What's at the Heart of Community? Trust and Collaboration.

I’m back from a little time off and feeling rejuvenated by the down time. Hope everyone in the Front and Centered community is staying safe and doing well this summer.

Community — it’s a word you hear me talk about a lot. We started this blog in an effort to build an online community — a place where people come to hear stories about leadership lessons found in everyday life experiences. As the years have gone by our community has grown quite a bit and our list of contributors have expanded. We can learn so much from each other.

Community has never been more critical than it is right now. A few years ago we created communities within our client base. These groups meet throughout the year to learn from each other about everyday business challenges and opportunities. They have built friendships and trust among each other.

When the virus hit and financial services began to see the impact, we quickly brought these groups together. Our meetings had no formal agenda other than to provide a forum where peers could gather to share how everyone was impacted and how they were handling that impact. To be able to lean on each other in times of crisis — that is a bedrock of a strong community. As the weeks and months have gone by and the world has continued to face unprecedented challenges, we continue to lean on each other as communities. 

In our UK office, they have been running the same community meetings and experience the same feeling of collaboration and comfort in learning from each other. Recently my colleague who leads our UK business, Brett Williams, wrote about some of the highlights in bringing their community of wealth management executives together. He talks about how, in this forum, long-time competitors have gathered to collaborate, because learning how we are all working to keep employees and clients safe is something no one feels the need to compete on.

Communities can only make all of us stronger. Stay safe and be well everyone.