Creating Community in the Workplace

Wouldn’t you like to work in an organization where people care about each other?  Where you feel supported and appreciated?  Where everyone manages to fit in, in spite of their personalities and work style preferences?  If you don’t have this type of environment, this series will provide insights and suggestions that can help you create community.  The deepening that occurs is the level of commitment of employees to each other, empathy for others, and deeper connections. Following are some characteristics of workplace community, and suggestions on how to develop and encourage them.  I’ll also talk about the ways to work with those who are uncomfortable with the concepts of creating community.

Level of Commitment

You can’t simply ask people to be more committed and expect them to oblige.  Instead, try asking people how they feel about commitment in the workplace; what it means to them; how they demonstrate it; how others have demonstrated commitment to them.  You may suggest and discuss degrees of commitment at a simple level:  agreeing to smile at someone in the morning even though you are not a morning person.  Or at a more complex level, jumping in to help others cover the position of a person who is gravely ill.  Explore what people are willing to do to show their commitment to each other.  What are they not willing to do?  What are their expectations of others?  What are their fears about being committed to others?  What are the rewards?  How do the benefits and limitations balance out?  These are important questions to discuss in an open dialogue where everyone’s ideas are welcome, and where there are no right or wrong answers.  Once you solicit this type of employee input, define organizational norms that people will agree to around commitment that are flexible, clear and specific enough to meet a wide range of needs and expectations.  Then ask who will be your champions:  who are the people who will demonstrate through their behavior what commitment means.  Most importantly, make sure to include opportunities to celebrate how people have demonstrated commitment in both small as well as significant ways.

Empathy for Others

When we try to develop empathy for others, it doesn’t mean we have the same reactions as they do to certain work or life situations.  Instead, it means that we can identify with them simply because we have had our own life situations that have been difficult, and know how deep our emotions can run at those times.  For example, I knew an employee whose feelings were hurt because co-workers did not come around to his office to chat.  (Most of them were introverts, or extremely task-oriented, so they didn’t engage in much small talk with anyone.)  Although I couldn’t identify with his frustration (since I like my time alone), I could remember a time when someone I knew seemed to avoid talking with me.  Both the employee I’ve just described and I were experiencing perceived rejection from two different kinds of situations.  So we could empathize with each other’s situations.

When we appreciate how others struggle, even though we might not agree or identify with their struggles, we strengthen our relationships. You don’t need to take on their problems.  You simply need to let them know you that you recognize their distress without changing anything.  Empathy also means sharing in others’ successes and failures by celebrating when they’re successful and being available to them when they fail.  Empathizing, however, can be difficult when we don’t like or respect another employee, and finding the balance of empathizing without feeding someone’s victimization can be even harder.  But that’s what it takes when we cultivate community.

Deepening Connections

Connecting to others is probably the scariest venture for most people.  To make deeper connections, we need to open ourselves up and allow ourselves to be vulnerable.  For some people, the cost is too great.  But when we open to others, let them see who we truly are, warts and all, we create a level of safety for them to open themselves to us.  This effort does not necessarily include sharing deeply intimate information, although you might learn about each others’ families and life outside of work.  The degree to which you get to know each other is up to you and must be mutual, honoring the degree to which people are willing to disclose information about themselves.  Over time, mutual caring and cooperation can grow, and along with commitment and empathy, plant the seeds for community.

Resistance to Community

Since people may resist creating and participating in, community, you can let them know that you truly do want them involved and you want them to contribute in their own way.  You can allow them to decide the degree and frequency of participation, and also have times when they get together with everyone as a community.  You can encourage them to be connected to the community, but they have choices about how involved they will be.  Not everyone will be equally invested in building or participating in a community.  But if we respect a person’s choice about his or her level of participation, whether on the fringes or in the middle of activity, you will likely be respected for letting them make that choice.  Those choices will build trust, which nourishes our ability to increase commitment, develop empathy and strengthen connection to one another.

New Offering

Check out the new workshop the Quinn Company is offering called Raising Consciousness in the Workplace:  Meditative Tools to Reduce Stress, Improve Relationships and Manage Conflict.  A complete outline is available at http://www.thequinncompany.com/attachment/SHARPENING_THE_MIND.doc or paste the link into your browser.