, virtual graduations, and many other practical measures designed to stop the spread of the virus eliminate shared experiences which risk reducing our sense of community. The natural outcome of all of this is what experts refer to as the looming mental health crisis.(2)
The desire to be part of a community is the reason people join social or civic clubs, political parties, churches, sports teams. It’s why we get so invested in our hometown or alma mater sports teams (Go Aggies!).
We all want to belong, to be wanted; we want to be part of something; and more importantly, we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. It really is as simple as the theme song for the American sitcom “Cheers” puts it: “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came…”
When we belong, amazing things can happen. From personal experience, and taking a work-lens, there have been two times when I would describe myself as being part of a high-performing team. In both instances, the words I would use to describe my experience are directly included in McMillan & Chavis’ definition of community. In short: my team became my community. And as a result, I personally was able to achieve more than I had on other teams, and we as a team achieved more than the sum of our high-potential parts.
Sticking with the work-context, how does a leader create a sense of community among his or her team? McMillan & Chavis propose a 4-pillar framework that perfectly aligns with my experience (1). Lets quickly take a look at this framework and pose some questions a leader can ask themselves to gauge how well they are doing in building community among their team. One thing to note before we look at the framework: it’s not solely up to the leader to create a sense of community, nor can they do it alone even if they wanted to. It’s the shared responsibility of every member of the team to support the conditions necessary to build community. But the leader has the greatest influence on whether or not those conditions exist for the team to support.
Pillar 1: Membership:
This is more than simply having your name listed on the roster. True membership speaks to belonging and psychological safety. Some simple questions a leader can ask themselves to test for belonging or psychological safety include:
Do those on my team identify with being part of our team?
Do team members bring their whole and authentic selves to work?
Do team members trust each other?
Are team members willing to be vulnerable around each other?
Are team members willing to take risks and fail in front of each other?
Pillar 2: Influence.
This works two ways: do members feel they have influence on the group? And does the group have influence on them? To truly be part of a community, members need to be willing to give up some (not all) of their individuality and conform to some basic team norms. But they also need to be part of shaping those team norms. So in addition to the two basic questions already posed for this pillar, a few other questions a leader could ask them-self include:
Do we have shared norms that everyone agrees to and follows?
Was the team involved in creating those norms?
Does the team actively look to each other for input?
Does the team actively engage in regular discussions about how to improve?
Pillar 3: Fulfillment of needs
In this case, the need we’ll focus on is purpose. As mentioned before, most of us want to belong to something bigger than ourselves. We want to know that what we do matters and has an impact on our organizations and on society. Daniel Pink has written extensively on the concept of intrinsic motivation, and one of his main pillars is purpose.(3) Those with purpose willingly go above and beyond. So to test whether their team has purpose, a leader could ask themselves:
Does our team have a clearly defined mission statement?
Does everyone understand that mission statement?
Does everyone buy-into that mission statement?
Do team members know how their actions support the broader purpose of our company?
Pillar 4: Shared emotional connection
The focus of this pillar is both a shared history and a common future. Not all team members may have a long tenure on the team, or maybe your team has not been in existence very long. Nevertheless, a leader can help the team understand where the team has been and, just as important, where the team is going. Some simple questions a leader can ask themselves include:
Does the team have a “story”?
Does everyone on the team know the “story”?
Does everyone on the team see themselves as being part of the story?
Do team members actively participate in activities that are shaping the future of the “story”?
As we think about turning our teams into communities, a word of caution is in order. Whereas the steps listed above can be a very powerful way to engage and energize members of the community, there is the risk of creating identities that result in others feeling left-out. There are countless examples in every aspect of life where “us-vs-them” scenarios are created. Damage and harm follow this mentality. A true leader builds a community that is designed to grow, to be welcoming, to be accepting, to be courteous, to be kind. Not all communities or teams need to be the same. In fact, it’s in the differences that our organizations and societies grow. But as we build our communities, let's remember to ensure we do so in such a way that we can be respectful and constructive in our dealings with those who are not members of our community.
Lastly, I wanted to share with you a quote I recently heard. It really struck me as I was pondering what I can do to create more community in the teams and organizations I belong to. David Brooks, author of the book “The Road to Character” shared a poignant sentiment in a recent speech that speaks to the sense of community we all crave:
“If you ask people at the end of their lives what made them happy, it was not self-sufficiency; it was the moments of utter dependency, when they were utterly dependent on somebody else and somebody else was utterly dependent on them.”(4)
17 years removed from that dusty road in Taiwan, I look back and realize that some of my deepest relationships in my life came from that experience. I don’t necessarily see some of those folks regularly, but when I do, those bonds of community are just as strong as ever. Same goes for those rare, high-performing work-teams that I've been privileged to be a part of. Though we professionally accomplished a lot, personally we grew and developed in ways that could only happen by being part of a true community. It is my hope that as leaders we can continue to improve the world by building one community at a time.
McMillan, D.W., & Chavis, D.M. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 6-23.
Stern, J. (2020, July 07). This Is Not a Normal Mental-Health Disaster. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-special-mental-health-disaster/613510/
Davies, S. (2018, December 24). Book Summary: Drive by Daniel H. Pink. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/business/drive/
Brooks, D. (2020, June 02). Finding the Road to Character - David Brooks. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/david-brooks/finding-the-road-to-character/
