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A subtle denial of ownership is innocence and indifference. The future is denied with the response, “It doesn’t matter to me—whatever you want to do is fine.” This is always a lie and just a polite way of avoiding a difficult conversation around ownership. People best create that which they own, and co-creation is the bedrock of accountability. The ownership conversation most directly deals with the belief that each of us, perhaps even from the moment of birth, is cause, not effect. The leadership task is to find a way to use this conversation to confront people with their freedom.^[1] 

It is vulnerable to accept responsibility when we cannot always control all the variables for success. We often avoid the vulnerability of taking responsibility with polite dismissals. What is one thing that you have taken responsibility for in this season of your life that leaves you vulnerable? Is it a work relationship, a neighbor relationship, perhaps the precarious relationship that a loved one or child is in with their work or friendships. Notice this, and claim this decision to engage without guaranteed outcomes.

Does anyone else know that you’ve made that decision? Find a way to share with someone today the isolation you might feel in being unable to control the outcome, and yet choosing to be a cause and not simply an effect.

^[1]Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (intro, and pp. 127). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition

Accountability is the willingness to acknowledge that we have participated in creating, through commission or omission, the conditions that we wish to see changed. Without this capacity to see ourselves as cause, our efforts become either coercive or wishfully dependent on the transformation of others.

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.^[1]

What are you creating at this point in your life? Take a few minutes to write this down. What are the relationships, the networks, the stories that you are still an active participant in? As you working through this journaling exercise, consider the following questions:

How Much Risk are you willing to take? How valuable of a moment do I intend this to be? To what extent are you invested in the well-being of the whole?^[2]

^[1]Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (p. 127). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

^[2]Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (p. 182). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The possibility conversation frees us to be pulled by a new future. The distinction is between a possibility, which lives into the future, and problem solving, which makes improvements on the past. This distinction takes its value from an understanding that living systems are propelled by the force of the future, and possibility as we use it here (thank you, Werner) is one way of speaking of the future.

Possibility occurs as a declaration, and declaring a possibility wholeheartedly can, in fact, be the transformation. The leadership task is to postpone problem solving and stay focused on possibility until it is spoken with resonance and passion. The good news is that once we have fully declared a possibility, it works on us—we do not have to work on it…

The challenge with possibility is it gets confused with goals, prediction, and optimism. Possibility is not about what we plan to happen, or what we think will happen, or whether things will get better. Goals, prediction, and optimism don’t create anything; they just might make things a little better and cheer us up in the process. Nor is possibility simply a dream. Dreaming leaves us bystanders or observers of our lives. Possibility creates something new. It is a declaration of a future that has the quality of being and aliveness that we choose to live into. It is framed as a declaration of the world that I want to inhabit. It is a statement of who I am that transcends our history, our story, our usual demographics. The power is in the act of declaring.^[1]

Take a quick assessment of what meetings you have coming up: will you be with a group of school parents, are you sitting down with your partner or children; is it with some stakeholders in your organization, or perhaps a reaction to a political action. Ask what is possible in the group, what new possibility can be done over the time of the meeting or the course of this group’s work? Problems arise and responses or “solutions” to problems are called for in life, however, consider the shift in engagement and in “departing empire for the wilderness of community”, when we begin with possibility and not problem.  Here are some questions you could use:

What is the crossroads you are faced with at this point in time? What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you?^[2]

^[1]Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (pp. 124-125). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

^[2] Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (p. 181). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Hospitality, the welcoming of strangers, is the essence of a restorative community. Historically, if strangers knocked at your door, you automatically invited them in. They would be fed and offered a place to sleep, even if they were your enemies. As long as they were in your house, they were safe from harm. They were treated as if they belonged, regardless of the past. This is the context of restoration we are seeking. Our hospitality begins with the invitation.  

The conversation for invitation is the decision to engage other citizens to be part of the possibility that we are committed to. The invitation is in itself an act of generosity, and the mere act of inviting may have more meaning than anything that happens in the gathering.

An invitation is more than just a request to attend; it is a call to create an alternative future, to join in the possibility we have declared. The question is, “What is the invitation we can make for people to participate in creating a future distinct from the past?”^[1]

Consider the invitations you’ve accepted in your lifetime. What invitations have you made lately that free a person to choose to “create a future distinct from the past?” How many invitations have buried the lead and turned out to be a sales pitch? How many invitations are laced with guilt trip, shaming you into accepting.

Consider how you might offer an invitation (or accept one) that originates in hospitality, in generosity, while also declaring the possibility plainly.

^[1]Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (p. 114). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The shift is to believe that the task of leadership is to provide context and produce engagement, to tend to our social fabric. It is to see the leader as one whose function is to engage groups of people in a way that creates accountability and commitment. In this way of thinking we hold leadership to three tasks:

• Create a context that nurtures an alternative future, one based on gifts, generosity, accountability, and commitment.
• Initiate and convene conversations that shift people’s experience, which occurs through the way people are brought together and the nature of the questions used to engage them.
• Listen and pay attention.

Consider one context in which you currently lead or could lead: it could be in a classroom, a neighborhood meeting, a discussion with other parents, a management responsibility… How might you make room for gifts to emerge and what would it look like to organize the conversation such that the others move into a place of clarity about commitment?

We’ll be discussing this journey toward commitment and belonging in the next several days.

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (p. 88). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.