The Three Great I’s in Shaping a Great Community - by Tazkram
Interact, include and integrate.
To be a great community, it must feel inclusive. While not something an officer or leader should aggressively attempt to achieve, keeping it in mind will help establish a community that will create friendships. When the three great I’s go without saying, the community has ascended from a group of friends to just what you seek, a community.
The first step on the road is interaction. When a new member approaches your community, they will be an outsider. Isolation is a barrier one must overcome, but not all people are extremely extrovert, and even those who are, may struggle to initially step through the door.
It is not uncommon, I am sure you’ve faced this issue yourself sometime in life. You start a new education, enter a sport’s team or start a new job. It is a daunting task to seek out new people. We do not know them or how and what they think.
Perhaps they think you look stupid, your opinions are wrong, your articulation annoying. They may hate us. You may feel lonesome until someone reaches a hand out to you.
Though the fewest practice hate toward those they have hardly greeted, it is not uncommon that we judge others, and they know this as well. To overcome this obstacle on the road, it is important to remind yourself and your peers to interact with newcomers. Even more so, if the community is already well-established and content.
Interact, but be weary not to become artificial. Tell them something so banal as “Hello” or “How are you today?”. Perhaps even compliment them. Interaction is the first step toward a great community.
The next step on the road is inclusion. Going from simple social remarks to actively including others, will not only be the seeds of friendship, but also let the newcomer let their guard down. Feel welcome, be happy to participate.
When you started education sometime in your life, you were forced to first interact with someone. You may have found a specific person, whose opinions coincided much with your own.
At one point, you began to care for their opinion on these topics. “What do you think of my new dress” or “How would you solve this math issue?”. You validated their opinion, and by extension, validated them.
Including others goes beyond small-talk, this is the step where you show your affection and interest. While this statement may sound like romantic dating advice, it will very much help you in your social community life as well. Care to ask, and care for what the newcomers say. This is the second step toward a great
community.The third and final step in this short guide is integration.
You may practice interaction as well as including, but sometimes something’s amiss still. While you sit in a specific social context, may it be your work, school or sport’s team, you may be approached by others. They ask your advice and validate you, perhaps they even greet you down the hallway, but that is it. When they leave, they don’t return.
The interaction or inclusion does not feel genuine and may even leave you with a hollow feeling of sadness. While the last step, it is also the hardest to achieve. How do you go from the previous scenario into a scenario, where you want to be part of a community? Anecdotally, I can say that I like to both give and receive appreciation beyond a simple ‘thanks’. Don’t you?
Integration is when the two first steps are achieved, but in a broader sense, it is also when it’s no longer up to you alone, but the group as a whole.
I was once part of a community, where I practiced these three steps as the community’s instigator. Yet to this day, despite my efforts, I cannot claim it was an inclusive and integrated community. While I spoke with all and grew friendships, not all in the community shared the integration. Several social groups sprung up within the community, and to this date, those two social groups stick, while the community suffered. Few tried to actively integrate, and when they did, it would more often fail than succeed.
Integration was never achieved, and why was that? Because integration is a mindset, that need be shared by all. It must become an explicit vision, that all want to take part in. It will be crucial to motivate yourself and other community members, and you may not always want to, but to create a truly great community, you must remember integration. When first you achieve integration, your community will grow from simply that to a group of friends, but with more. It will truly be a great community.
While you’ve read this small guide, I have refrained from giving examples as to how you practically can integrate, but you need not be more than aware. As I said, it is a mindset rather than a simple activity such as the first two steps.
In a coined phrase, it could sound something like “I want us to succeed together”.
So when making your community great remember the three great I’s, interact, include and integration.
1 Like