What if clique busting is wrong? What if changing how we think about—and changing what we do with—cliques is the most effective way to promote healthy communities?
Almost every organization has to handle groups of people—churches, schools, businesses, and the whole gamut. Sometimes these people close themselves off in small groups, and exclusivity starts to define these groups.
Cliques form.
Sometimes, these cliques dominate communities, with one Mama Clique lording over everyone else or multiple, small cliques creating a standoffish atmosphere. This harms newcomers that might not be socially adept. If you can’t (or don’t want to) navigate the intricacies of cliques, you’re probably not going to connect with anyone in a cliquish community. It’s discouraging.
The challenge is addressing cliques. For a leader in a community, it’s tempting to start “clique busting”: doing whatever you can to dismantle cliques.
Don’t do it.
In about a five to ten minute read, I will tell you everything wrong with “clique busting,” and if you’re an ordinary person trying to approach cliques, I’ll give some tips on what to do (and why you shouldn’t resent cliques).
Good cliques are good for everyone.
First, we need to ask and answer this simple question: what is a clique?
The popular definition of a clique is a friend group that socially excludes other people in the community. However, the sociological definition of cliques is “…social networks formed between individuals to establish friendships (that is mutual relationships).” Cliques are basic units of human, social organization.
In this article, I will use exclusive cliques to refer to the popular definition and friend groups to refer to the sociological definition.
Friend groups are necessary. They encourage micro-level friendships, and these connections between individuals are necessary glue for a large community. They are good, natural, and important.
Small friend groups provide an opportunity for deep, satisfying relationships that we all need. They give us an opportunity to talk about and share things that we can’t in larger settings. These groups encourage vulnerability, growth, and accountability.
Furthermore, friend groups give us spaces where we can be comfortable. Now, I support challenging yourself to be uncomfortable. However, having a close friend group that encourages taking challenges and uncomfortable paradoxically makes it comfortable to be uncomfortable. Friend groups have the potential to be a space where we can have fun with our friends and confidently go out to others or bring others in.
Therefore, clique busting ends up being unhelpful.
Clique busters want to break up or reform exclusive cliques to make a more inclusive environment. There are several issues with this.
First, you can easily misidentify a normal group of friends as an exclusive clique. Most people aren’t good at talking to strangers, period. Some feel more comfortable with talking to new people when friends are around, but some don’t. Friend groups that aren’t intentional about reaching out appear as if they’re an exclusive clique even if they aren’t trying to be.
Misidentifying friend groups as cliques is especially difficult to avoid if you’re bitter or resentful toward cliques. Your inclination will be to condemn any form of exclusivity, intentional or not. To be clear, exclusivity is bad either way. However, the solution to an intentionally exclusive clique can be different to the approach needed for an accidentally exclusive friend group.
Second, by clique busting—even if the clique is exclusive—you’re risking harming strong relationships between friends. This should be self explanatory.
Third, attempts to bust cliques just don’t work, especially if the clique is purposefully exclusive. You can’t (effectively) force people to connect with someone they don’t want to connect with. Cliques will persist in the community or leave a community that continually tries to dismantle the clique.
You’re probably in a exclusive clique right now, or you will be in one at some point.
Those proposing “clique busting” often don’t realize they are in a exclusive clique.
This is because exclusive cliques, usually, aren’t formed on purpose. Even among mature, well-meaning friend groups, they’re formed when the group neglects pursuing inclusiveness. If you never see new faces in your “friend group,” it’s (probably, not always) because everyone else is afraid to approach you. They perceive you as exclusive.
If your friend group isn’t consciously making an effort to reach out to others or bring people in, it’s probably an exclusive clique or going to eventually become an exclusive clique.
When it comes to fighting exclusivity, it’s almost always easier to look at people who aren’t doing it well and blame them. You smile and say hello; they don’t. None of them ever strike up conversations with you. They never text anyone outside of their clique.
There are two problems with this mindset:
- You exclude the excluders. Developing bitterness toward exclusive cliques will make you want to disassociate with them, and you will grow apart. If you succeed in making the community more inclusive—great! However, you will have done so without including the people who were exclusive. You create an exclusive clique without the old exclusive clique.
- Focusing on exclusivity causes unhealthy inclusiveness. If you focus on how other cliques are exclusive, you aren’t focusing on healthy inclusiveness. This is because if your reason for being inclusive is to be better than cliques, you’re not really being kind to the people you “include.” Instead of blame shifting, we all need to become more aware of what we’re doing to encourage healthy inclusiveness and connections.
We can encourage community from cliques instead of clique busting.
Developing stronger communities isn’t about clique busting. We need to encourage these smaller units—friend groups and exclusive cliques—to build connections. Through this, we form larger, better communities. We bring in people on the sidelines, and an inclusive environment is fostered.
Integrate cliques, don’t bust them.
How is this done?
Unfortunately, this article is coming to its ten minute time limit quickly, so I won’t provide many concrete examples.
However, the easiest step to take is start with yourself. Make an effort to talk to new people or people you typically wouldn’t associate with. Avoid judging people for exclusivity (actively being inclusive is hard!). Commit to becoming someone that binds people together across boundaries. Making connections that are beneficial but initially feel “unnatural” requires extra effort.
Basically, lead by example.
What do you do when you feel excluded?
This is hard.
When it feels like everyone is ignoring you and rejecting your attempts to connect with them, it hurts.
If your community is exclusive, I recommend finding other people who feel excluded. You will have a better chance at connecting with others “on the outside” of your community because they are likely craving authentic relationships. The beauty of this approach is that you will build your own community made of people who once had no community, and that is a very good thing.
Additionally, you can spark change through this. It requires social capital to do so, but once you have a good network of relationships with the people in your community, you can influence them toward inclusiveness.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Today’s extra content is on a few more ideas on addressing exclusive cliques. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but it has some good recommendations. Here’s a great excerpt from it:
Take a few king pins aside – in any society there are informal leaders who establish themselves as the “Grand Poobah” of the group. Their words carry the most weight, and they have more than their fair share of say in who is allowed to join the group. All these pecking order considerations are informal, but they are all in play as the group carries on daily activities. As a leader, you can befriend the informal leaders and ask them to open up the club to new members. I think one way to make progress is to enroll the informal leaders by seeking their advice on how to reduce exclusivity in the organization. These conversations will be tricky, but if handled properly, you can woo these people into becoming forces for the good in your organization.
Bob Whipple, MBA, CPLP
QOTD: Do you have a close friend group? If so, how did you meet them? If not, how are you trying to build closer relationships?
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