C is for Community

C = Community
Wellness of the work family

Wellness of the community is wellness of your work family. It includes your staff, your partners, your superiors, and your subordinates. It is your team. It also includes other teams you interact and depend on to do your job. 

A good way to understand “Community” is by thinking about the opposite of a community, an anti-community. An anti-community is like a shark tank. In the shark tank anti-community, any unidentified colleague is a shark until proven otherwise; in this type of environment a person can’t bleed because it attracts more sharks; get out of the water if someone else is bleeding; counter aggression with more aggression. In this type of anti-community, the members eat each other if they sense weakness or failure.

Needs for Wellness of Community

A community needs to have three things in place in order to be “Well”

1. Mutual Respect
2. Mutual Purpose
3. Mutual Weaknes

The sections below will explore these three elements in more detail

Mutual Respect

Mutual Respect is built through trust. An effective strategy for  creating mutual respect is to create trust.  Without trust, there is no respect. Once trust starts to form, respect will follow. 

• ABC’s of Trust: An Overview

  Dr. Stanley developed the “ABC’s of Trust” as a way to organize the critical elements needed for the establishment and sustainment of trust. This system has three domains which are A, B and C

  • A is for Ability  (the ability to trust)
  • B is for Brand (the character to trust)
  • C is for Communication (Communication for trust)

  Each of the above domains of trust contain several important trust elements, which are also organized with the  ABC mnemonic approach. The table below outlines this system.  

  Click on the tabs below to further explore each trust domain. 

• ABC’s of Ability

  A = Appreciation: In order for trust, and thus mutual respect, to be built people need to have their thoughts, ideas, feelings, actions, and contributions appreciated. 

  B = Base: A safe spot. A “home base”. People need to be in a safe environment in order to have the ability to trust others. This is a critical requirement for mutual weakness. 

  C = Connection: In order to trust, people need to be connected to their teammates. Healthy communities have lots of connection. 

  D = Decisions: Autonomy with authority. Everyone needs the autonomy to make decisions. They also need the authority that is necessary for this to actually work. 

  E = Everyone: Understand the role of everyone and what everyone does for the team. Everyone should know how and why their teammates role is important to the team and how/why it contributes to the overall purpose. 

• ABC’s of Brand

  A = Agreements: Agreements must be honored for trust. 

  B = Boundaries: Boundary setting is critical for trust in a community. 

  C = Consistent: Action and behavior need to be consistent with talk. 

  D = Delegation & Dirty work: Healthy delegation is important for trust and respect. Dirty work is the opposite of delegation, it centers around members of the community being wiling to do the dirty work. This also is important for trust and respect. 

  E = Expectations: Managing expectations is critical for trust and respect. 

• ABC’s of Communication

  A = Ask & Advise (the need to receive and give feedback): People need feedback. 

  B = Bona Fide (the need to tell the truth):  People need to hear the truth from their team. Communication should be based in truth. Lies cause paranoia and destroy trust. 

  C = Confidentiality (the need to protect sensitive information): People need to protect critical proprietary information is obvious. 

  D = Disclose information (the need to share everything you can): Information needs to be shared willingly. 

  E = Euphemize (the need to speak with good purpose): Speaking negatively about others is very damaging. 

Tools, Tips & Tricks for ABC’s of Trust

• Boundaries make a Base

  Boundary Setting is the B in the ABC’s of Brand. The second domain of the ABC’s of Trust. 

  Healthy communities (i.e. teams) are good at setting boundaries. These communities set boundaries during times of high trust and low conflict (i.e. they set boundaries proactively during good times). Boundary setting is a way to create a Base (an element of the Trust of Ability). These boundaries help establish a safe place for the community to function. When setting boundaries, healthy communities focus on determining the best ways for the team to:

  • Work together
  • Solve problems
  • Deal with conflict
  • Deal with crisis
  • Deal with failure
  • Deal with threats
  • Reduce stress
  • Maintain productivity
  • Serve patients and clients 
  • Communicate
  • Hold each other accountable

  This type of planning becomes important when things go wrong, when the situation is rapidly changing and during times of uncertainty. Failure, change and uncertainty often cause fear and anxiety which can lead to lashing out and conflict. Having a pre-conceived plan in place gives team members something to latch onto when they are stressed. This reduces conflict in the team and creates a healthy community. 

  TIP: Make boundaries flexible. Flexible boundaries are the most resilient. The best boundaries are those that are flexible with many options and lots of room to work. This gives team members room to work, improvise and adapt to changing environments and situations. Flexible boundaries allows team members to make decisions (element of Trust of Ability) and it allows healthy delegation (element of Trust of Brand).  

• The 3U’s of Unmet Expectations

  Expectation setting is the E element in the Trust of Brand, the second domain of the ABC’s of Trust. 

  Healthy communities understand that the cause of unmet expectations is almost always due to the expectations being unclear, unrealistic and/or unsupported. Dr. Stanley has termed these as the “3U’s of Unmet Expectations”. If you want your expectations to go Unmet, make them 

  • Unclear
  • Unrealistic
  • Unsupported

  It is important to note that it only takes one of the above U’s to seriously threaten expectations. 

  Healthy communities understand that they need to do the best they can to fight the 3U’s by making their expectations

  • Clear
  • Realistic
  • Supported 

  Healthy communities know optimal productivity happens when all members are combating the 3 U’s for any given expectation. This is especially important with expectations that involve leaders and subordiantes. In order to fight the 3U’s of Unmet expectations, leaders need to constantly encouraging subordinates to make sure expectations given to them are clear, realistic and supported to the level they need. Leaders also make sure they are receptive to requests for clarification and support. This includes situations when the subordinate feels the expectation is unrealistic (because if it’s unrealistic it won’t be met which is the primary goal for everyone). Leaders also know that an unmet expectation is ultimately their fault, and when this happens, they don’t blame the subordinate, they go back to the 3U’s and see which ones need to be addressed.

Mutual Purpose

Once Mutual Respect has started forming, the focus should turn to establishing mutual purpose. A good approach for forming mutual purpose includes 

1. Branding
2. Beacons
3. Best Behaviors

• Branding

  Good teams brand themselves. The brand should center around their purpose, values, beliefs and what they stand for. Good teams develop their own purpose. This creates buy in and commitment.

  Stories: Good teams use stories to communicate their brand. They spend a great deal of time telling their story

  1. Tell stories of where they are
  2. They tell stories of where they are going.
  3. They tell stories of those who have gone before them
  4. They also relentlessly look for different ways to tell their story.

  Good teams use logo’s, icons, and catchphrases that represent the brand. These things should represent and communicate who the team is and what they stand for. These things should be simple to say and remember. They should be simple but they need to communicate complex behaviors and concepts.

• Beacons

  Good teams highly utilize beacons to maintain awareness of where they are and where they are going. There are several different beacons that can (and should) be utilized.

  1. Destination Beacons (visible & language versions)
  2. Potential Beacons: What the capability is
  3. Energy Beacons: Where energy should be spent
  4. Link current position to where you are going.

  Make it a place of purpose: One that is full of the above beacons.

• Best Behaviors

  The behaviors that will get the team from where they are to where they want to go. These behaviors should also be branded and turned into catchphrases. These behaviors are saying, this is why we work, this needs your energy.

Mutual Weakness

Special Tools for Special Situations