Daily Buzz: How Rituals Add Value to Your Community

Connecting with a community is a primary reason that people join associations. Building community requires organizers to cultivate a space for trust—and members to take a radical leap and trust others, says Jonelle Seitz on the Personify blog  (opens in a new tab).

“Being part of a community, after all, means sacrificing a sliver of one’s own individuality in favor of a shared identity,” she says. “Your members need to trust each other enough to know the sacrifice will be worth it.”

To build a culture of trust, you need to lead by example and lead with authenticity, Seitz  says. Another key strategy: Facilitate ritual experiences.

“Here’s the thing: Studies have shown that groups of people who participated together in a completely bogus ritual trusted each other more than those in control groups did,” Seitz says. “Think about rituals that you engage in as part of a community—physical, online, or both. Does your organization take every new hire out to lunch, or induct them with a common project? What are the shared experiences that bind members of your association together at the annual conference? What do members of your advocacy group do together to celebrate gains (or acknowledge losses)?”

When you include rituals in the ways your community interacts, you foster trust and add a layer of meaning to membership.

Re-engage a Burned-Out Team

You have to learn to work with the team you have, not just the team you want. @davemckeown  (opens in a new tab) https://t.co/Q5tn8qmFZv  (opens in a new tab)

— Inc. (@Inc) August 15, 2019  (opens in a new tab)

Stepping into a new role is always challenging—even more so when you’ve inherited a demotivated team. To re-inspire and re-engage team members, start by asking why the burnout happened.

“The worst thing you can do is barge in, guns blazing, with your preconceived ideas of what needs to change in order to shake things up,” says Dave McKeown on Inc.  (opens in a new tab) “Without clarity on what caused the demotivation in the first place, you could end up at best solving the wrong problem or, at worst, even further demotivating everyone.”

Based on what you learn from the team, devise a strategy to combat those issues. Then, hold your team accountable to the plan and monitor progress. “Do a formal temperature check at 30, 60, and 90 days to check if you are trending toward a sense of re-engagement from the team,” McKeown says.

Other Links of Note

Have you noticed new Instagram followers that seem inauthentic? The company said growth hackers are behind the fake profiles  (opens in a new tab), according to TechCrunch.

If you’re taking the next annual meeting global, SmartMeetings offers an international safety checklist to guide your planning  (opens in a new tab).

Searching for a new project management tool? Google Assistant now allows you to assign reminders to other people  (opens in a new tab), VentureBeat reports.

(JJ Ying/Unsplash)