Your success in growing a community will depend on how well you can understand and articulate the following features: Shared values Membership identity Moral proscriptions Insider understanding

personal letter or telephone call that welcomes a new member can be powerful.

Community display rituals reveal the community to itself. There must be collective displays of participation and community membership. This means that there should be some activities where members can see other members participating as well.

Play rituals are very important. Communities must have an opportunity to play together.

She’s a Nobel Prize–winning economist who has identified eight features necessary to maintain a stable community property resource.1 This wisdom applies to many of the communities you’ll grow. While Ostrom’s work overlaps with ideas I have already shared, it focuses more on long-term community management than on creating belonging and is worth

Many leaders confuse self-selection (no invitation necessary) with “everyone belongs.”

The principles we will explore in detail are: 1. Boundary: The line between members and outsiders. 2. Initiation: The activities that mark a new member. 3. Rituals: The things we do that have meaning. 4. Temple: A place set aside to find our community. 5. Stories: What we share that allows others and ourselves to know our values. 6. Symbols: The

No matter what the explicit values are, the implicit values will reveal the real deal.

But communities that look strong and healthy are sometimes poorly organized.