Flashback - Questioning Your Community from People Soup 1979
by Cheryl MarkoffThis article was originally published in the 1979 People Soup, which was the magazine of Liberal Religious Youth (LRY), the group which preceded Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUUs).
Building a community can be a rough, fulfilling, and risk-taking task. There will be different kinds of people and therefore different needs to be met with different alternatives to meet these needs.
In order to build and maintain a positive community, everyone must be willing to:
- Realize, understand, and accept
that every person (although
different) is a unique individual with beneficial
contributions that
are deserving of equal representation. Have we given everyone
a chance
to share of her/himself?
- Visit other communities (such as
church groups,
city/community/school organizations, etc.) in order to see,
experience,
learn, and get ideas from them. Learning from others is important,
but
following others exactly may lead to negative results and poor group
communication and interaction. Are we being creative?
- Discuss situations and feelings
before stereotyping. To
assume is to make an ASS out of U and
ME.
- Establish continuous lines of
communication—not just when a
crisis arises. This will aid in keeping crisis
away. Now is everything
running?
- Accept personal and group
responsibility in coordinating,
implementing, cooperating, and evaluating
programs and recreation. Am I
maintaining responsibility?
- Recognize and evaluate the importance of your community.
- Why do we want/have a community?
- What are our personal and mutual goals?
- What and how are we acting to achieve these goals?
- What are the obstacles we have to overcome?
- What are
the strengths we have in our favor? How are we working
with these?
- Review roles and expectations of each member.
- What does each individual feel her/his role is?
- What does the group think is each member's role?
- Give everyone a first, second,
third, or more chance. This includes
YOURSELF! Sometimes it takes quite a
few times before someone gets the
hang of things. Keep loving and having
hope.
- Try to move beyond and above where you are now. Review past experiences and mistakes.
- What have we learned from them?
- What have we to learn from others?
- Show respect, be honest, and try to understand one another's experiences.
- How does each person feel?
- What are each individual's needs?
- What are the group's needs?
- What are we doing now to meet those?
- What can we do in the future to meet these needs?
- Work and play together! Try not to be competitive, as this can create insecurities, superiorities, and a negative atmosphere. Is our community making everyone a winner?
- Get involved! Be energetic! One
or two person's energies,
motivation, and belief can move everyone to action and
commitment.
- Maintain attention and intention.
- Does this community continue to work toward our goals?
- Am I/are we fulfilling as a community?
- Am I still interested? Why or why not?
- What can be done to keep interest?
- What can we do to be more
fulfilling?
- Participate as fully in possible in all conversations and activities.
- Am I giving "my all" to the community?
- What more can I/we do?
- Attempt to attend and encourage others to attend every gathering.
- Faithfully and continuously seek alternatives.
- What else can be done?
- How many options have we considered?
- Are we working things out or avoiding conflict?
Communicating is imperative to any community. The depth and type of communication will vary, though each type is equally important. The three basic levels are:
- Sharing by doodling
conversations, i.e., talk
about the weather or whatever. Simple talk. This
level opens up
conversation and should not be ignored or treated as
insignificant, nor
should it be the only level obtained.
- Sharing through exchanging
ideas and concepts.
This level opens up the passageway even further. It
demonstrates the
openness and willingness to accept one another's
viewpoints.
- Sharing—letting other people know where you stand in relation to ideas and how you feel about them on the inside.
Exercises
Communication is not always on the verbal level, though. Most times when one enters a room of unknown persons, the people in the room can tell quite a bit about that person. An exercise to see how well your community communicates on a non-verbal level is to divide into small groups of four, five, or six (or whatever number fits the group) and hand out an equal amount of Tinker Toys. Tell each group that they have five or ten minutes to build a structure 4 feet tall. There is to be no speaking. Start the process immediately. When the time is up, discuss:
- Did a leader
evolve?
- Did everyone
participate?
- What happened in the
beginning?
- What methods
were used to communicate?
- What accounted for
the success?
failure?
- What feelings were felt by the participants?
- Was the structure FIRM and SOLID?
Verbal communication may sometimes become a block instead of a facilitator of effective communication. Try this "Rumor Clinic" exercise. Divide into small groups of four or five and have a facilitator in each "accident report." An example report can be something like: The roads were slightly wet and slippery as it had just stopped raining ten minute before. The yellow MG was at the stop sign and the red Cadillac approached from the left. When the two realized that they were going the same way, both cars accelerated, trying to get there first…etc. Add a few details. Ask other members of the group to leave the room. Read the "report" to one person who did not leave the room. Have the first person to whom the report was read relate it to one other member in their own words, with NO help. Continue this process until all group members have heard the report. The last person should relate the report back to the rest of the members. Read the original report to the group and evaluate the difference in the two reports.
Discuss how communication went.
- Was it positive and
factual?
- Were things distorted?
- Why
were communications
like they were?
- Are we content with the way this
is?
- What can be done to change/fix/alter our communication?
Communities and groups have different roles that sometimes are taken up by members without their even knowing it. These roles play an important part in the group process, as some are task-oriented, and others are maintenance and anti-group roles.
- Task Roles
- Initiator
- Information-Seeker
- Information-Giver
- Coordinator
- Orienter
- Evaluator
- Maintenance Roles
- Encourager
- Harmonizer
- Gatekeeper
- Standard-Setter
- Follower
- Anti-Group Roles
- Blocker
- Recognition-Seeker
- Dominator
- Avoider
Go over and discuss who each person sees themselves as being.
- What role am I in?
- How do I feel about the
role I'm in?
- What is stopping me from entering the role I would like to be
in?
- What is causing me to be in the role I'm presently in?
- Do others
see me in the role I see myself in?
- Why/why not?
A community is based on care, commitment, and faith. All three of these must be felt by each individual for the other members, themselves, and those presently outside of the community.
Don't expect "instant openness." Opening up to others is a risk for many people. When every community member is committed to working toward an open, caring, responsible, and fulfilling community, the feeling will then grow in a positive fashion.
For more information contact youth @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
