Community is embodied belonging
What helps you thrive through challenging times and moments?
I was a department chair of two large graduate programs during the pandemic shutdown. While it was a really challenging time and disproportionately impacted folks, I felt purpose in guiding the program through it. In hindsight, I can see how it foreshadowed the work I do now related to resilience and the messy middle of change. That said, how I led during that time definitely came at the cost of my mental health. I mean, ultimately, I ended up taking FMLA and then transitioned my work out of academia.
This is why a lot of you come to me with the question: Should I stay or should I go? My response: Let’s shift your relationship to work first, then answer that question. Here’s why.
I think the hit to my health during my tenure as department chair came in part because I had limited genuine community at the time. I look back and I wonder if I had community outside of my J-O-B, how would it have shifted my relationship to work?
As I experience real community now, I can see something I never did then. Having community yourself is different than building community for others. I see this a lot with other leaders, too. When you create structures and spaces to hold others but you forget you’re part of it (or that others can hold space for you), you tend to take on too much.
Let’s take a few minutes to reflect on this word community.
Tell me, what does it mean to build community?
Where and when have you felt community?
What images or metaphors or definitions come up for you when you think about community?
What does community mean in your current work environment? How does the word community get used or when/how it is talked about at work?
How does this type of community feel in your body?
At my last Embodied Climate Action workshop, the folks who have attended earlier workshops overwhelmingly spoke of the positive impact of being together in community with folks who shared our collective climate urgency. How the community they felt during a 2-hour workshop left them feeling hopeful. They valued having a space for respectful listening, sharing of stories and experiences, and validation that you are not alone in this. One woman cried tears of joy sitting in a group of people whom she had never met before but now knew were out in the world caring and working.
Something I hear over and over now in all of my work - coaching clients, org consulting teams, climate workshops - is how important the community part of the work has been. How it was something they didn’t even know was missing. They talk about community as this tangible, embodied, felt sensation. Something you can’t fake. And once you feel it, there’s this wave of belonging and deeper inner-connection that washes over you. It makes me stand taller and walk with an open heart and strong back.
Have you ever felt this kind of community? I want more of it in this world. It’s the antidote to all the isolation and individualism that plagues us and perpetuates the chronic disconnect in our bodies, our work, our societies.
What do you long for in a community? What’s one little gesture you can make this week to feel that? How can I support your efforts at building genuine community?