Building Community

Hey all,

I had a couple of conversations this week reflecting on my communities and community-building skills, so that's what I'd like to write about today.

2 Big Ideas

1. Community makeup is just as important as size.

Think of each person in your friend group or community as a vote towards who you are. Each of them pulls you in different ways (and at different) strengths towards who they are.

This means:

If your community isn't diverse you get pulled into both the strengths and shortcomings of that group.
- No one is the whole package, so you have to pull different skills from different people.
Even if your community is diverse, if you're learning the wrong lessons from the wrong people, you're still headed in a negative direction.
- It's okay (to an extent) to categorize some things you like about a person and take away just those skills.
  - Trust me, people will notice you making an effort to break out of your negative stereotype (like me, I'm pretty nerdy but I'm not socially awkward so I get to learn from a more diverse crowd).
Be aware of who belongs in your "inner circle," these are the people who shape you the most, and who you have the most to gain from (in terms of happiness, skills, and favors too).

2. Consider How You're Good and Bad at Building Community

As always, self-awareness is one of the most important things in life, so considering in what ways you're good and bad at building community is important. Here, I'll go first:

Goals:

My goals with my community come at 3 levels:

Have a good, loyal bunch of around 5 best friends.
1. Helpful for confiding in, feeling connected, etc. - everyone needs 2-3 of these.
Have a good, admirable group of good to great friends I can learn new things from.
1. Helpful for diversity of thought, personality, and meeting new people.
A large group of people I'm friendly with.
1. This one's more about reputation. They are important because I want to be someone people want to work with or someone people mention positively in conversation.

Considering that, how am I good or bad at making connections?

I'm very bad with "awkward" people. I'm pretty decent at turning random strangers into acquaintances. I'm decently talkative, but it's hard for me to turn these acquaintances into true friends especially if the person I'm talking to is shy because I have a hard time gauging if people want to be friends or not if they don't say as much. (Like, am I making them uncomfortable or not?)
I'm very good at connecting people and becoming great friends with my good friends because I make an effort to talk to everyone in a friend group.
I'm very good at staying in touch with my old friends.
I'm very good at making friends with people who are "traditionally" successful and positive. They may not be the most innovative thinkers or people who take nontraditional paths, but my friends are almost always driven, positive, and intelligent.
I'm not as good at turning my "great" friends into my best friends because I don't spend lots of with one person too often.

So, here's my takeaway:

My connections diagram looks like a 3 tiered pyramid, with lots of acquaintances, a good amount of very interconnected "great" friends, and a handful of best friends. To me, I think this is a decent job. Sure, I have bottlenecks turning acquaintances into good friends and good friends into best friends, but as long as I don't lose any of my best friends, I'll have a very healthy community surrounding me.

As for the next steps, I'd like to get better at turning acquaintances into good friends, which is mostly about being more confident and charismatic. Additionally, I think I'd like to meet more people who are hardworking in nontraditional roles: trying to make startups, working on their projects, etc. because I believe I have a lot to learn from their ability to take risks with something they believe in.

My question for you now is: think about your community and your community-building skills, how do they serve your future goals well or poorly? Would you like to meet more potential partners (and with what traits)? Do you need to meet people who are driven like you? Or maybe more people that encourage you to chill? Is your community positive? Does it give you energy?

These are all things to ask yourself, and they are the only things you can answer once you're self-aware of how you build a community and what your community looks like. So I hope you give it some thought.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

-Ethan