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Priceless Perspectives #47: Community — What We Build Together

Writer: Scott Doggett
Scott Doggett
Sep 23
10 min read

Leadership growth isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some leaders learn through practical workplace insight. Others through story. Some through Scripture. Others through the executive lens. That’s why each weekly theme is explored through four different perspectives… so you can grow in the way that reaches your heart, your mind, and your leadership practice.


This Week’s Theme: Community in Leadership


Community is more than a place we live or a group we belong to. It grows when people are seen and valued, accept responsibility for one another, and contribute what they have toward a shared good. Leaders help make those connections possible, especially when needs extend beyond the walls of any one organization.


To explore this week’s theme, choose the lens that connects with you most or experience all four for a full, 360-degree perspective:


◆ Adventures of Noah Hart: More Than Winter Coats

◆ The Shepherd’s Voice: Who Is My Neighbor?


Because every leader eventually learns:

Community grows when we see the person, share the responsibility, and bring what we have.

And always remember… people are priceless!

Leadership Lens

◆ Leadership Lens


When People Become Our Responsibility


Ask ten people what makes a strong community and you may hear ten answers: safety, belonging, trust, opportunity, friendship, or a place to turn when life becomes difficult. Underneath those answers is a shared truth: people flourish when they know they are not facing everything alone. Leaders cannot manufacture community with a slogan. They can, however, create the conditions in which people know one another, share responsibility, and put their gifts to work for someone else.


Community Begins with Seeing People


It is easy to talk about a neighborhood, workforce, or customer base as if everyone in it has the same experience. But needs become visible when we listen to individual people. The parent missing a meeting may be working a second shift. The colleague who never joins after-work gatherings may be caring for someone at home. The student called “unprepared” may have been getting younger siblings ready for school. Seeing people does not mean assuming we know their story. It means making room to hear it and treating what we learn with dignity.

Community begins when people are known by more than the challenge they face.

Community Requires Shared Responsibility


Once a need is visible, the next question is often, “Whose job is that?” Sometimes the answer lies outside a leader’s formal role. Still, that question can become an excuse to leave a person stranded between systems. A leader may not be able to meet every need, but can bring the right people into the conversation, ask what is possible, and take responsibility for their own part. Shared responsibility also means listening to the people most affected. They should have a voice in decisions about their lives and community. Helping is most respectful when it is done with people.

You do not have to carry every burden to refuse to leave someone carrying it alone.

Community Grows When We Use What We Have


Some people can offer funding. Others can offer a ride, a professional skill, an introduction, an hour of attention, or a welcoming place at the table. Leaders often underestimate these ordinary contributions because they are looking for one large solution. The real opportunity is to notice what already exists, connect people willing to help, and make it easier for everyone to contribute without being pressured beyond their capacity. When the responsibility is shared, the work becomes more sustainable and the relationships become stronger.

Community grows when each person brings what they can, and no one is asked to carry it all.

Practicing Community This Week


This week, consider:

  • Asking one person what would help them feel more connected or supported

  • Listening to someone closest to a problem before proposing a solution

  • Introducing two people who could accomplish more together

  • Contributing one resource, skill, relationship, or hour you already have

  • Giving credit to the people whose quiet work holds your community together


The Leadership Ripple


When leaders see people clearly, take responsibility for their part, and invite others to contribute, a community becomes more than a collection of individuals. People begin to trust that they matter to one another. That trust can change what a team, school, neighborhood, or organization is able to do together.

A strong community is built each time someone says, “You matter here, and I have a part to play.”



Adventures of Noah Hart

◆ Adventures of Noah Hart


More Than Winter Coats


On a cool Minnesota evening, Noah Hart and Luman arrived at a high school gym filled with folding tables and the smell of fresh popcorn. A banner read:

COMMUNITY NIGHT — EVERYONE WELCOME

“I’m Justin, the principal,” said a man carrying a stack of chairs. Noah explained that he was traveling across the country learning about leadership.


Smiling man in red shirt hands a folding chair to a boy with a backpack outside a gym at dusk; a glowing cartoon firefly hovers nearby.

“Perfect,” Justin said, handing him a chair. “You can learn while you help.”


Justin greeted students and families by name. When a grandmother asked about the bus home, he walked her to the volunteer coordinating rides. At the next table, families browsed information on tutoring, meals, and winter coats.


“You know everyone?” Noah asked.


“I’m trying,” Justin said. “I want them to know this school belongs to them.”


A teacher hurried over. “The coats aren’t coming. The delivery van broke down.”


Justin looked toward the families waiting nearby. “Let’s ask what they need before we make a plan.”


He pulled up an empty chair for two parents and a student volunteer. One parent explained that several children needed smaller sizes. Another asked how families would know when the coats arrived.


The student spoke up. “My aunt runs the neighborhood center. They have coats. I can call her.”


A teacher found a replacement van. A parent offered to help bring the coats from the center. Justin asked each person what they could manage, then made sure families knew the plan.


“I thought you’d have to fix it yourself,” Noah said.


Smiling family registers at a blue table in a school gym coat drive; jackets and bins in foreground, warm busy scene.

“I couldn’t,” Justin replied. “But I could make sure the right people had a seat at the table.”


As the gym filled with music, Justin noticed a student sitting alone beside the popcorn. He joined her and complimented the welcome sign she had painted.


“Would you help us make signs for the coat sizes?” he asked. She smiled and nodded.


Later, neighbors and staff carried in the coats together. The student placed her signs along the table, helping families find the sizes they needed. Outside, Justin showed Noah the red pines growing beyond the school garden and gave him a few seeds the students had collected from their cones.


“Red pine is Minnesota’s state tree,” Justin said. “One person plants it, others care for it, and years from now people we’ll never meet will benefit from it. That’s community, too.”


Noah planted a seed in an open patch near the pines. A wooden sign shimmered into view:

Seed Planted (Minnesota): See the person. Share the responsibility. Bring what you have.

As Noah and Luman walked away, he looked back at the bright gym windows. Justin had noticed people’s needs, invited them into the solution, and made room for each person’s contribution.


“That’s how a school becomes a community,” Noah said.


Boy plants a seed beside a smiling man and glowing firefly, with a sign reading Seed Planted (Minnesota) in an autumn schoolyard.


The Shepherd’s Voice

◆ The Shepherd’s Voice


Who Is My Neighbor?


Theme Verse: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” — Galatians 6:2 (NIV)


Community in Scripture


In Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, a wounded man lies beside a road while others pass him by. The Samaritan notices him, approaches him, cares for his immediate needs, and makes arrangements for his continued care. Jesus moves the conversation from identifying who qualifies as a neighbor to showing what it looks like to be one.


Galatians calls believers to carry one another’s burdens. Together, these passages show that love is more than a feeling of connection. It sees the person before us, responds with responsibility, and offers what is available. The Samaritan could not personally provide every day of care, but he did not let that limit become a reason to do nothing.

We become neighbors when compassion moves close enough to act.

Community in a Christian Workplace


Christian leaders can practice neighborly love without requiring others to share their faith. We can listen to employees and customers as people, make space for colleagues facing difficulty, and work with local partners who understand the community’s needs.


That may look like helping someone find support, sharing a useful contact, making a schedule more workable when possible, or inviting people closest to a challenge to help shape the response. We must also respect boundaries. A leader cannot promise to meet every need, and generosity should never be used to pressure employees to give time or resources they cannot spare.

Faithful community honors the dignity of the person receiving help and the capacity of the person offering it.

A Leader’s Prayer for Community


Dear Lord,


Open my eyes to the people I might overlook.


Give me the patience to hear their stories before I decide what they need. Keep me from passing by because a challenge seems too large or lies beyond my job description.


Show me the part that is mine to carry, the people I can invite alongside me, and the gifts You have already placed within our community.


Help me serve with humility, respect the dignity of others, and build relationships that last beyond a single act of help.


Make me a good neighbor in the places where You have planted me.


Amen.


One Faith-Forward Mini-Challenge


Think of someone in your workplace or neighborhood whom you may have seen but not truly heard. Ask how they are doing, listen without rushing to fix their situation, and prayerfully consider one respectful way to share the responsibility or offer what you have.



The Boardroom Brief

◆ The Boardroom Brief


Community as a Leadership Responsibility


Executive review


Organizations depend on communities for employees, customers, trust, infrastructure, and permission to operate. Yet executives sometimes treat “community” as an annual donation or a day of volunteering. Those activities may be worthwhile, but leadership responsibility extends to the everyday decisions that shape people’s experience inside and outside the organization.


The executive question is:

Do the people affected by our decisions have a voice, and are we using our capabilities to strengthen the places on which we depend?

1. See the people behind the averages


An aggregate satisfaction score may look healthy while one group faces obstacles the average hides. Executives need regular ways to hear directly from employees, customers, and community partners, especially those who find the organization hardest to access. Ask managers what they are hearing. Examine where participation, retention, service access, or complaints differ. Then bring the people affected into the conversation before defining the solution. Listening should change decisions; otherwise, it becomes another survey.


2. Define the responsibility the organization can own


A company cannot solve every community challenge. It can identify where its operations, policies, resources, and relationships have a meaningful effect. A school district might examine family access to transportation. An employer might revisit shift schedules that make local child care impossible. A service provider might remove a confusing requirement that shuts people out.


This calls for clear ownership: who will act, which partners should be involved, what resources are available, and when leaders will review progress. Shared responsibility works when each participant knows their part.


3. Contribute core capabilities, not only spare funds


Money helps. So can facilities, logistics, purchasing power, employee expertise, and established relationships. The strongest contribution may be something the organization already does well, offered in response to a need identified by the community itself.


The governing test is whether the effort creates value for people beyond a photo opportunity. Build with credible local partners, compensate expertise where appropriate, and establish a way for participants to say when an initiative is missing the mark.


What executives should review


  • Voice: Whose experience is missing from our decisions?

  • Ownership: Which community needs are linked to our decisions and capabilities?

  • Contribution: What can we offer that partners actually want?

  • Evidence: Are people gaining access, trust, opportunity, or practical support as a result?

  • Continuity: Will the effort still work when a sponsor or executive moves on?


Bottom Line


Community is an operating responsibility, not merely a charitable activity. Executives strengthen it by seeing people behind the numbers, owning their organization’s part in shared challenges, and putting real capabilities to work with the people and partners closest to the need. The measure is whether more people can belong, contribute, and flourish because the organization chose to act.



Join the Movement That Builds Community


Community grows through choices we make every day: learning someone’s story, taking responsibility for our part, and offering what we have. None of us can meet every need. Together, we can make sure fewer people face their needs alone.


If this issue encouraged you, share it with someone whose quiet contribution helps your community flourish. And if your organization wants to build a culture where people are seen, valued, and invited to contribute, we would love to walk alongside you.


Learn more at: nationalald.com


Start a conversation: Book a 30-minute exploration call



Because when we see people, share responsibility, and bring what we have, something powerful happens…

People discover they belong to something they can help build.

And always remember… people are priceless!

Yellow smiley face button centered on a plain white background, conveying a cheerful mood.

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