Blog 5 – What kind of Community Builder will you be?
by Lorna Lyons
Julian introduced this session as being more about everyday contexts of community and focusing on what you are trying to achieve within your community. He suggested a good place to start it to think about what kind of community builder you will be or what type of community builder does your community need? Julian suggested there are 6 types of community builder:
- Physician – seeks to listen, diagnose & prescribe a fix for the community.
- Farmer – plants the seeds of community & looks after the soil & ecosystem.
- Therapist – listens & communicates with the community to make itself better.
- Engineer – formal approach to decide what to build a community with or upon.
- Curator – deals in ideas & stories from the community and shares these.
- Soil Scientist – monitor & sample the community & intervene when required.
Now that is a lot of information to digest and off into our breakout rooms we went to discuss and answer this question. My first thought was that we were all these things within our community or certainly taking on different roles at different times, and I think it is accepted that there is a certain fluidity to communities and the roles we play within them.
I felt I was the curator then I thought the physician then I fancied being the farmer, decisive I know. But on reflection as I write this several weeks later, I have decided that within the context of the bold team and in this moment in time we play the following roles but also help with all the others:
- Heather Wilkinson is the Physician because she is a good listener and does seek to diagnose and fix.
- Lorna Hill is definitely the Farmer who sows the seeds for our flourishing community within every single cohort.
- Lorna Lyons is the Therapist because hopefully I listen and communicate with our community effectively.
- Dawn-Claire Irvine is the Engineer who focuses on strategy and the big picture ensuring we are building a strong, formal community for the future.
- Magdalena Schamberger is the Curator as she collects bold Mini Commissions and captures flourishing to share.
- Frankie Greenwood is our Soil Scientist who does an excellent job in evaluating our community and its impact.
So over to you bold partners what roles do you play within your community or what roles does your community need you to take on and do you play different roles in different communities or play several roles within the same one?
I did say at the beginning of this series of blogs that sometimes there are more questions than answers but without questioning ourselves how can we learn and grow.
One thing is for sure we are all bold pirates sailing the seas of social leadership within dementia in our bold boat.
Ahoy! He hearties until our next voyage.
Find out more about Sea Salt Learning here!
Read the other blogs of our Community Building journey here.
