I thought it would be useful to bring a real situation from my own community into The Safer Skool Blueprint for us to explore together. I've already handled this situation, but I'm deliberately not going to tell you what I did yet. 😉 I want to hear how you would approach it first. Here's the situation: A new member joins a community centred around trauma healing and support. The community includes trauma impacted people, trauma informed parents and trauma professionals. Importantly, those aren't always separate groups. Many members, myself included, can sit within more than one of those identities. The new member clearly carries a great deal of hurt from previous negative experiences with trauma professionals. That history appears to influence how they interact with me. Because I'm both a trauma professional and the community leader, their communication towards me quickly feels confrontational and aggressive. They attend a live event advertised specifically as a social drop in space, rather than therapy, clinical support or a healing session. During the event, they repeatedly attempt to dominate the conversation and bring their anger and mistrust of trauma professionals into the space. Afterwards, the same pattern continues through comments within the community. Now put yourself in the community owner's chair. 🤔 How would you handle this? What would you be thinking about? Would you intervene during the live event? Would you speak to the member privately afterwards? How would you acknowledge the hurt behind their behaviour without making the wider community responsible for holding it? At what point does understanding why someone behaves a certain way stop being enough to justify allowing the behaviour to continue? How would you consider the needs of the other trauma impacted members and the trauma professionals who also need to feel able to participate safely? And where would your boundary ultimately sit? There isn't one perfect answer. I'd particularly like you to think about this through our four SAFE lenses:

Hi I’m Andy. I’m from the UK and I’ve just opened The Health Pension community. I help busy people create new habits around food, movement, sleep and mental health to transform their health. It’s particularly for people who have neglected their health by putting work, family and everything else first. I have literally just opened the doors today so I’m very new…and haven’t had any challenges yet as I don’t have any members. However, I recognise the huge benefit of providing valuable, safe spaces for members and focussing on them rather than endlessly looking for new members, so the idea of the group resonated with me. It’s great to be here!

@Andy Byrne is here! 🎉 A warm welcome to the start of something very special! We're creating safer Skools together 🌞 Please start with our welcome post which is pinned at the very top of our community feed. This will explain where we are in our build, your benefits as a Founding Member, and how to introduce yourself and your community. We look forward to getting to know you 💙

Would you like to add a course to The Safer Skool Blueprint Classroom that introduces our members to your community? I want the Blueprint to be a place where we don't just learn about building safer communities, but also discover and support the communities our members are creating. Your course can introduce us to: 💙 Your community and its purpose 💙 Who it's for 💙 What members can expect 💙 What makes your community different 💙 How you're putting the SAFE principles into practice Your course will be available for all members of The Safer Skool Blueprint to explore. How to add yours: 1. Create a course introducing your community in your own Skool Classroom. You may already have something suitable! 2. DM me your course key. 3. I'll add your course to our Classroom so other members can discover your community. Simple! 💙 👇 I've added mine as an example so you can see how it works. Welcome to The Skool Trauma Hub - The Skool Trauma Hub · The Safer Skool Blueprint I'd love to see our Classroom gradually become a showcase of communities whose owners are committed to creating safer, more supportive and engaging spaces across Skool. Let's discover and support what each other is building. 💙

The ONE change that would have the greatest positive impact on my community right now is: Please share in the comments below.