Organizations falter, teams get stuck, collaborations fall apart, families break down. No one wants the groups that are important to them to struggle with mediocrity. But they do! The Peckian Process (aka, Community Building Workshops) is a way to manage the dynamics that regulate group behavior and determine the relative success or failure of collective efforts. #CommunityBuilding #HealthyGroups #TrueCommunity
What we mean by "Community"
The word community means different things to different people. To some it’s a geographic location. To others it’s a group that they feel they belong to or a belief that they identify with. A hometown, a fraternity, a place of worship, a neighborhood, an ethnicity, a civic organization — all can be thought of as communities. However, what we mean by the word community is a particular type of human encounter and the quality of communication that arises as a result — one that is characterized by an unusual depth of authenticity, heartfelt human dignity, extraordinary respect, and wide-open space for individual differences to both coexist and to coact.
There are very few opportunities in our day-to-day lives for such an experience of self with others — where we can set aside our pretenses, settle into our human condition, and just be who we are in the moment. Community is one of those opportunities. Unfortunately, when people have an experience of Community it is usually because they have stumbled into it. Life has humbled them with a heartbreaking event and opens them up in a profoundly human way to those around them. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Community is principled. Therefore, its way doesn’t need to be accidental. When the principles are learned, the experience can be repeated whether you are building a relationship with just one other person or an entire group of people.
Community Building
While Community is a quality, Community Building is the set of principles underpinning that quality. When effectuated, Community Building fosters an unusual depth of trust through a set of relationship skills that for most groups are extraordinarily challenging to achieve. These dynamics and their principles were discovered by internationally renowned psychiatrist and bestselling author, M. Scott Peck, and are described in his books, The Different Drum and A World Waiting to Be Born. Used in a wide range of contexts around the world, Community Building enhances collaboration, improves group performance, and increases productivity by enabling group members to:
- Transcend the diversity of their backgrounds,
- Enter into difficult dialogue gracefully, and
- Both notice and be of service to the hidden order at work in their shared group experience.
When properly integrated into training programs, Community Building improves the learning experience of their participants. In fact, research demonstrates that Community Building groups achieve significantly better training outcomes by deepening trust among participants, increasing hope for the future, and creating a sense of belonging to something positive outside themselves. These properties can be tricky for helping professionals to achieve in their training programs. However, they surface in a very short period of time in Community Building Workshops.
Community Building Workshop
Community Building Workshops are the most concentrated form of Community Building principles. They are intensely personal three-day immersions — and are frequently contextualized by Peck’s vision for the Foundation for Community Encouragement, the organization that he formed to promote Community.
There is a yearning in the heart for peace. Because of the wounds and rejections we have received in past relationships, we are frightened by the risk of disarming ourselves. In our fear, we discount the dream of authentic community as merely visionary. But there are rules by which people can come back together, and by which the old wounds can be healed. It is the mission of [Community Building] to teach these rules -- to make hope real again -- to make the vision actually manifest in a world which has almost forgotten the glory of what it means to be human.
Guided by specially trained facilitators, this highly experiential process is an adventure in human interaction in which up to 15-30 participants learn to communicate in a richer and more authentic way than they are likely to have experienced in the past. Community Building Workshops improve inter and intra-personal skills, and can lead to experiences of healing, renewal and personal and professional growth. However, they are exceptionally demanding of facilitators and have proven to be difficult for organizations to sustain. Nevertheless, their impact on both individual participants, organizational culture, and mission is undeniable.
Join us For our Next CBW
Community Building Workshops at Chattanooga Endeavors are open to those who are either providing or receiving social services in the Hamilton County area. Whether you want to simply experience the model or learn how it might benefit your organization’s mission, please give us a call to find out more or click on the registration button to see if you qualify to attend our next Workshop.
Scott Peck
Bob Roberts
Robert E. Roberts, Ph.D., founding director of the highly praised Project Return of Louisiana, passed away on Oct. 14, 2013, at 70. Roberts' multifaceted career spanned from dentistry to academia, but his most significant contribution was his research and application of the Peckian Community Building model to prison and post-prison settings. Roberts served in the US Army Dental Corp, was an aviation enthusiast, and a long-time friend of the mythopoetic men's movement started by Robert Bly with his book Iron John. His lasting legacy, however, lies in his pioneering efforts in prison reentry and community rehabilitation.Project Return
Although Bob introduced many groups to the Community Building model, only a few were able to implement it — and Chattanooga Endeavors alone was able to sustain it. Project Return’s state funding ending in 2003, however, Bob’s legacy lives on in the thousands of men and women who he helped to transition from prison to free society as well as in the work that Chattanooga Endeavors continues to do.
This video includes a poem that Bob wrote after his first Community Building Workshop with Chattanooga Endeavors. It is read by his good friend, poet, and teacher, Timothy Young, and is published in his book, My Soul Said To Me. The scenes of Community Building at Project Return are from the Chance Films documentary, Road To Return.
