How to Skilfully Create a Community

Towards the ends of a Coach's Journey Community call a few months ago, someone reflected on the power of the call, how a new member had seemlessly fitted in, and how the community had come together. They credited me with 'skilfully putting it together.'

And then, after a brief pause, I said something like... 'You can see from the look on my face that I'm thinking... did I skilfully put it together?' Then another pause. 'Here's what I think happened, and I've thought about it a lot: I showed up, as me. And then you showed up. And that's why we're all here. And here we are.'

I had thought about this a lot.

The first time I thought about it was after going to two of Rich Litvin's 'Intensives' in the space of six months. There was something about the people in the room. In a way, although in those days it didn't feel like it was the big sell of the event, it was the biggest benefit. Those people. That community. The conversations that happened.

Here's what I think Rich did: he showed up, as him, as much as he could. And there we were.

It happened again when I went through Seth Godin's The Marketing Seminar. On that programme and in the Akimbo community in the longer term, I found the same thing. These people. There's something about them.

Here's what I think Seth did: he showed up, as him. And then there we were.

Since I went to university I've thought about how for two people to end up in the same place at the same time, at the same stage in life, they actually have to have quite a lot in common. To end up at UCL, where I did, I had to make a whole series of decisions: to go to university, to go to one in London, to choose one with the feel, look, location of UCL. And so did everyone else who ended up there. And so we shared something.

To go to a Rich Litvin event, people had to have found Rich's work somehow. They had to be willing to travel to London (the first time) or Santa Monica (the second time). They had to be willing to pay $2000 or so to get in. And, most of all, they had to choose that Rich's work is the work that they want to pay for. They have to be inspired by his work, and not hate it or, even, be indifferent to it.

To sign up for a Seth Godin course, a similar set of things have to have happened.

To end up in my Coach's Journey Community calls, or my 12-Minute Method Facebook group, the requirements are different, but the results are the same. A self-selecting group who - out of the almost infinite possibilities of how people could spend their time, they chose me.

And that fundamental final part: choosing me - that's important. That's where the magic happens. Because what I saw in Rich and Seth, what I admired in them - and don't forget that to admire a quality in someone else deeply we have to in some way embody that quality ourselves - was that they weren't just showing up. They were consistently showing up as them. And that allows the people to really, really choose them.

Now that's not easy - that's far more vulnerable and scary than people choosing a persona, a front, a version of ourselves. But it is powerful. My work on myself has to continually and consistently be more me. To free myself from myself so I can be myself. And so I can grow into being even more myself.

If we do that, then people are really choosing us. And that can be scary. But it brings a truth, a consistency, that is impossible to fake. In work like mine, when someone is choosing someone to travel with them on a journey of transformation, we usually choose to work with people who are like us, on some psychological levels. What that means in my community - or Rich's or Seth's or (I'm sure) Allegra's or Toku's or Annette's or Jo's - is that we are a group of people united by our psychology, by our hearts, by our souls. So when I invite people to lean into courage, honesty, vulnerability and leadership, they do that. Because they know what it means. Somewhere deep inside. Because they know me. Because I am them and they are me.

And to be in a room of people doing that, showing up in that way, that is special.

That is what is possible if we show up, as us, and allow other people to show up too. We can create community. Community that feels beautiful. That gets remarked on at the end of a call. Community that new members can seemlessly slip into, feeling part of the family in a matter of minutes.

That is how I skilfully put together a community.

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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online. 

The first 12-Minute Method Book - How to Start When You're Stuck - is out now!