As a tiny democracy leader, your most powerful tool is almost certainly your cellphone. If you’re like me, you’d prefer to improve your community by sheer force of an Excel spreadsheet. Unfortunately though, much of the work that needs to be done can’t be communicated with numbers or over email. Your primary job is to be your neighbors’ listening ear.
This is especially true because whatever “community” you’re serving is actually made up of an endless number of smaller communities and relationships. Your block has a group that gets together for happy hour every Wednesday night. There’s a collection of retired folks that play pickleball whenever the weather is nice. Your daily walk with the dog often coincides with the neighbors three doors down walking their kids home from school. Believe it or not, these are the moments that actually build communities.
Building community isn’t always about town halls or public meetings. It’s about cultivating real relationships based on common interests whether that’s safer streets or an affinity for heavy metal music.
If you’re a leader of a community group, you have a unique opportunity to engage with your constituents that many elected officials don’t have. If there’s a thorny issue to be dealt with, you don’t have to engage tens or hundreds of thousands of people through a digital survey. You can throw a block party. Use that opportunity to have fun and talk to people about important decisions at the same time.
Better yet, close the LinkedIn or Google Chrome app (wherever you’re reading this) and call one of your neighbors. Start with, “I’ve got an idea I want to run by you” or “Can I get your perspective on something that came up at our last meeting?” You’ll be amazed at how much better this makes your decisions, and the relationships created along the way.
For your particular board, committee or association, ask your colleagues why they said yes in the first place? What was their motivation for giving their time, energy, and Monday nights to this organization? Their answers to these questions (and yours) will not only reveal their priorities, but contribute to a relationship built on mutual respect and deep understanding rather than just serving on the same governing body.