I had a conversation with a colleague today about how to help get their team to engage with an initiative they needed to work on. The task was a daunting one for the team because the to do list was quite large.
I had recently, successfully, encouraged my team through the same task so this colleague came to me for support. As I talked through my approach, I realized it was very similar to how I navigate community management:
Tackle small tasks that feed into the bigger ecosystem
Focus on the successes and what was learned from them
Celebrate milestones
Adapt when momentum/engagement slows
Listen
This started me thinking about other areas that my community management skills could be and have been incredibly valuable in.
So, this brings me to my question and inspiration for this post. Where have you seen your community management skills be useful outside of the community management ecosystem?
Key community building skills include: bringing people together, ensuring you’re able to meet the needs of the community and the organisation, and foster an environment where people feel welcomed, receive value and the organisation benefits.
Outside of my role in building community, I’ve been able to show people how the work of bringing people together helps their work.
For example, how to apply empathic communication and active listening skills to help people feel heard. I’ve also been able to show people how to engage with an existing community in order to bring community insight to their work. Most important, I’ve helped people to see their own teams as ‘community’ and to build ways to foster trust and connection, especially remotely.
All organisations are communities IMO so these skills are going to become even more important especially in the remote work era!
Infact, there’s definitely a trend of people starting to see businesses as communities and career paths forming in this direction. From what I’ve seen it’s a mixture of community and knowledge management. I’d love to dive more into this topic at some stage.
I love this. I feel like it is an incredibly important skill set to have in a lot of leadership positions too. In community and in leadership, we may not always be able to take action on what we’re hearing but by listening, we can understand what is being presented and explore what solutions might look like down the line.
Feeling heard is often not given the importance it deserves imho.
In a leadership role. You learn to listen to every party involved and try to drive the best of people, for the better outcome of the entire organization.
