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Ownership is the decision to become the author of our own experience. It is the choice to decide on our own what value and meaning will occur when we show up. It is the stance that each of us is creating the world, even the one we have inherited.

The key distinction for the conversation is between ownership and blame (a form of entitlement).

We have to realize that each time people enter a room, they walk in with ambivalence, wondering whether this is the right place to be. This is because their default mindset is that someone else owns the room, the meeting, and the purpose that convened the meeting.

The idea that “I am cause” can be a difficult question to take on immediately, so lower-risk questions precede a direct approach on this one. The best opening questions are those about the ownership that people feel for this particular gathering. The extent to which they act as owners of this meeting is symptomatic of how they will act as owners of the larger question on the table. The extent of our ownership for larger questions is more difficult and therefore requires a level of relatedness before it can be held in the right context.

Here is a series of questions that have the capacity to shift the ownership of the room.

The most effective way to renegotiate the social contract is to ask people to rate on a seven-point scale, from low to high, their responses to four questions:

• How valuable an experience (or project, or community) do you plan for this to be?
• How much risk are you willing to take?
• How participative do you plan to be?
• To what extent are you invested in the well-being of the whole? 

These are the four questions to ask early in any gathering. People answer them individually, then share their answers in a small group. As mentioned above, be sure to remind them not to give advice, be helpful, or cheer anyone up. Just get interested in whatever the answers are.

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 128-129). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

The ownership conversation asks citizens to act as if they were creating what exists in the world. Confession is the religious and judicial version of ownership. The distinction is between ownership and blame. The questions for ownership are: “How valuable do you plan for this gathering to be, how have we each contributed to the current situation, and what is the story you hold about this community and your place in it?” It is important for people to see the limitation of their story, for each story has a payoff and a cost. Naming these is a precondition to creating an alternative future.

Community will be created the moment we decide to act as creators of what it can become. This is the stance of ownership, which is available to us every moment on every issue, even world peace, the overdependence on fossil fuel consumption, and the fact that our teenagers are slightly self-centered.

This requires us to believe in the possibility that this organization, this neighborhood, this community is mine or ours to create. This will occur when we are willing to answer the essential question, “How have I contributed to creating the current reality?” Confusion, blame, and waiting for someone else to change are defenses against ownership and personal power. This core question, when answered, is central to how the community is transformed.

Begin with yourself. What have I contributed to creating this current reality? If your answer sounds like confusion, blame, or waiting on someone else then you are in good company.But, to call forth transformation is to realize this and to take responsibility.

This would be a good time to check your motivations for convening others. If you believe you are recruiting people to a solution you’ve already arrived upon, then you are not yet vulnerably ready to ask the questions of the group.

We move from stanger to neighbor by admitting our participation in the current reality with a statement of ownership.

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 123, 128). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

The possibility conversation gives form to one way the gifts of those in the margin get brought into the center. Each person’s possibility counts, especially those whose voices are quieted or marginalized by the drumbeat of retribution. In fact, what distinguishes those on the margin in communities is they tragically live without real possibility. For many youth on the margin, the future is narrow, perhaps death or prison. They have trouble imagining a future distinct from the past or present. This is the real tragedy: not only that life is difficult, but that it is a life that holds no possibility for a different future.

There needs to be a point in each gathering where time is created for the private possibility to be developed and then made public. This works best in two separate steps. The best opening question for possibility is

What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your life or work or in the project around which we are assembled?

Later, the more direct individual question for possibility will be

What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform

When you conviene strangers through a deliberate invitation that costs something, they typically arrive as strangers. Insofar as those convened experience marginalization, those strangers are not just estranged from one another, but also from their possibilities. To call forth possibility in the room is to ask everyone as individuals what their next choice is (this is the cross-roads question).  To awaken to that together begins to introduce a shared possibility for the gathered room. There is an African proverb that says “It takes a village to raise a child.” Moving from private possibility to community possibility is a “village” habit, strangers cannot make community possibilities come to life.

But this is not enough. That possibility will take time and commitment to mature. So as you invite others, notice that the depth of commitment baked into the invitation often predetermines how far-reaching the imagination and courage of the collective can be. If you invite folks to gather one night, the depth of risk will match that. If you invite folks to a year of month gatherings, the depth will be different.

Did your invitation list include strangers? Are you inviting anyone who does not experience the advantages of life at the center of the community?

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (p. 126). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

It is the willingness to reframe, turn, and even invert a question that creates the depth and opening for authentic change. Questionstake on an almost sacred dimension when they are valued for their own sake. This is in stark contrast to the common need for answers and quick formulaic action…

After the invitation, there are five other conversations for structuring belonging: possibility, ownership, dissent, commitment, and gifts. Since all the conversations lead to each other, sequence is not that critical. The context of the gathering will often determine which questions to deal with and at what depth. It’s important to understand, though, that some are more difficult than others, especially in communities where citizens are just beginning to engage with one another. I present them in ascending order of difficulty, with possibility generally an early conversation to have and gifts typically one of the more difficult.

Possibility is not a goal or prediction, it is the statement of a future condition that is beyond reach. It works on us and evolves from a discussion of personal cross- roads. It is an act of imagination of what we can create together, and it takes the form of a declaration, best made publicly.

The journey from stranger to neighbor is one out of private isolation into public disclosure and shared experience. We’ll cover all 5 conversations in the weeks ahead. First, begin by imagining those you invited declaring a possibility outloud to a small group of strangers.  Imagine the momentary change in posture when curiosity, empathy, fear, and hope aren’t “left at the door” but brought into the room and discovered through authentic conversation.

This is not a quick fix… in fact when people share it will be important to listen without giving into the habit of fixing at all. Rather than being a quick fix, this is like leaving Egypt for the wilderness, a slow, courageous journey toward recovering neighborliness (be it in specific neighborhoods, workplaces, or other associations). Your work is to bravely ask deliberate questions that initiate such a journey.  But you cannot make participation happen- leadership enacts the vulnerability that you are asking from the rest of the room.

What happens in the room is up to those who are strangers to you and one another. Not all strangers are friends, but two or more can become known to one another (neighbors) when they courageously share personal possibilities. And then we’ve begun!

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 20, 123, ). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.