Rediscovering Connection with Shelley Doyle
Welcome to Rediscovering Connection, a Podcast where you'll hear from innovative leaders, researchers, community builders, and facilitators, on the frontier of connection.
Through soulful conversations, we explore new ways to connect, on-and-offline, to support our social and digital wellbeing.
I hope this podcast inspires you to rediscover connection in your own life!
Learn more about my work:
Website http://thecommuniverse.com
Subscribe to my YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@thecommuniverse
Rediscovering Connection with Shelley Doyle
#41 – Tristan Claridge: Social Capital in the 2020s - What Really Builds Connection
Tristan Claridge is the founder and president of the International Social Capital Association. In my final episode of Rediscovering Connection in 2025, we explore how Social Capital works, why it can never be transactional, and why authenticity and attention are the real foundations of strong relationships.
Listen to our conversation for greater clarity, perspective, and a reframe of how we think about Social Capital and Social Wealth today, including:
✨What social capital is (and what it isn’t)
✨Why social capital only functions when social needs are met
✨How authenticity and “obs listening” strengthen connection
✨Why people often underestimate the social capital they already have
✨The difference between having access to networks and feeling socially wealthy
✨ How knowing more things about each other, creates opportunities for deepening trust, and collaboration.
This episode is especially relevant for those who want to understand connection more deeply, explore how to activate the social capital they already have, and reflect on what it takes to build socially healthy, high-trust teams in a modern, distributed world.
About Tristan Claridge
Tristan Claridge is a globally recognised expert on social capital, with over two decades of experience advancing theory, practice, and policy in the field. He is the Founding President of the International Social Capital Association (ISCA), Director of the Institute for Social Capital, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and a Visiting Associate Professor at Heriot-Watt University.
Tristan’s work focuses on developing a deeper understanding of how social capital is formed, maintained, and activated, bridging rigorous academic research with real-world application. He works internationally with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to build social capital as a vital resource for individuals, organisations, and communities.
Find Tristan at https://www.tristanclaridge.com/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristan-claridge/
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I hope our conversation inspires you to rediscover connection in your own life.
Subscribe now and let the magic unfold.
Love & sparkles,
✨Shelley
About Your Host
Hello you, I’m Shelley Doyle, founder of The Communiverse™, Social Wealth Strategist and host of the Rediscovering Connection podcast.
If this conversation sparked your curiosity to delve deeper, I support organisations by working with HR, L&D and People & Culture leaders to turn disconnection into measurable Social Health, using the principles of Social Wealth to build socially healthy, high-trust teams.
One way this work comes to life is through my Social Wealth Workshop. This is an interactive, strengths-based session designed for innovative leaders and teams who want to better understand how Social Wealth functions, and how it can be activated to support social health at work.
Email: shelley@communiverse.vip to request info.
Find out more at TheCommuniverse.com or find me on LinkedIn.
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One of the things that's often missing from the, the literature on social capital is that a lot of the opportunities for social action come from knowing about other people, not necessarily by having trust or reciprocity. And those things are obviously important as well, but the opportunities often stem from simply knowing. So for example, I'm a software developer. I've, I've been doing it for years as a, as a bit of a hobby, and I'm, I'm quite good at it. You didn't know that about me, I assume, and until now, but now that you do know this, opportunities could arise where I could help you with something. And similarly, if when I find more out about you, then similarly we can identify opportunities where, where I might be able to benefit from something and we might be able to act together on something.
