Built to Belong

by Natalie Franke

  Start by building a persona of who your ideal leader would be. Think about their ideal qualities and skill sets. Create a list of things that you want this person to be and the values they should uphold.

  For example, I intentionally look for community leaders who are mission-driven, empathetic, diplomatic, resourceful, and deeply connected to our mission, vision, and values.

  Once you’ve outlined who your ideal leader would be, think about the motivations for why someone might want to lead within your community and identify which factors are in alignment with your vision for leadership.

  For example, some people might want to lead for the title or position of power. Others may be more motivated by the chance to make an impact or the feeling they get from helping a member reach their goals. Understanding potential motivators will help you to discern who is stepping up for the right reasons and what the value is that leaders will take away from the experience.

  It is also important to construct a vetting process. Don’t shy away from asking potential leaders tough questions. A strong leader can make or break the experience that members have with a community, so it is imperative that you choose the right people from the start.

  Here are a few great questions to ask potential leaders during the vetting process.

  • Why do you want to lead? What is your motivation for leading?

  • Give an example of a time you dealt with interpersonal conflict. How did you navigate it? What was the outcome?

  • How do you motivate others to take action?

  • What is an area where you feel as though we can improve as a community?

  • What impact would you like to make as a leader in our community?

  For Rising Tide, our process of choosing leaders includes an online application, a formal interview, and a rigorous onboarding process. Every leader is educated on their roles and responsibilities before taking on the title. This has evolved over the last six years as we have learned more about what we need from our leaders and who is the best person for the job.

  Allow your leadership selection processes to evolve over time, and when you find a leader that is the ideal fit, think about why that is and incorporate it into your persona. Improve your selections as you gather more experience and insight.

  Nurture from within.

  When looking to choose leaders for your group, consider looking first at your most committed members who demonstrate an interest in being more involved. The best leaders often begin as passionate members who are nurtured into roles of leadership.

  Create opportunities for deeper involvement (initiatives or campaigns where they can raise their hand), encourage members to take on more responsibility, and offer encouragement when you have an intuition that someone would be an excellent leader. Sometimes a small nudge or a word of affirmation can be the tipping point to encourage a member to rise up and lead.

  Develop an intentional leadership model.

  In order to empower people to be their best, feel fulfilled in their role, and provide as much value as possible to community members, develop an intentional leadership model. Think about the roles you need filled, the types of leaders who would best fill those roles, and clearly define responsibilities up front.

  An intentional leadership model:

  • Has specialized rather than general roles to empower leaders to leverage their unique personality types and superpowers. For example, you might need one leader to moderate your online group and another to plan events.

  • Divides responsibilities to reduce burnout (especially for leaders in volunteer roles) and keeps workloads clearly defined and limited within the scope of each role.

  • Contains opportunities for advancement as leaders grow and want to become more committed.

  For example, at Rising Tide we have two primary leadership opportunities: leading local chapters and moderating our online Facebook community. Both local chapter leaders and online moderators must care deeply about our mission, vision, and values. They undergo leadership training to understand how our community operates and how we strive to create inclusive and equitable spaces where members can truly feel as though they belong.

  The roles both moderators and chapter leaders play are specialized to their interests and superpowers.

  Our moderators oversee conversations, manage pending posts, and make challenging decisions regarding content and violations to our guidelines. To be a moderator, you have to be good at conflict resolution, making hard decisions, and connecting with people online. The role is best for someone who spends a good amount of time online and is a natural at navigating Facebook group discussion throughout the day.

  Our chapter leaders organize in-person events and are deeply involved in their local communities. To be a chapter leader, you have to be good at coordinating events, creating valuable programming, building face-to-face relationships, delegating responsibilities, and managing a team. This role is best for someone who is comfortable hosting in person and is great at motivating others to take on additional responsibilities.

  Additionally, many of our local chapters have chair/committee positions that report to each local leader. This creates a stepping-stone into leadership and creates more opportunities to get involved as members become more invested in Rising Tide.

  Creating an intentional leadership model means having specialized leadership roles, dividing responsibilities between those roles, and creating opportunities to advance in your community involvement over time.

  Encourage integrity, not perfection.

  We don’t need our leaders to be perfect, but we do need them to have integrity. The best leaders hold themselves accountable and humbly admit when they could have done better. They learn from their mistakes, are open to critical feedback, and improve going forward.

  Perfection is not the requirement—integrity to upholding core values, however, is.

  3. Create shared experiences.

  Here is where the mission, vision, and values collide with leaders who are able to make your community experiences meaningful for your members.

  Shared experiences can be large or small, seemingly significant or insignificant in the grand scheme of the community experience. They can take place in person or online. They can originate organically or be planned proactively.

  However, all shared experiences bring the community together and encourage members to connect with one another so that they can foster meaningful relationships or personal progress.

  Shared experiences often take the form of rituals, events, traditions, and symbols—or REST.

  Rituals

  Events

  Symbols

  Traditions

  Let’s look at each individually.

  Rituals

  Rituals in the context of community are a set of practices that all members of a group engage in. This might look like shaking someone’s hand as a greeting or singing “Happy Birthday” around a celebratory cake when someone gets a year older. In religious communities this often looks like prayers, hymns, and chants. In athletics it often looks like putting your hands in a circle for a collective “go team” cheer and concluding the game by shaking the other team’s hands.

  Rituals are the individual threads that knit us together in the tapestry of belonging.

  Small and at first glance insignificant, rituals bring members closer together through a shared behavioral language or experience. Rituals are fundamental to community because they contribute to our sense of collective identity and cultivate meaning for all members of the group.

  How to implement:

  • Examine communities and groups that you are a part of and take note of the rituals that connect you to other members. What rituals do you notice? How do they make you feel? What do you suppose their purpose is?

  • Ideate a few rituals that you can use to create a sense of collective identity and bring your community members closer together. What is the purpose of these rituals? How do you want them to make members fe
el?

  Common rituals in community settings often include:

  • A specific greeting when you walk through the door

  • Reciting core values before the start of a meeting

  • Kicking conversations off with an icebreaker

  • A framework for introductions or taking the floor to speak

  Rituals are as unique as the communities they arise from. These small actions lead to a feeling of belonging among members of the group.

  Remember that rituals should serve to connect members closer together by building upon their sense of collective identity. They are contributors to the culture of your group and can transform the way members feel about themselves in the context of your community.

  Group events

  Events are one of the easiest ways to bring people together physically or virtually within your community. Events can be cyclical or part of a tradition—like holidays, monthly meet-ups, annual fundraisers, or seasonal festivals. Events can also be spontaneous or serendipitous, popping up as opportunities arise or the mood strikes.

  How to implement:

  • Clearly define the goal or goals for your event. How does it relate to your mission? What do you want members to take away? The best events bring value for the individual members and for the collective group. Think about the value you want to offer and how you can achieve that through creating a meaningful event experience.

  • Outline the parameters and create a plan. Is it recurring or one time? Where and when will it take place? How can you ensure it is accessible to all members? Who do you need to help you to pull the event together? Start small with your event framework and create a plan.

  • Mobilize your community to share and get involved. Equip your community members with the tools they need to share about the event. Build a committee of event organizers or volunteers. Recognize leaders and volunteers before, during, and after the event to honor and encourage more help in the future.

  Need to increase attendance at your event? Ask members to personally bring one friend with them. A direct invitation (phone call, text, or direct message) can dramatically increase the likelihood of attendance because it is personal and creates a feeling of accountability.

  Need to increase awareness through social sharing? Hold a raffle. Each online share by a community member counts as an entry. Mobilize your members to spread the word and be your marketing engine.

  • Get feedback. After an event, survey participants to collect feedback on what members liked and what you could improve upon. It is important to listen to feedback in order to continue fostering a sense of safety and belonging within your group.

  Personally, my favorite group activities and events are those that create a little bit of intentional adversity and rivalry. You know, outings that present a slight challenge or difficulty that we can overcome together or in small teams. Bonds are often built by doing something difficult together. Healthy rivalry, as we know, also fosters a sense of belonging.

  Here are a few examples of events centered around small doses of intentional adversity:

  • Game nights, puzzles, and escape rooms

  • Citywide or digital scavenger hunts

  • Recreational sports or a group physical activity

  • Learning a new skill or taking a class together

  • Fundraising for charity or volunteering together for a cause you care about

  Intentional shared experiences can jump-start bonding and create memories that you’ll recount long after they are over. It can be as easy as choosing a group of friends, dividing into teams, and conquering a challenge.

  When planning group events, ensure that everyone can participate by keeping accessibility in mind. At Rising Tide, this means offering online events in addition to in-person ones for people who cannot attend physical gatherings. It also means prioritizing accessibility (live transcription for webinars, captioning for pre-recorded videos, choosing buildings with wheelchair access, renting chairs without armrests, etc.) to make sure that everyone can take part in the experience and feel intentionally included.

  Symbols

  Symbols are the badges of belonging. They are visual markers that represent or affiliate with something else. In the case of communities, symbols are recognizable indicators of the groups to which we belong.

  A brand sticker on a laptop, a flag on a front porch, a family crest, a cross worn on a necklace, or the emblem of an apple on the back of a phone—are all symbols that connect people to a community, brand, or ideology larger than themselves.

  In building your community, you can leverage symbols as a way of bringing people together and uniting them under a common icon, color, stylistic element, or brand. Symbols connect our personal identity to that of the collective identity. It gives us a tangible way to signal to others that we are a part of a particular group. It visually communicates our association.

  How to implement:

  • Build upon what already exists. Think about the existing symbols that are already recognizable as part of your community. What do those elements signify? How do members engage with them? How can you build upon them?

  • Create new symbols. Choose a visual element, icon, or even a hashtag that members can use to showcase to other members that they are a part of your group. Model how you want members to use your symbol and equip them with the tools (visuals, stickers, buttons, etc.) that they need to showcase their membership.

  • Make them a part of the community brand. Incorporate symbols into the member or leader onboarding experience. Include them in outgoing communication (letterhead, emails, group banners). Ensure that your symbols are a part of your members’ touchpoints with your community.

  For example, members of the Rising Tide Society use our hashtags on their social media content as a symbol to other members that they share core values (#communityovercompetition), are a part of the same community (#risingtidesociety), and take part in the same gatherings (#tuesdaystogether). That specific string of words signifies who is a member and cultivates a feeling of camaraderie between them.

  In creating symbols for your community, start small. Choose one icon or visual element that you want members to use to showcase their affiliation with your community.

  Remember to communicate the why behind the symbol as it should connect to your mission, vision, or values in some way. The most powerful symbols are those that are both recognizable and meaningful.

  Takeaway questions:

  • What symbols do you identify with most? Why do you think they are important to you?

  • Are there symbols that you think connect you to a deeper sense of belonging? (What would stop your stroll or your scroll as your brain recognizes that symbol as a part of your identity?)

  • How can you include symbols as a part of your community culture? What symbols signify the sense of belonging you are hoping to cultivate?

  Traditions

  Traditions are a long-established pattern of beliefs or practices. They create an anticipated set of events or customs that members of a community look forward to. By repeating, they also create a renewed sense of belonging over time.

  As we cultivate community, we can actively and intentionally craft traditions that enable shared experiences to continue in a cyclical way into the future.

  Every month at Rising Tide, we release a brand-new business guide on a topic that is important to our community members. Marketing, sales, workflows, communications, client experience, accounting… you name it, we’ve covered it.

  However, once a year we dedicate ourselves to a topic unrelated to business—philanthropy and altruism. Instead of bonding face-to-face over a cup of coffee, we head out into the community and bond shoulder-to-shoulder.

  We hold canned-food drives and build homes. We write cards for soldiers abroad and photograph rescue pups to help them find forever homes. Rising Tide members gather in cities all around the world to give back, and our entire community is made stronger for it.


  Traditions can begin at any point in time and should evolve as a community grows. Just because you have had a family tradition since you were a child doesn’t mean that you must carry it into adulthood. Likewise, just because your community has never tried a new tradition before doesn’t mean you can’t start something new.

  It is also important to question whether existing traditions continue to align with your greater purpose as a community.

  In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker explains: “When we don’t examine the deeper assumptions behind why we gather, we end up skipping too quickly to replicating old, staid formats of gathering. And we forgo the possibility of creating something memorable, even transformative.”1

  Several years ago, I was spending time with our Rising Tide leaders in Los Angeles after one of our first mega meet-ups. As we were walking to get lunch together after concluding our gathering, one of the leaders asked, “Why are we so quick to celebrate women when they get engaged, married, or pregnant but we have no rituals around celebrating when a woman starts a business? Shouldn’t we be hosting ‘business showers’ too?”

  Shoot. She was absolutely right. Sometimes we are quick to repeat formal traditions without questioning whether they are still relevant or connect to the individual or community need.

  As a wedding photographer, I have witnessed many couples who have unraveled past traditions and created unique ones, forgoing outdated expectations in favor of more meaningful ways to celebrate their union uniquely.

  It is empowering to acknowledge that we have control over the traditions that we are a part of in our lives and communities. We do not need to repeat traditions that no longer serve us. We can create new ones that are in deeper alignment with our purpose. The choice is ours.