“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.” ― Brené Brown

There’s a ubiquitous idea among community and business leaders—hide your weakness, at any cost. 

This approach may work at times if the goal is gaining power, but it’s nearly impossible to be an effective leader of a Community of Practice (CoP) with this philosophy. As my last blog post highlighted, trust is the essential element in any Community of Practice, and the only way to gain the trust of your team is by showing vulnerability. 

A few years ago I experienced the truth of this. My husband and I worked with a realtor who promised amazing results after we saw our “dream house” that was clearly beyond our reach. Somewhat worryingly, she told us, “trust me”. 

While these words can be oversold by many a person in sales, she really meant it. She went on to describe what was basically a Community of Practice among realtors. 

She and her colleagues meet weekly in a consultancy approach where they forward their most challenging clients and, together, craft an approach to the seller that, in almost every case, gets them a winning offer. While their domain is evident (real estate) and their practice (sales) is easily defined, their sense of community that allows them to share their practice elevates their work beyond the typical realtor working one client at a time to sell one house after another. 

Their willingness to engage in a shared approach, demonstrate vulnerability (after all, there is a commission on the line), and find new ways to solve the problem of successfully matching home buyers and sellers was impressive. This vulnerability made it far easier for me to trust that I could indeed trust this realtor to find us the right home.

When building a Community of Practice (CoP) community collaborators must share their practice, and even more daringly, their struggles with their practice. In fact, a measure of effective community building is the growing sense of trust within the group. With a strong sense of community, our domain becomes our passion and purpose. Without it, our domain is as simple as the place we go to work. 

As a leader, are you ready and willing to expose your strengths and weaknesses to benefit from every member of your community? This may go against your natural inclination, but when you see how effective it is, it’s incredibly motivating.

Here are ways you can take the lead in being vulnerable with your team or CoP:

Don’t be afraid of not having all the answers. You don’t have to be the first with an idea or an answer. Be the kind of person that actively seeks out others’ input. Acknowledge that you’re not an expert on a particular topic, and then ask for help. You’ll be amazed at the positive response. 

Encourage others to take the lead in important conversations. Try to engage the perspectives and thoughts of others. Ask different people to take turns at running meetings, you’ll see a newfound commitment to the shared vision of your organization. 

Expect honest feedback. Ask for your team to give feedback on some aspect of your performance. Of course, the way in which you receive these comments will impact whether you receive sincere feedback from your team again.

Regularly engage in consultancy activities. This allows you to delve into a colleague’s shoes and see their work in new, different, and refreshing way. Like the real estate group I shared earlier, this is a deeply sustaining practice that helps colleagues, or even competitors, to become collaborators. 

Be ready to try something new. Don’t let your ego protect you from being willing to step out of your comfort zone and risk embarrassment. And when you make a mistake (not if, when) acknowledge it. You’ll gain the respect and loyalty of your team when you show the humility to admit a mistake. 

Are you intrigued by what your team could achieve as a Community of Practice? Contact me to learn how your team can develop an action-oriented model of activities and ways of communicating that drives you towards your joint purpose. Or download my special report Leading a Purpose-Driven Team to learn how to get started.

Do you trust each member of your team? Do they trust you? Do they trust each other? According to Stephen Covey, “The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is the key professional and personal competency of our time.”

Trust is especially important if you’re working within a Community of Practice. In fact, a Community of Practice (CoP) based on anything but a shared feeling of trust and security—like fear or authority—ultimately will be a failure, because it’s based on an unstable foundation.

Of course, this is all easier said than done. Trust needs to be built over time and attended to on a regular basis. The trust of your team members can’t be bought, only earned.

Without attention to trust, mistrust happens all too easily. We have all had experiences where our trust has been betrayed. So remember each member of your team has had their trust misplaced, it seems to be part of the human experience.

Building trust through time and effort

Trust isn’t built overnight so you need to begin finding time to build trust within your community. I remember at one of my organizations, we diligently appropriated the first 20-minutes of every meeting to community building. And not just the “how is your week” type of check-in (which quickly becomes perfunctory). Instead, each staff member, on a rotating schedule, was charged with crafting a meaningful, opening to each meeting. On a weekly basis, that translates to 52 different ideas for a well-crafted, time-sensitive, community-building activity.

There are a plethora of community building activities both online and in print to help you get started. However, I’ve seen that the best trust-building activities are developed when I take an existing activity and then tweak it to meet the needs of this particular group. Personalized activities go a long way toward building a true community.

When these types of activities are prioritized, the first thing that begins to grow is camaraderie, a great lead-in to building trust. Occasionally, it builds competitiveness, but, as trust builds, the competition typically remains positive in tone.

To establish and maintain a positive tone, a solid set of working norms is necessary.

Most of us have experienced a perfunctory set of norms. In order to be part of the community-building experience, norms need to be organic and fluid. Rather than dictating to them as the leader or boss, encourage your team to co-construct their own set of norms. Discussion about the norms, as they are created, is important to ensure that each voice is heard in the shared behaviors for the group. Don’t forget, norms must be revisited on an intentional basis to help the group actively own their norms.

Are you intrigued by what your team could achieve as a Community of Practice? Contact me to learn how your team can develop an action-oriented model of activities and ways of communicating that drives you towards your joint purpose. Or download my special report Leading a Purpose-Driven Team to learn how to get started.