In his book The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, Peck says that community has three essential ingredients:
- Inclusivity
- Commitment
- Consensus

Based on his experience with community building workshops, Peck says that community building typically goes through four stages:

Pseudocommunity: This is a stage where the members pretend to have a bon homie with one another, and cover up their differences, by acting as if the differences do not exist. Pseudocommunity can never directly lead to community, and it is the job of the person guiding the community building process to shorten this period as much as possible.

Chaos: When pseudocommunity fails to work, the members start falling upon each other, giving vent to their mutual disagreements and differences. This is a period of chaos. It is a time when the people in the community realize that differences cannot simply be ignored. Chaos looks counterproductive but it is the first genuine step towards community building.

Shedding (Emptiness): After chaos comes shedding. At this stage, the people learn to shed themselves of those ego related factors that are preventing their entry into community. Shedding is a tough step because it involves the death of a part of the individual. But, Scott Peck argues, this shedding paves the way for the birth of a new creature, the Community.

True community: Having worked through shedding, the people in community are in complete empathy with one another. There is a great level of tacit understanding. People are able to relate to each other's feelings. Discussions, even when heated, never get sour, and motives are not questioned.