Ancient Brokers

A broker is an advisor or trader who stands in the middle to negotiate a deal usually for individual and corporate financial gain. There are many types of brokers such as stockbrokers, mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, arms brokers, and even marriage brokers. Brokering goes back thousands of years, as street traders and vendors would buy and sell wares, clothes, produce, medicine, weapons, commodities, and even slaves. Deals were brokered to make a profit, a financial gain over and above the cost of operations, production, and distribution. Many ancient trade routes boosted local economies, usually through agents that imported vital supplies, delivering them to individuals, businesses, and the community at large. They met the need of supply and demand, building capacity and fostering economic strength.

Social Brokers

Who would have thought that the art of brokering, a position often associated with mistrust, corruption, and fraud, with all of its problems, could also be responsible for ensuring community vivacity, stability, and growth? From the Incense Trail, via the Spice routes and the Silk Road, brokers have fostered great change. Think about the millions of people that would walk these routes and how cultures and languages evolved out of necessity and created economic and social change throughout history, even still feeling its impact today. As our money even now, is interchanged throughout the world, and globalization of financial markets and investments are melding, communities at the local level are embracing the need for collaboration in ways that require the presence of change agents, a new kind of social broker.

A social broker is one who builds relationships, stands in the middle assessing the needs and building the capacity of a community to strategically plan and implement data-driven solutions. These solutions or action plans affect the environment, people, businesses, and schools, promoting positive social change, sometimes with much resistance and fear. A change agent, brokers connections that may have never been there in the first place, or have become strained, or to strengthen an already thriving collaborative initiative or project.

Change agents must be fearless in their interaction with all sorts of sectors of a community, including law enforcement, government, health professionals, educators, and even the most feared and often misunderstood, youth population. I say this with a smile on my face, as I remember when youth were often expected to be “seen but not heard;” not so anymore! Times are changing and evolving and now more than ever, change agents are in a vital role of making connections that will be sustainable and profitable to the whole community.

Broker Backlash

I remember coming into my first job as a change agent in a small community. It was a highly visible and of course political position, whether I asked for it or not, and as a result I was taken out to a celebratory lunch with a local key leader. After what I had thought to be a pleasant welcome, she stopped toward the end of the meal, leaned aggressively and sternly across the table, looked me dead in the eye and said, “We don’t trust outsiders around here.” It was then when I knew I had my work cut out for me. It would be one of the greatest challenges of my career, building trust within a community I was not born or raised in, plagued with generational poverty, alcohol and substance abuse, and an unfortunate and powerful inter-agency competitive brutality that was severely stilting the progress toward a better future.

It took 10 years to build a community that is talking and working together, sharing resources, and collaboratively approaching sustainable solutions. It could not have happened without a dedicated person for the job, a person with skill in seeing the connections that could be made and able to broker trust to the point that the community was willing to invest their time, talents, and money for a common goal.

Change agents are a vital piece to the puzzle and often can be the link between a thriving community and a broken community. There is a common thought out there that promotes the idea that anyone can be a change agent, and I would agree. Anyone can produce an outcome whether it is sitting on the couch and not doing anything…fostering laziness or complacency, or getting off the couch, contributing to the community…and fostering passion. We all have the abilities to produce change either negatively or positively. It is a choice, and often one that many of us do not understand, making a daily choice of how we are wielding our energies.

Community Change

Change agents as a profession is growing, as more federally funded grant programs, government initiatives, and even corporate CSR programs are requiring communities to collectively address local issues through community coalition building. Community coalitions are a change agent’s home office as this is the place where deals are made, relationships flourish, and community problems solved. This is equivalent to the New York City Stock Exchange, the place where problems and issues are addressed with as much fervor and passion for any given topic. It could be where people hash out how to reduce alcohol and drug abuse among youth, or address neighborhood crime, improve the environment of a downtown area, or figure out how to increase citizen involvement. It is a place where the rubber meets the road with attitudes, perceptions, environment and policies, and revenue building strategies.

Change agents are changing the way our community breathes and communicates with one another and the outside world. They improve our social connection and therefore create positive outcomes within an organization and community for future generations. A social broker for the ages is a change mover and shaker that keeps evolving and influencing our world for the better. Think about what type of agent or social broker you are, and begin to build those relationships, making long-term investments in a community to reap the greatest of personal and financial returns. If I were to give it a name like the old ancient trade routes, I would call it the Resolution Evolution Trail and the trek is long, yet the journey is profitable. Find out who the social brokers are in your community, and walk alongside them. You may find a big surprise when you go searching for them, as the Change Agent, the new social broker, is really just you. Happy trailing!

Shawnee Bigelow is Doctoral Candidate for her PhD in Public Policy and Administration emphasizing in International Nongovernmental Organizations. She is the Global Development Director for Strategic Applications International and Servant Forge and works internationally as a public sector consultant. 2014. All rights reserved.