What if everyone had access to the social connections they need to thrive?
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This International Women’s Day, and Women’s History Month, the RSA US team has invited female-identifying Fellows to explore how social capital, social connections, and building community, intersect with their work. Throughout the month of March we will feature a series of blogs exploring how social capital – the network of relationships and support systems that help people succeed—can make a world of difference, particularly for women. From journalists to coaches to network architects, these female-identifying Fellows are building bridges, and creating the connective tissue that holds communities together.
Since COVID, I’ve noticed that many people struggle to make authentic connections, often engaging in a transactional way that leads to tension rather than real conversation. This isn’t just a generational issue; people of all ages face challenges in connecting, especially with those they don’t know.
In 2024, I founded The Connectors to help people overcome this and engage the right people, resources, and mindsets to move ideas forward. With 25 years of experience helping leaders connect across sectors, I coach people of all ages to activate change and build bridges that open doors, expand perspectives, and transform how they engage with the world.
Building relationships and social capital has been central to my life since childhood. As a child, I attended six different schools in nine years across three states. By the age of five, I knew I had to quickly integrate into new communities and build friendships. I learned to observe, adapt, and ask the right questions — ones that made others see I was worth talking to. Approaching each new environment with curiosity, I found that genuine interest in others’ experiences naturally led to my classmates wanting to include me in activities.
While the context of building relationships changes as we grow, the process and reasons for wanting to connect are essentially the same. Everyone’s needs are better met in community, and strong bonds between people will always make a community more vibrant, engaged, and healthy. Social capital enriches our lives by bringing new perspectives, approaches, and learning to our world. It uplifts me by allowing me to support and uplift others. I have built my entire professional life around the concept of connecting with others and building social capital. It’s explicitly the focus of my work right now, but it’s always been a core element in any role I’ve held.
Everyone’s needs are better met in community, and strong bonds between people will always make a community more vibrant, engaged, and healthy. Social capital enriches our lives by bringing new perspectives, approaches, and learning to our world.
Through my work I have the honor of helping leaders connect with other people, resources, and mindsets to move their ideas forward. Often, people think they’re forging connections, but their approach is rather transactional, either unknowingly or because they may have misunderstood what it actually means to forge a connection.
No one – no matter how successful you are – accomplishes anything in a vacuum. To move any idea forward, you have to get others to believe in you. Those people can help amplify your vision or course correct you along the way, both of which are crucial for success. And to enroll those people in your vision, you need to show up as an authentic person who’s as equally interested in the other person as you hope they will be in you.
These skills can be taught, and I help people at all stages of life develop them, both individually and in groups. The most rewarding part of my job is seeing people build bridges to others they might not have otherwise connected with.
Most people think about their accomplishments when asked about the value of their social capital. And while I’m deeply grateful to those who have believed in and opened doors for me, the greatest benefit has been the joy and learning from connecting with people of diverse experiences, identities, and backgrounds.
Working in various fields has allowed me to develop new skills and build relationships with different groups, making my network vast and varied—by far the greatest gift of my professional life.
I used to say that while some people collect things, I collect people and relationships. And while the sentiment was mostly true, I’ve come to realize that “collect” feels too transactional—it doesn’t reflect how I truly see the people in my life. I don’t think about people as pieces or things to collect. Rather, I think about the whole of them and how I can uplift and support them. This approach has brought so much value and a richness to my world with people I might not have encountered otherwise. I would most certainly not be the person I am today without learning from every one of those people – no matter their age, location, background, or education level.
In 2000, I started a job in a different state that I found through my connections, and the only people I knew were my colleagues. When I was laid off in 2001 (dotcom bust), I suddenly found myself searching for work in an unfamiliar place. I had some social capital, but it wasn’t enough—I didn’t understand the local job market or know how to get my foot in the door, especially as companies were downsizing. The only way to find a job was through networks, and I didn’t have people who could help me. Living in a transient area where I didn’t know my neighbors, it was an isolating, scary, and overwhelming time. While I had some connections from that job, they were also searching for work or trying to hang on to their positions, so they couldn’t help.
After many rejections, I gave up on finding my dream job and decided to earn an income through a temp agency. I was fortunate when a woman hired me to run a product sampling campaign for a multinational company, despite my lack of direct experience. We connected deeply, and this opportunity helped me build my community in that state.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to co-create a methodology called the Uncommon Table to disrupt traditional styles of programming, challenge conventional ideas of “experts,” and foster meaningful conversations that lead to action. This approach focuses on open dialogue, allowing everyone to contribute their insights. It challenges the idea that only a select few can be experts, recognizing that all experience matters and each person has something to contribute. Uncommon Tables ensure that every voice is heard, and participants are empowered to lead the dialogue through their curiosity, lived experiences, and perspectives.
We often believe we must “earn the right” to provide value through experience, but I’ve learned just as much from teenagers as from senior citizens. When inviting people to speak, I use the term “featured guest” to signal that they are there to contribute, not to be seen as the expert. This intentional framing encourages everyone to come prepared to learn and engage in a broader dialogue.
Trust is crucial for building connections and I work to earn that by showing up as my authentic self. When engaging in any environment, I focus on intention, attention, and curiosity.
I start with intention and a desire to connect. This may sound silly, but many people communicate without considering why they are connecting. I consciously envision what I hope both myself and the other person(s) will walk away with. Then, I pay attention to how others communicate, whether overtly or subtly. This requires me to be extra observant of things like context, side comments, and facial expressions that can unlock the opportunity for a deeper understanding. Showing that I’ve taken the care to remember details about others immediately makes them feel more valued and can establish deeper levels of trust. Finally, I ask open-ended questions. It’s easy to make assumptions or listen just to respond, but I aim to listen with a mindset of curiosity. I try to weave in questions that encourage others to share their thoughts. My goal is to learn and expand my understanding of the other person. Learning from others establishes trust and opens the door for continued connection.
In a world that often feels more divided than ever, it’s essential to cultivate opportunities to build bridges across different types of people. We sometimes think of social capital as this large, formal construct, but most connections happen on a much smaller, micro level. Developing ways for people to engage in both bonding and bridging social capital are crucial for building strong, healthy communities. Most people are comfortable with bonding social capital – engaging with people we have something in common with, like a political ideology, hobby, religion, ethnic background, or anything that gives us a shared language and understanding. Bonding social capital is important for our sense of belonging and identity, and at the same time, staying only within our shared communities is where we can run into trouble.
We grow by learning from people who have different experiences and we do that through bridging social capital — connecting with people who are different from us. While I have empathy and can imagine certain situations, I am limited by my existing knowledge and lived experience. Intentionally interacting with people who have different orientations expands my own learning and connection to others. Once we care about our neighbors, we’re more likely to soften our rhetoric and work towards common goals. I’d like to see local organizations create spaces for everyone to connect and to intentionally engage people who may not have come otherwise.
As the founder of The Connectors, Emily Weiner FRSA is a systems thinking entrepreneur, business advisor, and mentor who has spent more than 25 years connecting people and ideas to activate change. Learn more by subscribing to her Substack or connecting with her on LinkedIn.
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Our social connections work will oversee a step-change in encouraging approaches and practices that value and commit to stewarding social capital.
