Creating and Sustaining Community
© By Emily Headley

Editor's note: Emily Headley is a Principal of Ageless Excellence, a partnership dedicated to building community and creating hospitality for groups of elders and their allies.

“Living in community” is a phrase that is used frequently and applied to many settings. Its warm and fuzzy connotation makes it a popular phrase for various types of dwelling options; what it really takes, however, to live in community is rarely addressed. Though most people would agree that mere physical proximity is not enough, master-planned communities, condominium complexes, continuing care retirement communities, assisted living (AL) and even long term care properties often equate a group of people living together — either within a fence or under the same roof — with living in community.

During the last few of my 21 years working in the operations side of assisted living and dementia care, I’ve invested much energy tinkering with the system — implementing a wide variety of bells and whistles in an effort to create and sustain community. When all these efforts produced limited and short-term effects, I started to wonder if there was anything I could do to make significant strides toward this seemingly lofty goal.

What started out as a nagging little thought has turned into a self-funded sabbatical from the industry in which I had spent my entire professional life. The turning point came when I co-presented a Mind, Body and Spirit pilot program for groups of assisted living residents and staff. Prior to the actual hands-on workshop my colleague and I interviewed the resident participants individually and asked just one question: “What brings you fulfillment at this time in your life?” The content of each response from all 21 people in our sample centered on one theme — human connection.

While the methodology of our informal survey was far from scientific, and the number of respondents relatively small, the residents spoke with such clarity and power that almost overnight I began to see the current model of elders living together as woefully shallow. Its focus on leisure and consumption, with a healthy dose of efficiency thrown in, leaves few resources available to pursue the depth of human experience that creates full spectrum well-being.

With well-meaning yet misguided intention we operators of institutional senior living properties have been relying on increasingly luxurious amenities and services, e.g. beautiful furnishings, upscale dining programs, glossy brochures, etc. to do the heavy lifting of building community. We’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places!

While that conclusion now seems absurdly obvious, the industry is still very much entrenched in the importance of the external satisfaction/fulfillment drivers. Outside of the mainstream, however, interesting experimentation is going on. One such experiment is Eldershire (see workshop announcement), a refreshing challenge to traditional thinking about “retirement communities” which is being developed by Eden Alternative™ originators, Bill and Jude Thomas. My exposure to this project served as a catalyst for the reflections that follow. Specifically, I offer brief descriptions of three internally-oriented areas of concentration that represent a variety of teachings, beliefs, theories and principles surrounding the notion of creating and sustaining community.

Hospitality

Though a whole industry uses this word to describe itself, and institutional senior living settings claim to have a high level of it, I find the spiritual definition of hospitality — “recognizing the divine in another”— the best place to start in discussing the notion of true community. In fact, the title of a recent resident/staff workshop which I also co-presented was “Reciprocal Hospitality”; in it we mined participants’ wisdom about how to treat one another and their recollection of the personal fulfillment that occurs when they opened their heart to “the other”.

The stories that emerged from that workshop were extraordinary. An executive director with whom I had worked for over 10 years shared a story about feeling welcome in the workplace that brought all of the participants (residents and staff) to a reflective silence. A number of residents also shared heart-felt stories about deeply satisfying times in their lives when they extended sincere hospitality to another person, which sparked lively conversation about how to bring similar experiences to their present way of life.

The author Parker Palmer asserts that true hospitality can only occur when you need the stranger as much as the stranger needs you. I believe that it is possible to approach this level of reciprocity between residents and staff, as well as among residents, in an institutional setting. Abandonment of the current physical design of these settings is not a requirement, a re-allocation of resources is.  For example, building a budget around creating intentional community would propel resident satisfaction levels upward.  Word-of-mouth advertising would experience a commensurate increase, which would free up media advertising dollars to be spent on  “visiting time”  between staff and residents. The Eldershire model appears to embrace the community-focused approach enthusiastically.

A large part of the training in the Benedictine tradition focuses on cultivating the ability to be gracefully and sincerely welcoming at all times. (Indeed all religions and spiritual practices speak in some way to the practice of “welcoming the other”.) Radical Hospitality by Homan and Pratt offers a wonderful introduction to the inner shifts that need to occur in order for a person to be genuinely hospitable and welcoming. From preparing a table for a meal together to the art of deep listening, there are many skills that contribute to the ease with which one extends genuine hospitality to another.

We actually need look no further than a given individual’s experience with being made to feel (or helping someone else to feel) “at home”. Drawing from the heart to augment the role of being a host to someone is a familiar experience for most everyone  — especially women who are now in their elderhood. Yet, as mentioned above, the current senior living model offers precious few opportunities for that population to employ this well-honed, deeply satisfying skill. The lack of such opportunities overlooks the social capital that is lying dormant in properties that are filled with an average of 100 – 150 individuals (residents and staff) at any given time.

Core Gifts/Core Strengths

The belief that each person is born with a unique gift to give to his or her community is rooted in many ancient civilizations and was always a key component of adolescent initiation ceremonies. One of the primary roles of elders within the ceremonies was to help each young person discover his or her core gift.

Now, as a result of many societal and cultural factors, few of our elders are even aware of their own core gift. The word “gift” or “gifted” no longer refers to the innate qualities of each individual; it is now used to describe academically proficient students or someone who has superior talents in a given area of life. Bruce Anderson, in his book The Teacher’s Gift, observes that “By using the word gift to define differences in capability, we have turned our attention away from an older and more useful definition of gifted — one which was….used to honor and unite community citizens rather than divide and categorize them”. Thanks to the work of Anderson, Martin Seligman and others the concept of core gifts or strengths is starting to be recognized as an effective vehicle for enhancing collaboration, facilitating accomplishment and inspiring mutual appreciation of each other’s unique contribution.

I am a trained practitioner of the Core Gift Identification process, and have directly experienced the unifying power of incorporating this knowledge into group processes. It particularly resonates with one of the Eldershire community elements: Know others and be well-known. By incorporating everyone’s core gifts into some aspect of the community, acknowledgement of each person’s unique and valuable assets occurs as a matter of course. In other words, the greatness of who you are is recognized by the group, and you are regularly called upon to contribute in a meaningful way.

The 3 Principles of Human Behavior

Within the field of psychology there is a model of practice that is based on three principles. It is important within this discussion to distinguish between a theory and a principle — especially in relation to the “soft science” of psychology. A principle is consistently replicable and applies in all circumstances, e.g. gravity, whereas a theory may produce varied results, even when conditions are similar.

The 3 Principles of Human Behavior, as first described by Sydney Banks and practiced by a growing number of professionals in psychology, social services, education, law enforcement, education, etc. offer a reliable pathway for achieving personal and group-related goals with ease and grace. Books by Richard Carlson and Jack Pransky draw heavily from the Principles, along with peer-reviewed journal articles by physicians Roger Mills and William Pettit, to name just a few.

The following points, pulled from Principle-based understanding (and summarized for brevity) are applicable to many of the Eldershire components of well-being:

• Every person possesses an innate state of well-being, one that the body naturally returns to whenever possible.

• The power for attaining a high state of well-being rests squarely with the individual and the quality of his or her thinking, not with any external practice, product, environment, person, etc.

• Our thoughts about another person or occurrence in our life are the strongest influencers of how our reality actually plays out.

• Realizing consciousness about the power of our thoughts can happen in an instant, to anyone, once he or she receives some basic education about the Principles.

• A group’s or individual’s state of mind, e.g. positive or negative, is the primary predictor of the ability to accomplish whatever is desired, from measurable tasks to creating and maintaining an intentional community.

The above is a very brief overview of the broad underpinnings of a comprehensive, whole-person program for sustained well-being. During my 16-year tenure with Transamerica Senior Living we engaged in an executive leadership and communication series that was based on the Principles, and the impressive results for our business unit and in my own personal life which were achieved recommend the approach.

Connecting with another person is a deeply fulfilling experience.  When a group of people purposefully “stretch” themselves, by connecting to each other beyond the borders of selectivity and commonality, a profoundly hospitable community is created. - a community in which belonging, contribution and accomplishment occur regularly and naturally. Now that’s something to look forward to during one’s second journey through life!

Ü Emily Headley can be reached at at (530) 581-5640 or Emily@emilyheadley.com.