Episode 109 - The Single Best Question to Build Community

<h2 data-pm-slice="0 0 []"><strong>Summary</strong></h2> <p class="">Community really matters, but can be hard to build when we’re in a hurry. In this episode we discuss the single best question to build community (at least the best I’ve come across!).</p> <p class=""> </p> <h2><strong>Transcript</strong></h2> <p class="">Hello and welcome to episode 109 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we discuss the single best question to build community.</p> <p class="">I’ve spoken before about five things research indicates are difficult to build when we’re not all in the same place at the same time. They are:</p> <ol data-rte-list="default"> <li> <p class="">Community</p> </li> <li> <p class="">Collaboration</p> </li> <li> <p class="">Culture</p> </li> <li> <p class="">Climate</p> </li> <li> <p class="">Capability</p> </li> </ol> <p class="">Today we’re focusing on the first one - community. Building community in our teams and organisations is extremely important, both from an employee experience perspective, but also for performance. This is true whether you are currently working remotely, are back in the office or, more likely, some mix of the two. </p> <p class="">The catch now is that we are often needing to build community and connection at speed. Research shows us that the shift to online meetings has resulted in more meetings with more participants per meeting, but shorter meeting times. You’re also far less likely to have all of your team in the same place at the same time, so the opportunities to build connections are fewer and further in between. We therefore need to be intentional about building community. We can no longer leave such a central part of workplace culture to chance now that the proverbial water-cooler discussions have all but disappeared.</p> <p class="">Community is about what we have in common - that’s where the word comes from. It’s about shared characteristics, beliefs and interests. We build community when people share thing