The habits of highly effective community development practitioners

Abstract

This paper is the result of a study aimed at answering the question: ‘What makes effective community development practitioners effective?’ In it, all the articles published over a 10-year period in the Community Development Journal, International Social Work, Journal of Community Practice and Social Work (South Africa) were subjected to a secondary analysis. This made it possible to identify eight ‘habits of effectiveness’. This set of habits can form a credo to guide a practitioner's service delivery. It also provides a list of criteria to help identify ineffective habits and confirm effective ones.

Keywords:

• community practice
• credo
• effective community practitioners
• habits

1. Introduction

The number of journal articles and other publications dealing with factors that determine community development's successes and failures has increased in the past decade. In spite of this expansion of knowledge, however, scant attention is paid to the key role-player in service delivery: the practitioner. Increased pressure on community development practitioners and their employers to substantiate their contribution to the betterment of community life has made it important to ascertain what makes some practitioners succeed where others fail. This question prompted a research project in which Stephen R Covey's (1989) basic approach in determining ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ was used to ascertain the equivalent habits of highly effective community practitioners. The research procedure and results are covered in this article.

2. Research methodology and analysis

The study used Grinnell & Unrau's guidelines for secondary and content analysis (2008:305–25) and Lincoln & Guba's (1985) refinement of Glaser & Strauss's (1967) constant comparative method to analyse all the articles published in four scientific journals during the 10-year period 1997–2007: Community Development Journal, International Social Work, Journal of Community Practice, and Social Work (South Africa). These were specifically selected because their content represented the views and research findings of diverse social work and non-social-work authors.

It can rightfully be argued that these four journals are not necessarily the most appropriate sources and that other journals and publications (e.g. publications by international organisations, governments and the private sector) should also have been included. There were, however, some advantages in this choice. The four journals provide systematic, peer reviewed data that are often lacking in non-scientific publications, and information that, in many respects, can be viewed as state of the art in community development research and thinking. The high levels of data saturation achieved with the current analysis indicated that, although desirable, the inclusion of additional publications would probably not have revealed major additional habits.

The analysis focused on articles that would contribute the most to answering the core research question: ‘What makes effective community development practitioners effective?’ Preference was given to those that met one or more of the following three criteria:

• Articles had to either focus on the empirical analysis of practitioners' behaviour or deal with actual community development interventions whose success or failure had been analysed empirically. However, some articles that gave a substantive (re-)interpretation of other authors' empirical research were also included (e.g. Rothman, 2000:89–105).

• Where possible, articles that dealt with the grassroots level work done by one or more practitioners and spotlighted the individuals involved were included. The neutral term ‘community practitioner’ was used to refer to any practitioner who provided a service described in the articles as being ‘community development’, ‘community organisation (practice)’, ‘community (social) work’, ‘community (based) practice’, ‘community support’, ‘social development’, ‘human development’, ‘developmental social work’ or ‘neighbourhood work’.

• Articles that did not provide at least some indication of the practitioner's underlying habits were discarded.

The constant comparative method of the grounded theory approach is defined by Glaser & Strauss as a research methodology that uses ‘joint coding and analysis [to] generate theory systematically [by] using explicit coding and analytic procedures’ (1967:102). In the practical application of this method in the research project, the views expressed by especially Dye et al. (2000), Lincoln & Guba (1985:339–344) and Poggenpoel (1998:338–40) were used as a guideline. This produced a process that consists of the following five steps:

1. Decide on the unit of analysis that will be used. (In this case it was an empirically based indication of a habit or habits that were exhibited by the community development practitioner(s) covered by an article.)

2. Do a line-by-line analysis of each of the articles published in the selected journals. Code the habits that emerge from them and cluster these habits into provisional categories according to their emerging themes. (The first round of analysis in this study produced 19 such categories.) Eliminate any articles that do not contain relevant data.

3. Compare all the habits in each provisional category, and across categories, so as to identify similarities and differences. This makes it possible to reconceptualise and integrate some categories and arrive at a useful definition of each category and its content.

4. Draw comparisons between categories in order to identify their relationships with each other, to refine their demarcations and, ultimately, to arrive at a coherent, stable and meaningful category set. (In this study, acting on recommendations by Poggenpoel (1998:339), these categories and their definitions were then discussed with two peers so as to enhance the trustworthiness of the findings. The process reduced the categories to a final set of eight major ‘habits that lead to success’.)

5. And finally, ‘write the theory’ (Lincoln & Guba, 1985:339).

In spite of the stringent selection criteria, the process still produced 85 appropriate articles. Due to length constraints, only 39 of these can be directly cited in this paper.

3. The nature of habits

In this study, Covey's definition of a ‘habit’ was used as the ‘core unit’ in the analysis of the journal articles. He defines it as:

the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire' and explains that ‘Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why. Skill is the how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do … Creating a habit requires work in all three dimensions. (Covey, 1989:47)

Although Covey has various detractors (as listed by Furnham, 2000:63–4) and although other classification systems based on, for example, role differentiation and core strategies (Compton & Galaway, 1999:337–62; Dubois & Miley, 2005:214–23) are available, numerous researchers from a variety of fields have nevertheless found his definition and exploration of habits very useful (e.g. Jackson, 1999:359–62; Haimes, 2001:220–4; Pettit & Fetro, 2006:3–6). Habits were also found to be the most appropriate construct to use in identifying the factors that make effective community development practitioners effective.

Covey (1989:46) is of the opinion that, although habits can be learned and unlearned, it takes tremendous commitment to break deeply embedded habitual tendencies and to replace them with others. It requires new knowledge and skills, and especially the desire for change. Once change has been achieved, it also requires commitment not to fall back on ‘the old ways’ of being and doing (Weyers, 2007:4).

Community practitioners have good habits that need entrenching and bad habits that need replacing. A profile of the habits that make for effectiveness would provide a set of criteria for assessing their own habits and could bring them long-term beneficial results in their professional endeavours.

4. Overview of the eight habits of highly effective community practitioners

The eight habits are clustered according to a simplified form of the so-called ‘four levels’ on which practitioners function: the intra-personal and personal, organisational, inter-organisational or cross-organisational/agency, and community/society levels (Morales & Sheafor, 1986:299–302; Hobday, 2000: 874–83). The levels and associated habits were used to develop a model (see Figure 1). This model takes the form of a set of concepts and principles that can be used to guide interventions and behaviour (Rothman, 1987:3–4; Sheafor et al., 1997:51). It uses an hourglass as its main metaphor, to illustrate two inherent characteristics of the habits of effectiveness. The first is that they are part of a fluid, bidirectional process. A habit that focuses on the practitioner as an individual (e.g. Habit 2: Self-empowerment) will invariably influence their propensity to activate the push of discomfort and the pull of hope in others (Habit 7) and vice versa. Like the sand in an hourglass, therefore, the habits can run in either direction, top down or bottom up, and still form part of one, integrated and definable whole. The hourglass is also a reminder of the time factor that is ever-present in the development and living out of habits (Covey, 1989:48–9).

Figure 1: A model of the habits of highly effective community development practitioners

Three points about this model should be noted: first, neither the levels nor the habits are self-contained entities – they simply imply focus points within the systems and processes constituting community practice; second, habits are interrelated – they overlap and are not necessarily restricted to a particular level; and third, the structuring of the habits in the model does not imply any priority rating.

Only the main characteristics of each of the eight habits are discussed here. These habits go beyond the normal or generic requirements for ‘good practice’. For example, sound planning and administration are prerequisites for all successful service delivery, but the habit of also using these processes as an empowerment tool (see Habit 6) would set ‘highly effective’ community practitioners apart from the ‘good’ ones.

4.1 Habit 1: They strive to understand their position within the greater scheme of things

Community development does not happen in a vacuum. Rather, it is characterised by numerous and often contradictory professional, organisational, community, cultural, political and other expectations and dictates that threaten to overwhelm the practitioner involved (Whitmore & Wilson, 1997:70–1; Kenny, 2002:285). Analysis of the selected articles made it clear that highly effective community practitioners were those who overcame these pressures by understanding their position within the ‘greater scheme of things’. This implies, inter alia, that they were able to:

• put reality before theory and dogma;

• recognise the potential impact, but also the inherent limitations of their involvement;

• accept the limitations of their own knowledge and skills and respect the community's indigenous knowledge, skills and potential;

• understand their status as outsiders to the beneficiary community and accept that the community is the owner of the process and the results achieved;

• recognise that, although product-related ‘hard results’ are often required by systems from within and outside of the beneficiary community (e.g. by community leaders and funders), process-related ‘soft issues’ are equally important;

• accept that the ‘classic’ collaborative self-help community development approach is not a panacea for all community ills and that it would be appropriate only in certain circumstances;

• view the negative emotions of community members (e.g. hatred, anger, despair, naive faith, paranoia) not as a hindrance or disruptive nuisance, but as a potential basis for creative collective action; and

• internalise the principles and values that govern their work and make them an integral and practical part of their service delivery (Cornelius et al., 1999:19–20; Botes & Van Rensburg, 2000:53–4; Hoggett & Miller, 2000:360; Hyde, 2003:49–50; Keough, 1998:189–94; Rothman, 2000:94–9).

4.2 Habit 2: They continually empower themselves

A habit that set effective community practitioners apart was their continuous endeavour to empower themselves. This resulted in a psychological feeling of intra-personal empowerment; that is, a sense of control over their own affairs and competency in influencing their own and other people's lives (Forrest, 1999:101; Itzhaky & Bustin, 2005:77–91). Successful practitioners had a sense of mastery over the diversity of knowledge and skills required by their practice. They achieved and maintained this by using all possible opportunities to sharpen their skills and to improve their knowledge (e.g. by attending all available workshops, seminars, conferences and other study and training opportunities) (Weyers, 2007:8). Their sense of control and competency also comes from:

• association with a collective (i.e. a group with which they shared a common identity and aspirations, such as a profession);

• a self-critical mindset coupled with a positive self-concept (including an openness to learn from their own successes and failures);

• critical awareness (i.e. awareness of their place, roles and functions);

• a propensity to act (i.e. perceived ability to initiate action on their own behalf or on behalf of others); and

• mastery of their mission and goals in life and their destiny (Itzhaky & Bustin, 2002:64, 2005:82–3; Kam et al., 1997:102–3; Tsang, 1997:139–42; Weyers, 2007:8; Whitmore & Wilson, 1997:70–1).

A number of authors stated that there is a correlation between a practitioner's sense of intra-personal empowerment and their inclination and ability to empower others (Forrest, 1999:101; Itzhaky & Bustin, 2005:78–83, 87–9).

4.3 Habit 3: They spend time on self-renewal

Most of the articles consulted for this study suggested that rendering community development services can be physically and mentally exhausting. It tries the practitioner's patience and perseverance and shakes their belief in people's ability to break deeply embedded habitual tendencies. It was therefore not surprising that the third habit was only hinted at in the ‘success literature’. Its details came mostly from articles that dealt with stress, burn-out and job dissatisfaction or practitioners' need for some type of ‘psychological protection’ against job-related stress and the feelings stirred up by working with problems and in oppressive environments (Ross, 1997:64–5; Watt, 1998:108, 110; Kasiram, 1999:346–9; Matlhabe, 2001:67–8; Malherbe & Hendriks, 2004:28–34; Narayan, 2005:10, 13). The analysis of these articles indicated that effective practitioners were in the habit of spending time on self-renewal. The habit seems to be predicated on the principle that really effective practitioners are those who strive to enhance not only their consumer system's well-being, but also their own personal wellness (Layton & Collins, 2004:430). They especially take time off or use opportunities for:

• self-reflection (this can vary from going to a retreat for a day or more to taking a couple of minutes off for quiet reflection, visualisation, self-affirmation, meditation or ‘communication’ with a ‘force’ greater than themselves);

• building and maintaining support networks (e.g. they did not take spouses, family members, friends, colleagues and religious affiliates for granted, but actively sought and nurtured these support networks);

• self-care (for example, managing their personal lives by balanced eating, adequate rest, appropriate exercise, regular vacations and stress management exercises and their working lives through time management, self-assertive behaviour and overload avoidance); and

• forgiveness (the ability to forgive oneself for not being able address all the problems and needs all of the time is as important for the practitioner as it is for the client system) (Ross, 1997:64–5; Kasiram, 1999:346–9; Matlhabe, 2001:67–8; Layton & Collins, 2004:430–6; Malherbe & Hendriks, 2004:28–34; Narayan, 2005:10, 13).

The habit of self-renewal surrounds all the other habits because it is the one that makes the others possible (Covey, 1989:287). Without it, the community practitioner will lose the ability to function as an effective service delivery ‘instrument’ and as an effective individual.

4.4 Habit 4: They first seek the moral support of their employer and colleagues

Acquiring the management's approval of plans and their provision of guidance and adequate financial and other resources (e.g. time, labour and facilities) is a generic prerequisite for any service (Rothman, 2000:102; Weyers & Van den Berg, 2006:184). What sets effective community practitioners apart from the rest is their habit of first seeking and obtaining their employer's and colleagues' moral support before they start to seek the support of other, ‘outside’ sources. This includes:

• persuading management to accord a high priority ranking to their particular project, service or endeavour;

• getting senior managers personally involved in the service (e.g. by attending meetings);

• gaining the organisation's trust so that they will give the practitioner the scope to be creative, the freedom to assert autonomy and the opportunity to take calculated risks;

• persuading senior managers to maintain their support in turbulent times and conditions;

• obtaining emotional support from the manager or supervisor; and

• acquiring adequate inputs, cooperation, support and loyalty from colleagues and other staff members (Boehm & Litwin, 1999:20; Allen & Boettcher, 2000:29; Malherbe & Hendriks, 2004:32; Weyers & Van den Berg, 2006:184; Comeau et al., 2007:132–5).

4.5 Habit 5: They build and use partnerships and coalitions

The single theme covered the most in the 85 selected articles was building, maintaining and using coalitions and similar types of inter-organisational or cross-organisational partnerships. It became clear that highly effective community practitioners do not try to work alone, but build and use effective partnerships. In the context of the research, the concept ‘partnership’ was used to refer to an interacting group of organisational representatives who coordinate resources and actions in pursuit of a common goal without the loss of the constituent organisation's or agency's identity or autonomy (Allen & Boettcher, 2000:25; Waysman & Savaya, 2004:124). Such partnerships could be formal or informal and involve the government sector, the private sector (including funding agencies and the business sector) and the broad non-government or civic sector (Midgley & Livermore, 1998:29–39; Lombard & Du Preez, 2004:233). The selected articles described things that successful practitioners had done to establish, maintain and use partnerships. For example, they:

• understood and accepted their own abilities and limitations as a partner;

• were able to use networking and marketing skills to establish personal contacts and good relationships with prospective coalition partners, to bring them together and to ‘sell’ the intended endeavour's underlying philosophy or vision and benefits successfully;

• could persuade members to share and respect each other's interests;

• succeeded in entrenching a set of shared values and a shared sense of purpose in the group;

• were instrumental in establishing a structure and framework for managing the multi-layered relationships and tension inherent in coalitions;

• encouraged the partners to pay attention to research and not instinct and to focus on shared learning; and

• succeeded in persuading the coalition partners and the agencies they represented to accept the financial and other risks involved in the partnership or coalition (Allen & Boettcher, 2000:29–34; Hoefer, 2001:8, 11; Gray & Collett van Rooyen, 2002:196; Blaxter et al., 2003:13–56; Green & Nieman, 2003:164, 167, 176–7; Waysman & Savaya, 2004:123–43; Lombard, 2005:218–9; Mai et al., 2005:110–22; Weyers & Van den Berg, 2006:179–183).

4.6 Habit 6: They use management and planning as empowerment tools

The articles suggested that community practitioners had to be able to plan and manage their own work effectively, but also allow their role in planning and management to be determined by the expectations and abilities of the other people and systems involved (Johnson, 1998:48; Boehm & Litwin, 1999:18–21). What set the highly effective community practitioners apart from the ‘good’ ones, however, was their additional habit of using the issues and problems that arose from and during management and planning as an empowerment tool. They would, for example:

• use planning and management meetings as a vehicle to:

  • encourage stakeholders to exercise their rights and participate in planning,

  • teach members leadership and administrative skills usable beyond the narrow ambit of a given project (e.g. skills in participatory planning and management, team building, consensus decision making, strategic thinking, financial management, and providing oral and written feedback),

  • work through rather than avoid conflict,

  • use conflict and power struggles as a learning experience in assertiveness and conflict management, and

  • foster trust between members;

• focus on developing a positive vision of the future and their involvement in the project;

• enable the members to experience the ‘sweet smell of success’ by tackling tasks with easy-to-achieve goals first and having clear short-term and long-term goals that were in line with the group's ability to reach them; and

• make sure that each member had a ‘job description’ (i.e. a clear understanding of what is expected of them) and experienced ‘job satisfaction’ (e.g. by running a reward system) (Boehm & Litwin, 1999:18; Allen & Boettcher, 2000:29; Botes & Van Rensburg, 2000:53; Rothman, 2000:95–9; Weyers, 2007:9).

4.7 Habit 7: They activate the push of discomfort and the pull of hope in others

Some of the articles focused only on the technical facet of the needs and assets assessment component of community organisation. Others implied that the ability to perform these tasks was only a generic requirement that all community practitioners should meet. Truly effective practitioners were also in the habit of using the needs and assets assessment process as a mechanism to activate the ‘push of discomfort and the pull of hope’ (Sheafor et al., 1997:129) in the community. Effective practitioners would:

• accept that community members are experts on their own situation;

• always start with the community's felt and expressed needs and not shy away if these were essentially material in nature (the prospect of fulfilling material needs is a strong pull factor, especially at the beginning of a project or service);

• use collaborative needs assessment methodology and procedures so as to not only provide data on the nature of the needs, but also conscientise all the role players about their potential role in the needs fulfilment process and their ability (power) to do something constructive about it (conscientisation can be viewed as a prerequisite for developing the will to change or be changed and to become involved);

• put the community's needs first and not accept the needs ascribed to it by government or agency policies or by practitioner bias;

• help the role-players to take ownership of needs and their fulfilment, or problems and their solutions; and

• not see the community as just a reservoir of unfulfilled needs and unsolved problems, but rather as a pool of assets, strengths and abilities waiting to be tapped (Rothman, 2000:103; Gray & Collett van Rooyen, 2002:196; Raniga & Simpson, 2002:189; Simpson, 2003:158; Gathiram, 2003:44, 46; Lombard, 2005:219; Weyers, 2007:8–9).

4.8 Habit 8: They instil an internal locus of control in others

Community practitioners usually work in a ‘problem and needs rich environment’ where community members, at the most basic level, become involved only if they are convinced that they will be substantially better-off after their endeavours than they were before (Rothman, 2000:94, 97–8; Weyers, 2007:10). The factors that constituted being ‘substantially better-off’ differed widely from one practice situation to the next, but usually entailed some type of material, social, self-esteem or self-actualisation benefit (Green & Nieman, 2003:164, 167; Lombard, 2003:232, 237–8; Simpson, 2003:149, 157). The selected articles suggested that highly effective community practitioners were not simply those who were able help communities to address their specific needs and reap the associated benefits. Rather, they were those who went beyond the needs and benefits domain and succeeded in instilling an internal locus of control in their target groups. This was often achieved by helping the groups:

• to unlearn their learned helplessness mindset by, for example:

  • persuading them to take ownership of their current situation,

  • making them aware of the negative outcomes of some of their current behaviour patterns and values, and

  • persuading them not to be passive recipients of services or a casualty of their circumstances, but rather active partners in the process of making decisions that affect their lives; and

• not to see themselves or their community as ‘victims’ but rather as potential victors by, for example:

  • convincing them that they are people of innate worth who deserve better,

  • instilling empowerment related feelings (e.g. self-efficacy, outcome expectancy and hopefulness) in them,

  • developing an individual and shared positive and clear vision of what they want to achieve in the future,

  • convincing them that groups have more inherent power than individuals and that it is, therefore, one of the best mechanisms through which ‘victory’ can be achieved (Johnson, 1998:43–5; Raniga & Simpson, 2002:182, 187–8; Gray & Collett van Rooyen, 2002:196; Green & Nieman, 2003:162–4, 167, 176–7; Gathiram, 2003:44–5; Simpson, 2003:149, 157; Lombard, 2003:232, 237–8, 2005:218; Itzhaky & Bustin, 2005:78).

5. Findings and recommendations

This research aimed to find an answer to one core question: ‘What makes effective community practitioners effective?’ Although the journals that were analysed contained numerous articles on the broad field of community development by a diversity of researchers, most dealt only with requirements that practitioners should meet. Their personality traits and habitual tendencies received scant attention. There was therefore a clear need for more research in this field.

The 85 articles that were selected had more than 19 different countries or territories as their primary research focus. However, there were hardly any differences between the core habits of highly successful practitioners in the various countries. Where there were differences, they usually pertained to specific components of a habit. It could, therefore, be concluded that the identified core habits were probably applicable to all community practitioners. However, more research is still needed to ascertain whether more habits should be added and whether some of the current (somewhat overarching) habits should perhaps be subdivided into two or more.

Although the study was not the definitive exposition on the subject, it did produce sufficient information to identify eight core habits of success. It is recommended that these habits should form the basis of a credo that all community practitioners should live by. This credo, or set of personal beliefs, can, tentatively, be formulated as follows:

1. I will strive to understand my position in the greater scheme of things.

2. I will take time to empower myself.

3. I will spend time on self-renewal.

4. I will first seek the moral support of my employer and colleagues before I seek the support of others.

5. I will not try to deliver services alone but will build and use partnerships or coalitions.

6. In my services I will use administration and planning as a tool to empower others.

7. In my services I will activate the push of discomfort and the pull of hope in others.

8. My main goal will be to instil an internal locus of control in the people with whom I work.

From the analysis of the selected articles, it would seem that the habit of instilling an internal locus of control in community groups is the most important of these habits, but also the most difficult to master and sustain. It is, however, the core of effective community development services.