Nurturing relationships in place
Community development is an action-oriented line of work. Whether we are connecting change agents to resources, building connections within communities or building capacity through aligned opportunities for skills development and learning – our work is about helping communities take action on matters that are important to them. Helping them work together to make things happen to improve the places they live in and the lives of the people who live there.
In a field where practitioners work across a broad range of policy issues and where day to day work contexts vary enormously – the practice of ‘helping make things happen’ takes on a variety of forms. There is however some important foundational work that underpins our ability to be effective in all of these contexts. Whether we are working on ending homelessness, building social cohesion, revitalising neighbourhoods or creating opportunities for children and young people – our ability to help ‘make things happen’ in a place is underpinned by both our knowledge of a community and the relationships we have within it. We may possess a range of other skills and abilities that help us help communities achieve their goals but without knowledge of place and relationships in place, our efforts are constrained.
The previous articles in this three part place series explored the ‘promise of place’ and the importance of cultivating ‘place knowledge’ as a foundation for place-based community development practice. In this last article of the series, we focus on the importance of place relationships as a pillar for effective practice.
Nurturing relationships in place
By place relationships, I am referring to those relationships that we form with the people and organisations in the communities we work in. This is distinct from relationships that we might form with institutions and services who operate in an area but do not have a deep and lasting connection to a place. Interagency networks, sector collaboration and partnerships of an institutional kind may be important drivers of localised service integration, but they are not a substitute for the relationships that we need to form at the grass roots level to achieve meaningful change.
Place relationships help us build authentic, meaningful and purposeful connections with the communities that we work in – the people whose lives are most impacted by our work. You can have developed the most incredible program based on mountains of evidence, but without genuine relationships in place – how do you know it’s relevant? How do you know it’s in line with what people in this community need? How will people find out about the program in the first place? As community development practitioners we rely on relationships in place to help us navigate local contexts and adapt the way we approach our work to ensure we are both relevant and it is responsive to local needs.
Places are natural sites for connection that give rise to many forms of informal and formal association. They offer a plethora of platforms that we can plug into to identify and nurture relationships at the community level. Here’s a few that come to mind:
Sporting clubs
Cultural and religious institutions
School communities
Playgroups
Seniors’ groups
Neighbourhood associations
Local community safety groups
Community gardens
Local business associations
Community arts and theatre groups
Shifting the dial from transactional to transformative relationships
Whilst the opportunities for relationships are plentiful, building authentic relationships in place requires time, commitment, consistency and the right approach. Often time and scope constraints lead to surface level engagement and relationships that are transactional in nature. This often plays out in transactional approaches that focus on the breadth of engagement – the numbers of people reached vs the depth of engagement, the strength of the relationships formed and the potential of these relationships to help transform communities.
I’ve been reflecting on this challenge of shifting the dial from transactional relationships to transformative relationships that improve outcomes for communities. Relationships grow over time and yet often our relationships are bound by the timelines and contexts of individual projects, staff contracts or funding agreements. The below table is a snapshot of what I have observed as the standout features of transactional and transformative approaches and the ways in which this engagement plays out in communities.
Building trust in community
Building relationships that take us beyond the transactional state is a long-term game. At a basic level it comes down to trust. Trust is the currency of relationships. As we put energy and efforts into building relationships we earn trust. Trust provides the foundation for relationships to grow, as people’s trust in us grows so does the strength of our relationships – our relational equity. Building trust however requires a sustained investment in relationships over time.
There are a few things that I’ve found to be important in establishing and maintaining trust in the places I’ve worked:
1. Be present
When we are present in community, we have the opportunity to learn more about them – this builds our knowledge of community and place. Building this knowledge however requires us to be good listeners and good observers. Opening yourself up to the knowledge that exists within community requires you to put aside your preconceived notions of what this community is about or what might work here.
Don’t drop in and out when it suits you. Be present in community, when it’s not tied to a KPI or part of your funding plan. When we show up for communities at times when it’s important for them it shows that we care and are interested in how we can help cheer them on and support their goals rather than narrowly focussed on ours. Often the simple act of accepting a weekend or evening invitation to a community celebration or a football carnival can mean much more than we think
2. Be authentic
Be honest about your limitations, clear on your goals and genuine in your engagement.
Invest in getting to know people and let them get to know you. Don’t be afraid to be human in community and share a bit of yourself with others.
Show a genuine interest. If you are not genuinely interested in people, then you are in the wrong job! Sometimes despite our interest we get distracted – we let the business of our work get in the way of being in the moment with people, showing them that we care and are genuinely interested in their experiences.
Be interested in the other aspects of people’s lives that are outside of your ‘project scope’ – these aspects often intersect in interesting ways and through broadening your lens to listen to what people want to tell you, you might pick up on things that you hadn’t considered.
3. Build credibility
We don’t trust people or organisations that we don’t see as credible. Being seen to be credible – is being the ‘real deal’ in the eyes of others. It’s the value that lies in having a good reputation in community as someone that follows through on their promises and delivers high quality work.
We can build credibility through collaborating with community on small things that are a priority for them. Sometimes we start with the stars when what might get us closer to our goal is identifying the low hanging fruit that are high priorities for the communities we are working in. Generating these small wins can build our credibility with communities as a good partner, paving the way for achieving bigger things together. It’s a bit like building a credit rating.
In community development work we are often leaning on others to help us achieve outcomes. These relationships however will be short-lived if it’s not a two-way street. There will come a time when those people or organisations that you’ve leaned on will want to lean on you. In community development practice reciprocity in relationships can involve being flexible in responding to requests for support, even when the act of helping takes us beyond the ordinary scope of our service or project.
Leaning in on the bumpy road
When you’ve invested in relationships and built trust, you often find that people are more likely to be honest with you. This can sometimes mean telling you the things that you might not want to hear – maybe they don’t think your program is going to take off, or that your engagement methods aren’t appropriate for their community. Perhaps they feel undervalued or disrespected in some way. These are crossroads points in our relationships with community. How we deal with things when relationships get challenging makes the world of difference. Small fractures can turn into big chasms if we are not attune to frictions and develop the skills and language to be able to respond.
When things get tricky or uncomfortable, we have a choice to make. We can lean in, be curious, listen carefully and learn, adapting our approach to strengthen relationships, or we can get defensive, back away and move on to a community that is ‘easier’ or more compliant.
These bumps, if we learn to lean into them a can strengthen our relationships in community in the long run, providing us with useful frames of reference that we can draw upon to navigate future challenges that may arise.
Accruing relational equity
As we invest in building trust and nurturing relationships we start to accrue relational equity. Our relationships strengthen and, we are able to leverage them to help make things happen in the communities we work in. When people trust us, they believe we have their best interests at heart. They feel comfortable to share with us their needs and aspirations and see us as a safe partner/collaborator.
There is a compounding effect that occurs when our relational equity builds. Whilst the time and resources we invest in those initially stages might be significant, in the long run our efforts are rewarded. Communities are more willing to engage with us. We spend less time trying to get them to the table and more time doing meaningful impactful work together. We are more efficient in making things happen in community. When there’s a problem, we know who to call and we can be confident they’ll pick up the phone. Communities see us as valued partners and we are better able to mobilise people behind important goals. We become a catalyst for relationships that build within communities, playing a connector role in building up partnerships and networks that bring people and organisations in community together around common causes.
Our relational equity becomes especially important in times of crisis, when swift action is critical, and we need help to mobilise people or get word out. During the recent pandemic local authorities and other government agencies involved in COVID – 19 relied heavily on their networks within communities to help get the word out there about vaccinations and health protocols and to help identify vulnerable people in community.
Embedding a relational focus in our work practice
There is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes before we can take action or support action in community. Being present, listening, observing, learning, building credibility and ultimately trust – these relational aspects of community development work are important precursors to action but are often under-resourced, under-valued and misunderstood within organisations and by funders.
Embedding a relational focus to our work requires funders, organisations and the individuals that work in them to recognise that:
relationships are central to the achievement of community development outcomes – they are our greatest assets.
in order to leverage the power of relationships we need to invest time and resources into nurturing them.
transformative relationships are the pathway to sustained impact and change.
There are many practical steps we can all take to embed this way of working into how we do business, here’s a few to get you started:
Make time to be present in community – with no agenda
Map the relationships you have and those you want to strengthen
Be intentional in identifying strategies for investing in relationships
Meeting new people, learning about what makes them tick and making things happen together is an incredibly rewarding process. Embrace the privilege, and enjoy the ride.
