Build a community that will nurture and grow your company's culture

The power of building a strong internal community is immense. According to the Harvard Business Review, people who are happy are 53 percent more likely to stay with a company than individuals who are unhappy.

Most importantly, real community members work differently together. They help clean up a mess, even if they didn?t make it. They have an emotional commitment that no person is left behind. This decreases turnover costs significantly, improves productivity and ultimately drives profitability and asset value.

As culture is the heart and soul of your business, community serves as the body?don?t take care of it and it will die.

How to build community
After the vision and mission statements are written and the values and market position have been identified, many organizations believe that these components will simply integrate themselves into the business. As a result, posters are placed on the wall, ?pledge cards? are handed out and the five steps of serving customers are circulated around the office. Once complete, many assume that no further steps need to be taken.

Much like a garden, culture needs a place to live and grow. The first step is deciding what you are going to plant (defining your culture). Next, you must go out and buy the plants and tools (people and training). However, if you think that your garden will simply grow and flourish on its own from this point forward, you are mistaken.

Healthy cultures grow in healthy communities. Communities are different than teams. Teams are functional. They provide specific results to the community at-large. Communities serve a bigger and more powerful long-term purpose. Their culture is the power of their ?fertilizer.? As we all know, some fertilizer is not as good as others!

So, what is a community?

• A community is a group of people committed to and working toward a higher purpose (vision).
  
• A community has common interests (taking fantastic care of each guest).
  
• A community has agreed upon goals and is interdependent.
  
• A community is interactive with one another.
  
• A community is dependent upon each other. It is only as good as the sum of its parts.
  
• A community is deeply connected. When one person in the community is in trouble, others in the community reach out, support and assist in the progress of the member in trouble.
  
• A community is a group of people who have a common culture.
  
• A community thrives in a positive environment that drives productivity.
  
• A community focuses on its strengths and leverages those strengths to accomplish its mission.

Communities are built on six primary pillars. Great organizations work every day to ensure the strength of these pillar. It?s a lot like compound dividends: the more you invest, the better your investment yields.

The six pillars of a great community are:

1. A strong sense of connection between the members (employees).

2. Clean communication?This is real talk, not ?nice? talk. It is vigorous conversation used to work through problems. Clean communication is easy in good times, but is truly tested in difficult moments.

3. Compassion?Giving members of your community what they can have, in a way they can have it, moving from a place of caring. Compassion is leveraging strengths, not focusing on weaknesses.

4. Higher purpose?Individuals know that what they do as a member of their community makes a difference in everyone?s lives.

5. Participation?If people are not participating, not only do you lose out on their gifts, strengths and optimal productivity, you also feel the drag of their energy

6. Responsibility and accountability?How are you working and delivering on your commitments and responsibilities to your community?

Welcome to the community!