Why your community feels busy but still disconnected, and the design choices that make people feel necessary.
What if the issue in your community isn’t that people won’t engage? What if engagement is happening, but it’s not translating into connection?
I see this often when I talk with community owners and leaders. The space looks active from the outside. Posts get comments. Questions get answered. People show up to calls or respond in threads. Yet something still feels off.
The group feels noisy but shallow. Participation exists, but the relationships never deepen. Members interact with the leader or respond to prompts, yet they rarely begin to rely on one another. Over time, the community starts to feel like a place people visit rather than a place they belong.
In this episode of Find Your Freaks, I unpack why belonging doesn’t happen by accident. I explore the structural flaw I see in many communities, why leader-centered spaces are more fragile than they appear, and what changes when leaders shift from controlling the community to stewarding it. When the focus moves from activity to interdependence, connection begins to grow and belonging finally has room to take root.
Episode Highlights
- [02:41] Why many communities feel active but still lack real connection
- [06:18] The difference between connection and belonging
- [11:07] Why proximity alone does not create belonging
- [16:32] Curating a community around shared values instead of business stage
- [21:45] Protecting the community container before members join
- [26:14] Encouraging member-to-member reliance and trust
- [33:50] The hidden risk of leader-centered communities
- [39:12] Stewardship vs. control in sustainable community leadership
Connection Comes Before Belonging
Connection and belonging are not the same thing. I know those words get used interchangeably, but they describe different experiences.
Connection is something a community can intentionally design for. It shows up in the structures that allow people to interact, collaborate, and see each other’s contributions. It happens when people have opportunities to talk, share ideas, solve problems together, and build familiarity over time.
Belonging, however, is something each person decides internally. It is the moment when someone begins to feel that their presence matters, that they are seen by the group, and that something meaningful would be missing if they were not there.
Connection creates the conditions where belonging becomes possible. Without connection, belonging rarely forms because people never move past surface-level interaction. When communities focus only on engagement metrics and overlook the deeper relational layer, they often end up with activity that looks healthy but does not actually create belonging.
“Connection and belonging aren’t the same thing. Connection is required before belonging can take root.” — Tonya Kubo Share on X
Belonging Isn’t Proximity, It’s Interdependence
Many people assume belonging is a byproduct of proximity. If you gather aligned people in a room or inside a digital community, relationships should naturally follow.
Sometimes proximity does create connection. Think about parents whose kids play on the same sports team or coworkers who share the same office. When people see each other regularly and share the same space, it is easier for conversations to start and familiarity to grow.
But proximity alone rarely leads to belonging. Without something deeper tying people together, those relationships often fade the moment the shared setting disappears.
Belonging develops when people share responsibility, rely on one another, and contribute to something larger than themselves. When members know their presence affects the group and their participation matters, the community begins to feel different. It becomes a place where people are not just present, but connected through mutual contribution.
“Belonging isn’t proximity. Belonging is interdependence.” — Tonya Kubo Share on X
The Quiet Design Flaw That Makes Communities Fragile
Most communities are designed with the leader at the center. The leader answers the questions, solves the problems, and becomes the hub for nearly every interaction.
This usually happens for practical reasons. The leader starts the community, introduces the conversations, and wants to make sure members feel supported. In the early stages, it makes sense for the leader to be highly involved because they are setting the tone and modeling how the space works.
Over time, though, this pattern can become structural. Members begin directing every question to the leader. Conversations flow through the leader instead of between members. Even when other people in the group could offer insight or support, the expectation remains that the leader is the primary source of answers.
This structure is rarely intentional. Yet the outcome is predictable. The leader eventually becomes the bottleneck, and the health of the community becomes limited by the leader’s capacity and attention. When everything depends on one person, the community can appear active while still lacking the resilience that comes from members supporting one another.
“A leader-centered community can look active and still be fragile.” — Tonya Kubo Share on X
What Gwen’s Client Community Teaches About Belonging
In the previous episode, I spoke with Gwen Bortner about the way she works with her clients. During that conversation, she mentioned that she does not really think of herself as running a community.
I see it a little differently.
When I step back and look at the way her client ecosystem functions, I see one of the clearest examples of intentionally designed belonging. Her clients gather quarterly for planning sessions, and the group itself is relatively small. They are not in constant contact, and they are not meeting every week, yet the relationships between members are surprisingly strong.
Part of what makes this work is that the container Gwen has built encourages interaction that goes beyond her. Clients share ideas with one another, offer perspectives based on their own experience, and help each other think through challenges in real time. The conversations do not stop with Gwen’s guidance. They expand outward as members begin to recognize the value each person brings to the room.
Over time, those small moments of collaboration add up. Members begin to trust each other’s insight and look to one another as resources. The result is a network of relationships that exists alongside Gwen’s leadership rather than depending entirely on it.
“Belonging grows when members rely on each other, not when everything flows through the leader.” — Tonya Kubo Share on X
The Unpleasant Truth About Power
There is an uncomfortable reality behind many struggling communities. The problem is often not the strategy, the platform, or the technology being used.
Most leaders spend a lot of time trying to fix surface-level issues. They look for better engagement tactics, new tools, or different ways to prompt conversation. Those changes can help temporarily, but they rarely address the deeper issue.
Sometimes the real challenge sits much closer to the center of the community. Leadership insecurity can quietly shape the way the space is designed. When leaders feel responsible for every answer, every solution, and every meaningful interaction, they unintentionally position themselves as the only source of value in the group.
Over time, members begin to rely on the leader rather than on each other. Questions flow upward instead of across the community. Conversations stay shallow because members are waiting for the leader to respond rather than engaging with one another.
What forms in that environment is dependency rather than belonging. The community may look active for a while, but it remains fragile because the relationships that sustain belonging were never given space to grow.
“Most communities don’t fail because of bad platforms or bad people. They fail because of insecure leaders.” — Tonya Kubo Share on X
Stewardship Over Control
The distinction I want leaders to sit with is the difference between managing the container and owning the relationships inside it.
Managing the container means paying attention to the culture of the space and the conditions that shape how people interact. It involves setting clear expectations, modeling healthy communication, and creating opportunities for members to collaborate and contribute. The leader’s role is to protect the environment so that connection can grow naturally among the people inside it.
Owning the relationships, on the other hand, places the leader at the center of every exchange. Conversations move through the leader, questions are directed to the leader, and members begin to look to that one person as the primary source of support and validation. Over time, this creates a structure where the community cannot function without constant input from the person at the center.
Healthy communities depend on stewardship rather than control. When leaders focus on maintaining the container instead of controlling the relationships within it, members gain the space to connect with one another. As those connections deepen, people begin to rely on each other’s insight and experience.
That shift is where belonging becomes durable. Instead of depending on one person to sustain the group, the relationships themselves become the foundation of the community.
“Stewardship protects the container. Control tries to own the relationships.” — Tonya Kubo Share on X
Three Questions I’m Sitting With
- Where in my community does connection exist, but real belonging hasn’t taken root yet?
- Am I designing spaces where members rely on each other or quietly routing everything through myself?
- What would change if the success of this community no longer depended on one person at the center?
These questions keep pulling me back to what belonging actually requires. Belonging grows through interdependence that is shared, trusted, and built through responsibility to one another.
Meet Your Host
Tonya Kubo is a community strategist, marketing consultant, and rebel with a cause: helping people find the place where they truly belong. For nearly two decades, she’s built online spaces that feel less like comment sections and more like chosen family. She’s the fixer you call when your Facebook group has gone straight-up Lord of the Flies and the bouncer at the door of internet nonsense. As the host of Find Your Freaks, Tonya brings together unconventional thinkers and bridge-builders who know “normal” was never the point.
Episode Transcript
Get the full transcript from Episode 19.
Resources & Mentions
- Episode 18 – Small Circle, Big Impact with Gwen Bortner
- The Business You Really Want Podcast
- Clutter-Free Academy by Kathi Lipp
- Rachel Allen – Community support for spouses of incarcerated individuals
- Nikki James Zellner – Carbon monoxide safety advocacy
Support the Show
If Find Your Freaks matters to you, help us keep it ad-free by buying us a coffee (or two!). Every dollar goes to production so more weirdos can find their people. You can purchase Find Your Freaks merchandise online through Abilities and Attitudes.
Let’s Stay Freaky
What’s Next
Tonya talks with Stacey Morgan, an Army spouse of 25 years, mom of four, speaker, and author of The Astronaut’s Wife. Stacey shares how launching her husband into space reshaped the way she approaches fear, leadership, and going first. Together, they explore what it means to build connection and lead with courage in communities shaped by constant change.
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