2021 Jack Ricchiuto | Nuance Works
Paperback, 172 pages

“Reimagining Community: The Politics of Listening” is a collection of brief essays about building community. It focuses on communities of place like neighborhoods and communities of purpose like organizations. Getting community right in these ubiquitous contexts allows us to get community right in all other contexts.

I wrote this book from the realization that we need community now more than ever. We need it where work and live. We need it because our most significant problems and opportunities are complex and wicked. They defy efforts in isolation or in opposition. Progress on them is only viable when we come together as collaborators.

The book features the distinctions between vibrant and flat communities. The essential difference is in the politics of listening. How we listen to each other determines the culture of the community. Conversations about politics are about power. We have three fundamental relationships to power: power assumed, power denied, and power shared.

In vibrant communities, we listen with interest from collaboration. This is power shared — listening for opportunities to be smarter and better together. This makes it easier for us to live our best lives possible.

In flat communities, we listen with judgment from dominance and disengagement. Dominance is power assumed — listening for ways to exploit, compete with, or control others. Disengagement is power denied — listening in a refusal to take responsibility for contributing to our community. This keeps us divided and brings out the worst in us.

How we listen is shaped by how our brains are wired to manage the constant of ambiguity. Those of us who spend more time being ambiguity-friendly listen from collaboration. Those of us who spend more time being ambiguity-intolerant listen from dominance or disengagement. Rewiring becomes possible for any of us — at any time in our lives — through the kinds of conversations that make listening with interest more possible.

Communities move in the direction of their conversations. The book explores dozens of conversation structures, principles, and dynamics that make the shift to a more vibrant community more possible. It also looks at how to reimagine the social structures of communities to become more vibrant.

The book is inspired by brain, social, and political sciences along with decades of working with people seeking to build community in a variety of urban, rural, cultural, and work contexts. It draws wisdom from the brilliant researchers and practitioners in the space. The book concludes with a brief Guide that brings together two dozen conversational structures that have the power to build community.

This is for anyone who wants to participate in the building of their communities. The character of a community is defined by how we show up together. Getting the future right is about getting community right. This conversation is enormously important as we enter an era that might be more pivotal than any before. It is an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine community.