Community Building Tips: The Dip
At this Checkpoint
This is the fifth part of a toolkit series on community building and social change.
Read this if your group has decided main activities and is ready to start organizing, or you’re already organizing but you or other group members seem less engaged or motivated.
Skip this if you and your group are still highly motivated and engaged.
“Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it”
The NGM Circle Community Building Journey Map: You are at “The Dip” checkpoint.
Many well intended projects die out before ever really becoming anything. Plans, ideas, and words stay imaginary until we take action. Groups often find themselves paralyzed after the initial excitement of starting something new wears off. You may catch yourself or others feeling stuck, finding new things to get excited about, or wanting to back away instead of following through with the plan. The goal of this checkpoint is to choose to commit or quit.
This checkpoint is crucial if you start to notice these thoughts and attitudes creeping into your group since it’s a chance to check in about any deeper reasons for the lack of engagement.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting the group
Are things moving too fast or slow?
In all the excitement of planning and starting something new, it’s not unusual for people to over commit their time or have unrealistic expectations about how long community engagement work takes. Establish new expectations with group members if necessary to better align with actual availabilities.
There might also be a lack of consensus among group members about choices made in the previous stage. If supporters abruptly stop showing up to meetings or returning your e-mails, they may have not felt seen or heard by the group and lost interest. As a leader in the group, try to equalize power and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak and contribute in group brainstorming sessions.Are things moving in the “wrong” direction?
Similarly, you can have group members who still show up and want to participate but are not fully supportive of the activities and mission decided on in the “Think it Through” stage. They might have had a different course of action in mind but compromised to support the overall vision. Make sure they feel safe and supported in sharing their thoughts and contributing to the mission.Do group members feel ownership?
As the initiator of this group, you have a certain power whether you want to admit it or not. You convened this group and others are looking to you for leadership. If people aren’t engaged, you may not have given them permission to be as involved as they’d actually like to be.Do group members feel a sense of belonging?
It will be hard to build a growing community or make cultural changes if your group isn’t embodying the change you want to see. Always take time to introduce group members, welcome people, check in with them, socialize, get to know each other, and be human. It’s hard to stay motivated if your community just feels like a job.
Troubleshooting yourself
If the answers to those questions aren’t holding you back, there are a couple of other common personal blocks that start showing themselves at this point.
Aversion to effort
Everyone goes through this to some degree. Taking action of any kind is uncomfortable to most of us, it means real work and effort. This aversion is especially obvious when it comes to social change which forces us to go against social and cultural norms.
Fear of failure
Sometimes when we deeply care about something, we try to hold onto it. Failure and success are imagined states that both mean change. Whether we fail or succeed, we have to be committed to change to move forward at this point since it will disrupt the current way that we live.
These mental blockages usually go hand in hand, since our fears of “failure” or “imperfection” often justify us doing less work.
Summary
Actions to take before moving on to the next stage
Assess lack of engagement within the group
Assess lack of personal engagement
Decide to move to the next stage, return to a previous stage, or quit
Thanks for reading! This is part of a toolkit series on community building. Stay tuned for the next installment!
-Ryan