For our law firm, it’s important to build both internal and external communities. Internally, it’s about engagement with staff – the more involved we are, the more we’re likely to stay in the business, and the more we enjoy coming to work every day. Externally, we’re here to help our clients. And to find out how we can help, we need to live and breathe their community. That means spending time with them to understand their business and their business world.
We must first understand that people connect in different ways. There are extroverts, who enjoy larger crowds and parties; and introverts, who are naturally quieter and more withdrawn, but still want to be loved and respected and feel that they belong. This is why we do a number of different engagement activities, such as conferences, seminars, dinners, and for the first time, a movie screening last month in Taikoo Place.
There was something for everyone at the movie event. The extrovert enjoyed the networking part, and the introvert might just watch the movie and enjoy a glass of wine or orange juice in a cosy setting. We’d picked the movie Like, which is about the impact of social media on mental health – something that I’m deeply worried about. We’re now only connecting through machines and not face-to-face, even though that’s where real relationships can be developed. How sad is that? Through the event we wanted to raise awareness of this topic – it wasn’t about us, but about this business community of over 30,000 people.
We can do more together as a community. You can help a limited amount of people as an individual. But we can also inspire others and change habits on a larger scale when we do it together. After all, it’s about how we’re connecting with one another. Whether it’s in a business or charity setting, if we work together rather than sitting on our own in a silo mentality, then we will succeed – or fail – together but we will support each other through it all.
How else can we engage with our team? See what Cedar Hong Kong’s Jessica Haigh has to say about the power of “us”.