buzzwords – like “community”
You’ve seen an important idea become a cultural buzzword. Later, both the buzzword and the idea itself, powerful as it may have been, fade into obscurity. Remember the television commercial with the business guru conducting a seminar challenging his listeners toward an “out-of-the-box ‘para-dig-em shift?’” That single ad was the death-knell to those proposing shifts of paradigm. Their message became humor. It signaled to people in every trade or business, “Climb back in the box. Refuse to innovate. Love your mediocrity. The tide has turned.” Of course, the workforce did not shut down all new ideas. Creative people stayed creative. Managers continued to manage. Really everything was okay, except a once living ideal died – not really died – it became a humorous cautionary tale.
Lady on the right is wearing a white shirt. What a rebel!
Community is a word suffering a similar fate, though I suspect, that like “out-of -the-box” business thinking, purveyors of community will not move to an isolated Idaho mountain, but will manage to keep the ideal alive after it has died a humorous death-by-marketing.
Buzzwords become cliche, become fodder and cease to move anyone toward any action other than ridicule.
I want to protect the word “community” from this fate, because the longer I live the more necessary it becomes. The more isolationists I meet, the sadder their lot, in my opinion. (Maybe they could form a community!)
The more counselors I meet, the more I am convinced that counselors need counselors. Bloggers need bloggers for viral enhancement (and to convince one another that self-publishing an idea is a viable means of sharing one’s work. Pastors need pastors. Writers need writers. Artists need tequila and other artists. I suspect everyone – janitors need janitors, excavators need excavators – does better work inside a like-minded community.
art cred: leadershipturn.com
What we could probably do without are books telling us how to DO COMMUNITY. At an airport bookstore I started counting volumes of Leadership books. There were popular titles: Lead like this. Lead like that. Be like the guy with the bad hair. Find your strength. Regurgitating Maxwell. I stopped counting after about 312. This was at an airport bookstore, not a full service bookstore! I felt dirty and duped, because I’ve read a few leadership books in my day.
It hit me; leaders do not buy these books. Leaders have other leaders around them constantly. When leaders do buy leadership books, they do so to brush up on a weakness, or hire someone to cover a weakness or to reassure their suspicions. They are tools of reinforcing what they already know. They learned how to lead from their community of leaders.
Most of these books are written for fearful wanna-be’s (cliche/buzzword intentional) or those just beginning to dip their toes into the pond of leadership, who may or may not belong there. What the newcomers need is a community of leaders, not a book. Seriously, not one well-intentioned book can help them practice something they do not already know!
Connection with a true community of leaders will save them hundreds of dollars, thousands of hours and a million rants about “who is not following which principle!” Yes, you can save money, time and your sanity through the simple, enjoyable effort of participation in the free exchange known as community.
But a “para-dig-em” has been established. Community is a buzzword soon to become loath. And leadership books will continue to sell faster than aging ten-speeds following a Kings of Leon concert.
Community is dead. Of course it isn’t, but we’ll move on to another topic du jour, while the people who value community will continue to thrive at their craft.
Everyone else will marvel at their successes, and buy books telling them how to ape it via principles and marketing. Everyone else will practice the next rote buzzword until they manage to kill it.
