According to the New World Encyclopaedia, ‘The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means “common, public, shared by all or many.”[1] Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix con- (which means “together”) and the word munis (which has to do with performing services).’
So, in synthesis, performing services together or sameness, shared by many.
Togetherness can be a challenging concept for many – possibly because of a sense of loss of identity or maybe because they find it hard to adapt their ways to find a new common way or culture. Communities exist all across the world whether social, business/economic, geographical, demographical and so on. In many ways, community could be considered to be a higher form of civilisation in that, done well, it truly engages all members not just in a passive way but in the true sense of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
What if we imagined politics founded on a true sense of community we might see cross-party resolutions to intractable issues. Or, we considered project groups that become truly self-organising teams pooling the ideas, skills, qualities and resources of each group member, arriving at a higher order outcome. How amazing could that be?
Which may lead us to reflect on the extent to which our leadership is focused on building community – a true sense of sharing, acting together. Our management practises tend to take us into seeking more individual accountability and responsibility – more clarity about who to hold to account. We typically find the notion of group objectives and group accountability quite messy, preferring that single point of reference albeit supported by a group.
Community building can be messy for sure involving both processes and human dynamics and significant amounts of self-organising. Leadership becomes something that sits at a group level and not vested in one positional leader. Each person must find their own inner leader and work out how to contribute that to the collective. In a true community, there’s no coasting or sitting back. Each person must own their part in the whole as well as consciously contribute to the values and culture of the community group.
Community based business such as cooperatives have been experimenting in part in this space for many years now. According to Cooperatives UK, there are seven co-operative principles that define how a co-op operates:
- A co-op is owned and controlled by its members. It exists for the benefit of its members, who may be customers, workers, suppliers or the wider community.
- A co-op is democratic – this means every member has an equal say in how it’s run and how profits are used.
- Every member contributes financially in some way – from buying products, working for the co-op, investing in it or deciding how to spend its profits.
- A co-op is an independent business, owned and controlled by its members.
- It offers education and training to everyone involved, so they can develop the co-op and promote the benefits of co-operation.
- It co-operates, works with and supports other co-ops.
- A co-op supports the communities it works with.
As we reflect on these principles we may, at first glance, struggle to see how some of them can be translated to creating more community based, cooperative teams within our organisations. And yet, as Frederik Laloux has reminded us, creating self-managed teams is a powerful next step for organisational design and employee empowerment and satisfaction, leading to higher organisational performance. If we examine the cooperative principles closely we can see fundamentals such as equality, diversity, inclusion, accountability, responsibility, being fully in, connectedness and meaning.
So in the continual examination of leadership, maybe incorporating principles of community into our leadership ethos could be worth a look?