our third space

Everybody wants to have a village, but few are willing to be villagers. Building presence takes work. It requires vulnerability, patience, and the willingness to show up even when the room is not full. That might mean hosting an event for ten people when you have ten thousand followers. The cost of community is inconvenience.

I try because I don’t think there is another way. I believe that human beings are objects in motion, and when that motion takes us farther away from each other, there is only one outcome. Our lives will all get more precarious. We will trust each other less. The authoritarians and strong men will find more acolytes.

I like to think of gardening metaphors, like growing trust. You have to water it—not too much, not too little. And things will always grow in different directions and with different outcomes than you’re expecting, but that’s okay.

“Questions are houses. As you think about the doorknob of a group conversation, you’re helping others open this door, and creating the house they live in together for a moment in time.”

Good communities incubate innovation and creativity – think of the salons in France where intellectuals used to meet to discuss the latest ideas; the Olympia Academy; la Bande de Picasso. A feeling of belonging allows people to be authentic, to move from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, and to take risks knowing that they have people to... See more

There are a lot of organizational structures and lived practices embedded in our bodies that we just enact by default. But through explicit facilitation practices or when we make meetings happen in a certain way, that helps change these conditioned ways of operating. In the process of learning to work this way, what really helps is, again, trust.... See more