Creating Community

Posted by Ann Deaton Share Your Voice

Anywhere we are, we can create community. Whether walking our dogs, or sitting in an airport, or responding to a child who is lost, we have the opportunity to stay in our own small worlds. And we have the option of creating connection with another, the possibility of a community in which we all belong.

What I have realized over the past ten years or so is that much of the work I am meant to do in this world is to create and sustain learning communities. I have been stunned over and over again to see the miracle of how a group of many separate individuals can become a community. The conversations deepen. Individuals ask for help, and generously offer their assistance. Laughter increases, and people's faces ease as their posture relaxes in this safe space of belonging. The individuals are transformed as they become one in community. They leave afterwards able to contribute what they offer to others in an entirely new way. It is a beautiful thing, and amazingly powerful. How can we create that more often in our world?

As an answer, Peter Block has written Community: The Structure of Belonging, a book that makes it abundantly clear how essential it to focus on transforming our communities. If we are to create the world in which we all want to live, we must build our capacity for and commitment to community. Block describes our current world as one of detachment and disconnection. The costs, he says, are our individual sense of isolation and loneliness as well as the fact that "there are too many people in our communities whose gifts remain on the margin" (p. 2).

Communities enable us all to bring our gifts. This is, I believe, a key source of the energy of communities. Last week I got to see this happening in a sixth grade classroom, a workplace partnership, a spiritual community, a family, an online social network, and in a group of strangers coming together to learn. Each came with their own individual gifts, and left with an appreciation of the gifts everyone else had freely offered. They left with a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, and that seemed to free them up to be themselves fully. That is the power of community.

I love that my work with Bounce is all about creating a true sense of community in companies, teams, schools, organizations, communities, and families. I see how this is changing their lives, and enabling them to expand their sense of joy, contribution, and being. I see that this is also changing me; no one fails to be transformed by the capacity of a community. And I am grateful that I get to do this work. As Block asserts, creating community is critical if we are to realize the possibility of a peaceful world in which each person is cared for and appreciated for what they bring.

• What is a possibility for community you want to see realized in your life?
• Whose contributions can you acknowledge?
• Where can you be fully present to your experience with others?
• How can you demonstrate your caring for and welcoming of another person?
• What are you doing to create community today?

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Ann Deaton I am a leadership coach, and Managing Partner in Bounce. I love to coach and facilitate with individuals and systems experiencing significant change and growth. The clients I work with, regardless of their age or position, are talented and creative individuals willing to look with fresh eyes at their challenges and opportunities, and to take action based on their discoveries. As a result, they find that they are capable of accomplishing far greater things than they ever imagined. What do you want to accomplish today? Who do you want to be?