Hi Reader, Daria's here.

And today I want to talk to you about communities. Honestly, I think it's one of the best ways to learn, grow, and connect. It is so valuable — and also so hard to build.

It starts with real energy. People show up. And then, somewhere around week six, it goes quiet.

We tend to blame ourselves for that. Maybe we didn't have enough passion or needed more follow-through. But enthusiasm and passion aren't really the problem. The missing part in most communities is structure — someone whose job is to keep the thing alive after the launch buzz fades.

Here's a way to build that in from the start.

Bridge Builders

In the latest Built by People Leaders episode, I talk with Katherine Hawkins-Jones, Chief People Officer at Somerset Bridge Group, about why workplace communities die — and how to build ones that don't.

Her move is to stop relying on one heroic organizer and instead appoint a handful of "Bridge Builders": internal connectors spread across the business who keep community alive from the inside.

The mistake would be to assign them. What works is to look for them inside your organization. There are already people others naturally gravitate to — people who make introductions, who notice who's been left out. You invite those people to opt in because you want it to be a choice, not a chore.

Then you give them something to work with. Teach them the tools they already use — Teams, Slack — show them how to plan a simple event, how to draw people in. Point them to a short playbook. Get them together regularly to compare notes and adjust as things change. And keep an eye on the health of what they're building: size, depth, whether people still feel safe enough to speak.

Why it works

Two reasons. First, it distributes the load. One person carrying a community will eventually run out of road. That's the tenacity gap Katherine names, the reason initiatives lose pace. Spread across several advocates, the community stops depending on any single hero staying motivated forever.

Second, it grows the builders themselves. Being a "Bridge Builder" sharpens exactly the skills people want more of — communication, networking, speaking up in a room. You're not just keeping a community alive. You're developing the people who keep it alive.

Try it this week

Picture your team or your wider org and answer three questions:

Who do people naturally go to — not because of their title, but because they connect others?
Who lights up when they’re bringing people together?
Who’s slightly outside the usual circle but clearly wants in?

(By the way — these are often the people who show up as Play Makers in their GC Index profile: the ones whose natural energy is connecting others and building cohesion. Curious about it? Take a look or just reply and I’ll tell you more.)

Name two or three. Then invite one of them for a fifteen-minute conversation. Ask: “If you could make this a better place to belong, what’s the first small thing you’d do?” Then give them the room and a little cover to try it.

That’s a “Bridge Builder” starting to build.

One line worth keeping

"A lot of the initiatives that I see lose pace because people aren't tenacious with it." — Katherine Hawkins-Jones

The full episode has the rest: the "me please" system that got junior people access to the projects they were being quietly left out of, why she'd rather run several small communities than one big one, and the community health check she uses to tell whether a group is thriving or just surviving. Listen on your favorite platform.