This is the fourth and final(!) post in a new Sunday series by our Yellow Collective project manager Lauren Caselli about finding, creating, and growing a community of people who have your back. Whether it’s online or in-person, free or paid, having a community of people who understand and support you can move you toward your goals faster than ever. To read the other posts in this series, click here.
So far, when talking about community, we’ve identified how to figure out who are the awesome people you want in your life , and then we figured out how we actually ASK them to be in your life . Last week , we talked about how to host an amazing, inspirational gathering.
Today, to wrap it all up, we’re going to cover what happens when everyone goes home. How do you keep a community strong after an inspirational gathering? How do you encourage people to take action on the changes they want to make in their lives, and maintain lasting momentum of all the goodness from the gathering?
The goal of this series isn’t just to help you meet new people; it’s to help strengthen bonds of friendship so that you can go forth into the world with a veritable army of amazing supporters who will back you up during your world-changing missions.
Here are four ways to keep the community you’ve built strong as it continues to build over time:
Help identify actions steps.
Remember at the end of the last post when I mentioned that you should encourage people to create an action step or a goal at the end of your gatherings? If your group is comfortable, you should go around and share your goals, write them down in a central location (my community and I have a shared Excel document), and review them at the beginning of your next gathering.
Sometimes, you don’t even have to remind yourself or your peers about their goals; simply by writing them down and allowing them to be in the back of their minds is often enough for the goal to get completed by the next gathering.
Take the discussion online (or offline!).
If your gatherings are in-person, create a Facebook group or a Slack channel to keep each other updated on progress. If you’re already meeting in a digital group over Google Hangout or Skype, schedule a meet-up far in advance or plan to do a retreat together at some point.
Creating various methods for people to connect and stay in touch with each other helps with the accomplishing of goals, but it also takes a “once-a-month” group (like a book club) to a prioritized circle of trusted advisors and friends. And that’s what we all really want, right?
Create a public method of accountability.
Perhaps it’s assigning accountability buddies that meet every week to hold each other to goals or using one of your Slack hangouts as a goals check-in.
It’s one thing to set a goal, and it’s another to have a structured method of reviewing and revising those goals. Build in some public-facing accountability and see how those action steps get completed quicker than ever.
Follow up one-on-one with your other community members.
Group meetings can catalyze all sorts of changes, but those 1:1 conversations that your group members will have in between gatherings and online are the reason that a group like yours exists. Empower people to create connections and find others in the group that may be able to share wisdom around a tough issue. These connections are where people will be able to go deeper than is possible to go within a group.
And if you’re anything like me, you’ll find that each person in your group serves a specific purpose, has a specific wisdom, and will be able to use their unique perspective to guide you toward your goals and your mission, even if it’s not in a group setting.
Psst…Yellow Co. is so invested in having a community of amazing people around us that we’re launching something extra special ****at our conference on August 25th.** Want to be the first to know about it? Sign up for our first-to-know email list **here** (or if you’d rather be there in person for the big reveal, **snag one of the final spots at Yellow Conference).
Photos by Andrea David
