Community in coliving

“Community” forms a key part of the value offering by almost all coliving operators. But what is “community”? And how can you create something which, in the end, has to emerge organically from your members? To answer these questions, Conscious Coliving, Art of Co and a host of expert coliving contributors have co-created The Community Facilitation Handbook: a guide which explores these questions and offers practical tools and resources to help you facilitate authentic community. In this article we summarise the key points and topics covered in The Handbook.

Firstly, what defines “community”? If you stick a bunch of people into a space, is that community? We would say no, it’s not. Community is about much more than sharing space - it’s about a group and place where we:

• Feel a sense of connection and belonging,
• Understand and meet each others’ needs,
• Actively participate and engage
• Create a healthy culture that provides a positive social experience,
• Offer support while also holding each other responsible.

Defined as such, it becomes clear that organic community is something that must be facilitated with patience, care and love. It is not something that can be implemented from a top-down hospitality-like approach. The main difference between facilitating and managing is the mindset. The term management often implies “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people” (Lexico). In a coliving context, this might look like an operator imposing a vision of the community, events, activities and spatial and experience design on residents.

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In contrast, to facilitate means to “make (an action or process) easy or easier” (Lexico). Community facilitation is the process of building community through enabling the creation of strong relationships and group dynamics that also allow for individual needs to be met. For coliving operators, this means involving residents in the creation and development of the community experience. For instance, instead of creating an imposed calendar of events, the operator would find out what types of events would serve the needs and interests of residents, and then engage them in both the creation and promotion of such events. The operator might also ask for regular feedback from residents about how to improve the spatial layout, communication channels, feedback processes and other relevant factors that lead to an enhanced community experience.

A facilitation approach supports the creation of an organic community, higher resident satisfaction and operational processes that are less capital-intensive than a top-down approach. For instance, cost savings that an operator can derive from facilitating authentic community include:

• Reduction of acquisition costs (due to stronger word of mouth and less need to spend on marketing);
• Reduction of maintenance costs (as stronger communities take better care of the place);
• Reduction in event costs (with community members more involved in event creation).
  However, a facilitation approach does need specific input and a dedicated person or team to bring it to life. This is where the Community Facilitator (CF) comes in.

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The role of the community facilitator.‍

In The Community Facilitation Handbook, we define the community facilitator as:
“A person responsible for community building by facilitating group interactions, open communication and bridging the gap between community needs and operational processes. Their ultimate goal is to support the emergence and maintenance of community by enabling residents to foster authentic connection, fulfill their individual needs and catalyse collective engagement.”

In order to fulfill their duties, the community facilitator has different responsibilities across different stages of the user journey:

• Resident onboarding: welcoming and integrating the resident within the community, while contributing to the improvement of the onboarding experience with community experience and operations teams;‍
• Ensuring resident wellbeing: ensuring the appropriate systems and containers are in place to allow for residents to feel emotionally and physically well and safe;‍
• Community development: facilitating the flourishing of the community and its activities, empowering residents to be involved and take ownership of events, initiatives, communal budget allocation, resident meetings and engagement with local neighbourhoods;‍
• Conflict resolution: preventing potential tensions between residents and facilitating the resolution of communal tensions on both an individual and collective level;‍
• Product development: working with different departments (operations, marketing, design) to improve the overall user experience and concept based on resident feedback.

In contrast to traditional hospitality roles, the job of the Community Facilitator requires a different profile than most hoteliers, operations managers or front desk positions. For instance, an effective community facilitator should be a solution-finder with high levels of self-awareness, emotional stability, a flexible mindset and sociability. The Community Facilitation Handbook also details several of the hard and soft skills that are essential for a community facilitator to have, as well as a sample job template that can serve as a reference for recruiting a community facilitator.

The job template also helps clarify something important: what the role of the CF does NOT include. This is because one of the biggest risks related to the CF is overburdening them with too many tasks and responsibilities. Work overload is common for community facilitators; not only because the job can be emotionally draining, but also if the job includes responsibilities that go beyond community building, especially when a coliving company grows quicker than the community team can adjust to. As such, it is important to be clear that the roles that should NOT belong to the community facilitator include:

• Sales: while a CF can be involved in the curation of new residents, the main role of the CF is to make sure that residents have a great experience, not to bring new residents in.
• Marketing: while the CF can be involved in marketing initiatives such as taking pictures of community events, a CF should not be running marketing initiatives, such as social media campaigns.
• Customer support: while the CF is the first point of contact for residents, keeping the focus on interhuman relationships and individual experience is important. Many customer service tasks can be automated to give the CF more time to focus on unique problems and experiences.
• Operations: making the CF role free of operational duties in regards to the building allows the CF to focus on the communal and experience processes only.
• Baby-sitting: while CFs can facilitate residents to better manage and avoid conflict, a CF should not micromanage or intervene in conflicts unless absolutely needed.

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Tools to enhance community building and facilitation

Adopting a bottom-up facilitation approach that leverages the role of a community facilitator can really enable a community to develop and thrive.

To support this, The Community Facilitation Handbook offers a series of tools and resources that CFs can use to enhance the experience in their communities.
The tools can also be used by management teams and residents themselves. We offer a summarised version of some of these here by category.

• Decision-Making Tools One of the biggest challenges in building community is figuring out how to make and take decisions that feel fair and inclusive. Participatory decision-making tools such as Loomio and Gradients of Agreements can help your community make better decisions.
• Personal and Professional Development Practices Coliving spaces offer the opportunity for residents to nurture and develop themselves both personally and professionally. Practices such as sharing circles and masterminds can enhance this process.
• Communal Events/Rituals Rituals and communal events such as shared meals and community assemblies create opportunities for people to interact, bond and connect.
• Communication & Conflict Resolution Conflict is inherent in community and tensions cannot be avoided. There is often a fine line that
  CFs need to tread between facilitating conflict and getting too involved. Conflict-management and communication frameworks, such as Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Beginning Anew and Radical Candor are good options for CFs to be familiar with and offer to residents.
• Technology Integrations Technology can be used to streamline operations and enhance community experience in coliving spaces. In particular, tech tools focused on optimising operations - such as property management systems, access control and booking platforms - can be of great use to operators.

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Fostering Authentic Connection

Building community and authentic connection can be challenging. We also know that there is no one- size-fits-all community building approach: it has to be adapted to the vision, residents, resource capacities and degree of responsibility of each coliving space and operator. However, with the right mindset, a supportive management team and a strong set of community building tools, the community facilitator can be empowered to enhance the community and brand experience of any coliving space.