From the middle of L'Orangerie, Christina smoothly slides beside me and says, “What brings you here?”

We were in the middle of a physical icebreaker experience led by the founder of Community Council, Christina Hug. L’Orangerie is where we congregate to be prompted, to think, to share space. It is warm, nostalgic, and welcoming; you can feel life spilling over from the chateau that sits 50 meters away. We played the human spectrum as one of our icebreaker experiences, and I found myself being an island boy, by myself on one side of the room. That’s when Christina slid over.

The prompt: Please stand on this side of the room if you feel open to asking for help, and the other if you find it hard to ask for help.

What brings you here?

The funny thing about the question is why wouldn't I want to hang out at Chateau in France, duh? For real though, what brought me here is an insatiable craving and a warm invite. A desire, like many others I know, to find belonging. To have community during these uncertain times. Personally that week, though, it was to foster deep, meaningful connection with people who also adore supporting and leading communities.

My first community was a foster home. My foster mother’s name was Lady. Is Lady. She is 101.

She was single. She raised over 65 kids during her tenure as a foster mother. She became 65 strangers’ place of belonging. Support. Care. Discipline. And tenderness. She became a place for me to be held.

She instilled this culture of asking for help, but never really accepted it; she shouldered a lot in 65 different beings. She taught me to know that in this world, I’m always going to have to ask for help. When you’re competing with other foster kids for love and attention and meals, everyone has the same needs; you learn quickly that if you really want all your needs met, you can’t depend on just one person. You have to ask for help.

She always had a village supporting her, even when she was being stubborn and couldn’t accept it. Some of those foster kids became her children. Some of them now support her in her old age. Just like I do.

She still doesn’t ask for help easily.

Sidebar: she does ask for help now. And she deserves it. We do our best.

I went to a chateau in Normandy, France because my best friend Mykim told me about Community Council last year. She’d had an unforgettable experience: learning with community leaders how to support, sustain, and care for ourselves and our communities, with operations and infrastructure and systems thinking. Exactly what I needed in this moment to recalibrate myself, and Palette Group, in this current uncertain market.

Two and a half hours on a coach bus from Paris. I got my chatty Cathy on with Jessica from Maryland, who manages a marketplace, a community of merchants.

On arrival: a champagne campaign and a printed postcard with a map of the chateau and your room placement on it. We were told to move quickly. The first activity was starting in fifteen minutes.

Picture eighteen of us running up the steps. The pitter-patter of different shoes climbing carpeted marble. Giddy children. None of us had ever seen a chateau up close before, let alone stayed in one.

Christina introduced the home to us with a scavenger hunt, a piece of paper with clues to the rooms and places to discover, smell, and touch. Go to places we probably wouldn’t dare go, because she wanted us to feel at home and like we belonged.

So we frolicked. Lara from Brighton UK. Jessica from Maryland. Valentina from Madrid. We found places to hike, hidden statues, places to hide when you needed a moment to breathe. The dungeon below, and the game room that lives in it.

This was a full-body immersion. Every part of the chateau needed to be felt, listened to, experienced. Like a bath bomb for your spirit.

Christina made sure we were cared for and supported in a way my foster mother has never been, couldn’t even imagine. Oh, how I wish she had. These privileges to rest her body and her mind, after giving so much to her tribe.

Christina designed one hell of a program. She didn’t carry content, she built containers. So that people could feel a sense of belonging through shared vulnerability and excitement.

She prioritized belonging before contribution. And this is what I believe the future of work should feel like. The presence of our minds, day to day.

Eighteen of us inside that container, each one bringing real wisdom into a room designed to receive it.

The 17

To my new sisterhood: there was so much substance and magic in your expressions, your understanding of community, the lessons we shared, the challenging parts and the fun parts.

Kayla, the PhD from Atlanta, walked us through a conversation design framework on day three that bent the whole room’s brain. She spoke of one notion, “affording the room,” that I can’t shake.

In conversation design, “affording the room” is about creating the conditions for the kind of exchange you want people to have. The layout, prompts, objects, flow, and social cues in a space all influence how people enter, participate, connect, and respond. A room can afford openness, reflection, intimacy, collaboration, or hierarchy, depending on how it’s designed.

She was also hands-down one of the funniest people in the room. Stand-up routines are definitely in her future. I kept wishing we had a little set in the chateau. She’s about to be in New York City interning at Meta, and I’m so happy Meta has someone like her on the inside.

Bea runs Dubita Café, a salon in Madrid where you can paint, drink, read, just be. A communal space where people meet, hang, play games. She’s never touched AI, never felt the urge. AI was a big part of one of the days, when we collaborated on what it means to be in community with AI and how to leverage it to support communities at scale, to build systems around the work we do.

Her version of community is still fully analog, and there’s so much beauty in honoring that. So much respect and learning. There’s a reason a handwritten letter still feels warmer than an email or robot-printed paper.

Lara from Brighton, mother of two, runs a founder community called Found & Flourish out of England. She’s the kind of person you meet and immediately know you’ll be talking to forever. Within the first thirty minutes, I had a lesson I’ll never forget. It’s in my body, and I cannot wait to activate it in the coming weeks and months.

Estela, creative community leader from Bulgaria, kindly contributed an experience for the last day. We’d each get our own envelope, and everyone would write a small note of gratitude and/or how we’d experienced each other as we became chateau people.

Eighteen of us, from Bulgaria, Romania, the Netherlands, Maryland, San Francisco, Ottawa, British Columbia, Tokyo. Nonprofit leaders. Corporate startup leaders. Learning and development thinkers. Indigenous land-preservers. Space-thinkers. Every single one handpicked because of how they care about people in a season that does not reward caring about people.

It’s lonely to be a person whose work is community. For four days, we held each other.

On the last day, Christina Hug walked us through a burnout exercise. Four prompts. The one that moved me most: “What does it look like when you are at your best?”

The line that came out in my own handwriting was:

Don’t compromise craft for convenience. Protect the space you create. Your expression is yours, even when others co-opt.

That’s the standard I want for myself. And for the people I work with going forward.

On the last day, when our envelopes were returned to us, you can imagine the tears coming down my face. The WhatsApp chat blew up with more crying emojis. We walked away from the chateau holding stacks of letters from people who’d been strangers four days earlier and were now a beautifully connected community.

I’m so grateful for this group of women. That I got to witness their epic journeys. Their insights, their intellect, their charm, the beauty of their comedy. And to hold space for them while they held space for me.

P.S. Always down to go in on another chateau with any of y’all.

P.P.S. More community-centered activations and tools are coming soon to the Palette Group community.

Photo credit: @sandraschezz