The winter of 2024 was both unseasonably mild and unseasonable gray in the Pacific Northwest. Trying to jolt myself out of a mood as bleak as the weather, I donned my hiking boots and headed out into the woods with my little terrier, Eddie. As I stomped up the trails along the edge of town, a small white mop came bouncing toward us. I immediately recognized Lulu, a past patient whose spritely attitude belied her 13 years. As our dogs played together, Lulu’s owner and I continued on the trail, catching up on the years since I was Lulu’s veterinarian. On arrival back in town, we parted ways, and I continued toward home.
A few blocks later, I ran into my neighbor June. Having recently lost her husband, she shared that her house had sold and that she was moving into a senior apartment complex. She confided that she could not keep her beloved dog but had found her a good home. We shared a hug and a few tears. I told her how inspired I was to see her taking ownership of her future and making choices that would sustain her independence.
At times like that, life offers us a glimpse into the power of community, our human condition, and the human need for belonging and connection.
What Does Community Mean to You?
It is with a sense of serendipity that I ponder the meaning of connection, belonging and community and bring this musing to Today’s Veterinary Business. The new Coach’s Corner column is designed to build community in the veterinary profession.
According to Google, community is:
- A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
- A feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests and goals.
- Interdependent organisms of different species growing or living together in a specified habitat.
For me, the definition fails to convey the feeling of being part of a group of people who share a sense of identity, a narrative and a mutual concern for one another. Community is a word that speaks of belonging and relationship and invokes a sense of “coming home.”
Twenty-seven years ago, I moved to a small community in the mountains of southeastern British Columbia, Canada. Together with my partner in life and veterinary medicine, we bought a practice. There were days when I longed for the anonymity of living in a larger city. Days when I came around the grocery store aisle to find myself face-to-face with an unhappy client. Days when, exhausted and wanting to get home to my kids, I found myself trapped in the post office and offering veterinary advice to a neighbor.
Those early years were a weird dance of craving community and hiding from it. Looking back on the privilege of being a small-town veterinarian, it is only now that I appreciate that weird dance and wonder if it might just be a missing piece of the well-being puzzle for many of us.
Finding Our Way Back to Each Other
We live in times where connection and community can look quite different than in our grandparents’ generation. Through the power of technology, we can connect with people around the world with the click of a mouse. We connect online through our social media platforms, and we belong to communities on those platforms.
Yet, recent research points to our increasing disconnection. In May 2023, the U.S. surgeon general called attention to the crisis of loneliness, isolation and lack of connection, saying: “At work, loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making. For our health and our work, it is imperative that we address the loneliness epidemic quickly.” The advisory went on to outline the importance of cultivating a “culture of connection.”
I sometimes wonder if the technology that makes connecting so easy drives our increasing sense of isolation and disconnection. We need to find our way back to each other and find our way back to being in community.
In her book Mastering Community, management professor and researcher Christine Porath identified six actions that leaders can use to build a community in their organizations. They are:
- Share information: Never hoard knowledge.
- Unleash people: Think autonomy, trust and coaching.
- Create a respectful environment: It’s what you say and how you say it.
- Practice radical candor: We need to get better at giving good feedback.
- Provide a sense of meaning: Be part of something bigger than ourselves.
- Boost member well-being: Be intentional about the tools to care for ourselves at work and outside it.
Coaching Tools You Can Use
While action steps like those provide a how-to manual for building connection and community, I know from experience that building community is about more than actions. Successful community builders develop a communal mindset that embraces positivity, possibility and a belief in the goodness of others. Building community is an act of courage in that it invites us to step outside ourselves and trust others, make ourselves vulnerable to others, and be willing to set aside our needs in service to our community’s greater goals and needs.
Each of us can be a positive force in our communities and shift the culture by practicing these three coaching skills:
- Learn to listen: Think of the last time you felt truly heard and consider how it made you feel. Appreciated? Understood? Respected? Learn to set aside distractions and practice listening with your ears, eyes, head and heart.
- Ask better questions: Questions are a wonderful tool to engage curiosity and hold judgment at bay. They help us gather information and better understand a person or situation before we jump into action. When you feel ready to tell someone what to do or offer an opinion, practice taking a breath and asking a good question instead.
- Stand in the greatness of others, even when they fall: Being human is hard, and our ability to show up as our best selves can be challenged by the circumstances in our lives. Believing in the capability of others, their inherent goodness and their desire to do the right thing will shift how we communicate as we build stronger relationships and empower others to live into their gifts.
Putting It All Together
Mastering community might best be captured by the word “ubuntu.” From the Bantu language, ubuntu describes a value system that recognizes the interconnectedness of individuals with their societal and physical worlds. Ubuntu can perhaps be better appreciated through the words of the late South African archbishop and theologian Desmond Tutu:
“One of the sayings in our country is ubuntu — the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality, ubuntu, you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas we are all connected and what each one of us does affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out for the whole of humanity.”
Each of us has a choice in how we show up in our communities. Do we choose to lift others or pull them down? To build connected communities that fuel our sense of belonging and feed our well-being, or ones that tear us apart through competition and comparison?
Look for opportunities to connect, prioritize people and make our communities (both at work and outside of it) places where we find ubuntu. Sometimes, the smallest actions can have the biggest impact. When added together, they may be what helps us find our way back to each other in veterinary medicine and beyond.
LEARN MORE
- “Why Being Respectful to Your Co-Workers Is Good for Business,” TED Talk by Christine Porath, bit.ly/3ORyNz0
- “Human Uniqueness and the African Spirit of Ubuntu,” YouTube video with Desmond Tutu, bit.ly/3uRALIB