Vogl - The art of community: seven principles for belonging

More Praise for The Art of Community

Powerful, practical, and inspiring. A modern articulation of, and advancement on, timeless wisdom. Emerging or veteran leaders who integrate these principles will build communities that are more resilient, passionate, and harmonious in the face of adversity and uncertainty.

Alan Price, Founding Director, Global Leadership Initiative, Harvard Business School, and author of Ready to Lead?

The Art of Community is a brilliantly intentional, well-composed plan for engaging and developing communities. This book is both an inspiration and a field guide for those who wish to connect deeply and build the communities our world so desperately needs. As I read The Art, I found myself drawn to possibilities that fed my soul. I see new ways to tie myself and my family to others in constructive and spiritually rewarding ways. The Art of Community promises to enrich our lives immensely through new insights into community, leadership, and personal growth.

Thomas A. Kolditz, PhD, Brigadier General, US Army (ret.); Director, Doerr Institute for New Leaders; Founding Director, Leader Development Program, Yale School of Management; Founding Director, West Point Leadership Center; and author of In Extremis Leadership

This book is full of rich wisdom and simple tools to help make community real. Our mission statement includes the word community, but I never truly understood what it meant until reading this book. Too often we declare a community around affiliation without digging into the shared values and care for one another that make a real community.

Jason Jay, PhD, Director, Sustainability Initiative, MIT Sloan School of Management, and author of Beyond the Choir

A deeply thoughtful and compelling book that shares many insights with clarity, accessible examples, and ideas for implementation. I learned a lot.

Lawrence Levy, former CFO, Pixar Animation Studios; cofounder, Juniper Foundation; and author of To Pixar and Beyond

Charles Vogls book is a lucid, ferociously intelligent, and readily accessible road map to building a more connected culture. Education about community and character has been subordinated in American education to myopic cognitive and commercial learning. The result everywhere around us is devastating, from unprecedented wealth disparities to rampant tribalism. This work points to a much-needed antidote.

Marty Krasney, Executive Director, Dalai Lama Fellows

A useful field guide to create durable and profound connections. It is an important undertaking, as isolation and loneliness are a root cause of the breakdowns all around us, including extreme violence.

Peter Block, author of Community and Flawless Consulting

Ive personally experienced the magic that Charles Vogl creates in powerful communities. People feel genuine belonging and connection. Now he has written down the essential principles so that others may experience this magic themselves. I cannot imagine a more important subject for a book in a society where so many of us hunger for connection and community.

Scott Sherman, Executive Director, Transformative Action Institute

The Art of Community is an outstanding guide to creating and fostering the meaningful communities all of us need. As technology that allows us to physically detach from one another accelerates, it has become more important than ever to understand what community and belonging mean. Strong, mature communities benefit both individuals and humanity as a whole.

Jonathan Knowles, Explorer in Residence, Autodesk, and host of the Autodesk IDEAS series

If you are tasked with bringing families, neighborhoods, or organizations together, read this book first. In The Art of Community, author Charles Vogl reinvigorates a vision of community and the importance of social bonds to our well-being. In place of our convenient and transient associations, Vogl tells us how to establish relationships that are more meaningful and enduring.

Michael OMalley, author or coauthor of Every Leader Is an Artist, The Wisdom of Bees, and Leading with Kindness

The
Art of Community

Seven Principles
for Belonging

CHARLES H. VOGL

The Art of Community

Copyright 2016 by Charles H. Vogl.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Ordering information for print editions

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-62656-841-9

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-842-6

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-843-3

2016-1

Project management, design, and composition by Steven Hiatt, Hiatt & Dragon, San Francisco.

Copyeditor: Paula Dragosh. Proofreader: Tom Hassett. Indexer: Theresa Duran. Cover designer: DogEared Design.

To Mr. and Mrs. Mwango, Mr. Puta, Mr. Davies,
and Luposhi village in Luapula Province, Zambia

Even before I knew it
you welcomed me when I was a stranger in a strange land
far from home and crying in the night.
May I offer to others what you gave to me
when you changed my life.

Draw the circle wide.
Draw it wider still.
Let this be our song.
No one stands alone.

Mark Miller and Gordon Light
Draw the Circle Wide

In my professional life, I work with leaders in tech, finance, government, and social change organizations to create meaningful change. Drawing partly from spiritual traditions, I help these leaders understand how they can build loyalty, strengthen identity, and live out shared values. When leaders create a robust and committed community, they build relationships that are effective and resilient. These relationships in turn can lead to profound change. This book is an extension of that work. Its primarily (but not exclusively) intended for those brave people who seek to bring others together to create something enriching, satisfying, and meaningful. Sometimes that something is a community that can shift the future of our planet. But lets put that aside for the moment.