#43 The Importance of Community
In this episode, Roy and Catherine explore why community matters so much and how differently it works today. Catherine opens with a relocation agent who used to tell her they’d find a neighbourhood full of her “like-minded people,” only for Catherine to point out that her like-minded people are scattered across the world, not clustered in one place. She breaks community down into layers: simple everyday kindness, like a neighbour who says hello or stops to greet your dog, and the deeper layer of genuine colleagues and peers, like the podcasting community she and Roy both rely on. Her core point is that humans are genetically wired to need and thrive in community, but what community actually has to provide has become far more multi-layered than the old village model, where one person tended wounds and another built houses. Roy approaches it through the groups he’s deliberately built around himself: joining, then forming, his own Toastmasters group specifically with people he liked spending time with in order to overcome his fear of public speaking, and later the business communities he’s part of, the Connected Leaders Academy and his own Authority Alliance (theauthorityalliance.com). His rule is to do things with people he genuinely enjoys, not people he’s chasing money alongside, since chasing the dollar tends to put you around the wrong people, drains your energy, and eventually falls apart anyway once people stop trusting each other and start trying to get one over on each other instead of lifting each other up. Catherine ties it together with research from a guest on her other show who built a questionnaire around happiness and toured the US asking people one key question: what meaningful community are you part of where you feel you genuinely contribute and are served in return. The people who had a real answer to that question were measurably happier than those who didn’t.
Timestamps
0:02 — Introduction and today’s question: the importance of community
0:18 — Catherine: finding your tribe, and the many layers community has become
2:47 — Roy: building Toastmasters and business communities around people he actually likes
4:01 — Catherine: the happiness research tied to meaningful community
4:43 — Closing thoughts and sign-off
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[Speaker 2] (0:02 - 0:16)
Welcome to episode number 43 of Different Points. I'm joined with my co-host, Catherine Llewellyn, and I'm Roy Cullen. And today's question is the importance of community.
What comes to mind, Catherine, when you hear that one?
[Speaker 1] (0:18 - 2:46)
What comes to mind is how so many of us are in quotes trying to find our community or trying to find our tribe. And I used to have a relocation agent who would help me to find the next property I was going to move into. And she would say, Catherine, let's try and find somewhere where there are the people who are your like-minded people.
And I would say to her, my like-minded people are mostly very individual and they do not all live together in a clump. They live all over the place, all over the world, all over the country. It's no longer the case that you just arrive somewhere and you're surrounded by people who all live next door and are all really like-minded in terms of what they're doing with their lives, what they're interested in, what their values are.
If you're lucky, you'll arrive somewhere where you're surrounded by kind, considerate people at that level. But most of us need community on many, many different levels. The level of just simple kindness, a neighbour that says hello, or you see them with their dog and you have a little joke about you stroke the dog, say hello to the dog, and that's it.
Yes, that's a part of community. And another part of community is the people who are really our colleagues and peers. You know, like for me and you, Roy, we're in a kind of podcasting community.
So that's really important for me as a podcaster. That's very, very important that I have that community that supports me. And I've got other communities I'm connected with.
So I think this question of community, it's of prime importance because we are genetically designed to need community and to support community and to thrive in community. But what we need as community has become so multi-layered now, it's gone way beyond, we just need the village we're living in. And that person's good at helping people, you know, tend their wounds and that person's good at helping you build a house that's not going to fall down, you know, which was maybe years ago what we had.
Now, what we need in our community and what is available for us is so, so, so much bigger. So very big topic, Roy, I think. What do you think?
[Speaker 2] (2:47 - 3:59)
Well, for me, it's kind of, I just think of groups when I've been in the community, because I mean, you can have community of friends, of course, but let's say Tossmasters, when I decided I wanted to overcome my fear of speaking, I joined one, joined another, but I formed one and got into people that I liked. So I made sure I surrounded myself with like-minded people that I liked to spend time with and it became very successful in a way. And then, like I say, the business groups have been the Connected Leaders Academy, but also the one that you remember, the Authority Alliance, shameless plug, theauthorityalliance.com.
But that's the same thing. It's like a community of people that are helping each other in business to grow. And I like to be surrounded with, and I like to do business.
We've done a lot over the years. And it's like, I like doing things with, if you call it community, if there's a group, like you mentioned, the podcasters, it's a case of do things with people that you enjoy spending time with, as opposed to just following the dollar. Because if you're following the dollar, you'll be hanging around with the wrong people and they'll suck your energy.
And eventually it'll fall apart anyway, because people won't trust each other and they think they're shafting each other, as opposed to lifting each other up.
[Speaker 1] (4:01 - 4:41)
Brilliant. Yeah. So it's a massive, massive topic.
And I had a guest on my show a while back, whose whole thing was about happiness. And he had a little sort of questionnaire and he was going all around the States with this questionnaire, asking people questions and filming them. And then he analysed it and wrote a book.
And one of the questions on it was, what meaningful community are you in when you really feel you make a contribution and it really serves you? And the people who had that community were so much happier than the people who didn't. Just such a simple thing.
And he's done the research.
[Speaker 2] (4:43 - 4:58)
Excellent. So just for the listeners, what comes to mind when you listen to that question? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
So be sure to give us a thumbs up, five star rating, share with just three friends. I don't want you to share it with all your friends, just three of them. Until next week, take care or the next episode.
