Creating Really Good Community

4 ways to build and strengthen connection

Note: this article was posted on my Medium in 2020. I’m editing it to be current and re-sharing it here because it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written, and it provides a good precursor for the next article I’m working on.

For the last 15 years, I’ve been obsessed with community.

When I say obsessed, I mean that my undergraduate degree is actually in “intentional living communities” (thanks to a create-your-own-obscure-focus Humanities program), I wrote a 250-page thesis on the topic, and I have spent most of my working years helping found or resource more than 80 communication communities on 6 continents. I don’t consider myself an expert on this topic anymore (or ever), but I am still fascinated by it.

In recent years, as the topic of “community” has grown from Robert Putnam Bowling Alone in the book aisles into countless worldwide bestsellers, I’ve realized that a) I was right about what’s cool, and b) not many people seem to be talking about an essential facet of building community — building really good community.

From Sebastian Junger to Charles Vogl to countless business biographies, we’ve heard about belonging, boundaries, identity, and ritual; all the things that form a group with an inside and an outside, where we know (relatively) what’s expected and how to take part.

But, what distinguishes a community from a tribe? A practical group with an identity from a home that radiates warmth? A family from a lifelong space of support?

I don’t claim to be an authority on this. The combination of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and systems design that makes up community is something I could study for many lifetimes and not even know what questions to ask. However, here are some thoughts that came to me this morning while looking at my life, with its many communities, and pondering: “What makes the good ones really good?”

Theories of a Thriving Community

1. Compete to Contribute

2. Risk Rejection

3. Pet the Elephant

4. Choose Membership by Love

1. Compete to Contribute

When I wrote this article, it was during the thick of the COVD-19 quarantine, and I was in Colorado with a group of friends. I woke up early, before sunrise — groggy and tired — and came downstairs. I found the kitchen of our Airbnb a mess. The counters were dirty; the sink was full of dishes; the cats were meowing to be fed.

Slightly to my shock, what ran through my mind was not “Dammit, why don’t people clean up after themselves??”

It was: “Yes! I got here first!”

That thought initiated this article (I did clean the kitchen before writing it, btw). Why, as near-OCD as I am about cleanliness and contribution, did I feel excited seeing a dirty kitchen?

I thought back on the day before.

I’d woken up, and my friend Carrie had made me tea and fed the cats so they wouldn’t wake us up. Sophie was cleaning the dishes in the sink. Telind walked in with a big box of tomatoes and wine to gift the house. Geof woke up and, before even getting fully conscious, started to make tomato soup for all of us for lunch.

I hadn’t done anything but work all day. So, waking up at 6:30 am to a kitchen dirty from the food I ate without having to cook, I thought, “Now’s my chance. Nobody else is awake. Now I get to contribute!”

Like all the precepts on this list, Compete to Contribute is based on reciprocity. Everyone must contribute in some way. Those ways don’t have to be the same — in fact, a key part of this norm is to honor and rely on the particular skills each person has: Carrie is a natural mom who loves to make people comfortable; Geof is a gourmet chef who enjoys making food; I create community for all of us through my work. However, if you added up the energy each of us spend contributing to the group, it would probably be about equal — and if something really needs to be done, all of us will take part. We are competing for each other, not with each other.

In groups like this, contribution becomes an unspoken yet core expectation. This strengthens the group, and I think it also strengthens individuals. I believe that a main cause of depression is having nothing expected of you.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in communities of contribution is to let others care for me. Not all contribution has to be 1:1. If Sophie starts doing the dishes, I don’t need to swoop in and demand to help. I don’t even need to do the dishes the next day, or the next. But if a few days pass and I haven’t equaled others’ energy — without context that I’m sick, troubled, or not able to — the group will start to resent me. Or, more dangerously, others will begin to contribute less as well.

Then, when I walk down to a sink full of dirty dishes, I won’t think “I’m excited!” I’ll think, “Not again.”

2. Risk Rejection