Community Leadership Connects the Dots

Before we dig into this topic, I want to make sure we clear the air about what I mean by community leadership. It is possible that your role, as written, does not align with the traditional management roles within your association. You contribute to the creation of community strategies and extend value for your program through internal relationship building, but you aren’t a people manager. If any of this sounds familiar – YOU ARE A COMMUNITY LEADER. As community builders, we tend to get into the mindset that just because we may not be directly setting the direction for the program or managing a team of people that we can’t speak up when research tells us that is not the case. If you play any part in the success of your community, you have a responsibility for connecting the dots to ensure its alignment to the larger organization strategy and for continued value delivery.That said, we have a certain responsibility to ensure that we are aligned to the rest of the business. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, while our responsibility is to our community members, we also have a responsibility to provide business value. I can guarantee you that your senior leadership did not make the decision to build a community for the sake of building a community. Members can gather in many ways, so you can believe that the decision to invest in community was part of a larger a strategic vision. How can do you understand what that vision is? There are a few ways to get to the heart of it to ensure alignment.Use your amazing communication skillsYou’re probably think that you’ve heard this before. Yep, that’s because you have. The only way to find out where opportunities to extend value through community lie is to find out what’s happening in your association. And you shouldn’t only be talking to your colleagues about what they’re doing. Talk about what your community is planning. I don’t now how many times that I’ve been talking with someone else within my association about separate initiatives that ended with us planning to collaborate for mutual benefit. The only way you’ll uncover those moments is to talk to others versus waiting for others to come talk to you. But more on that later.Understand that change is constantHow many times have you heard that your association is going in one direction with a specific initiative and the following week something has changed? This is not unique to associations, but it should be something you keep a constant pulse on, and you should be flexible when it comes to managing your community strategy, in that respect. Remember, strategic plans help guide your program, but are never meant to be set and not touched for 3-5 years. As conditions change, you should be prepared to make changes to how your community supports your business and your members.FocusI once heard someone say that whenever the numbers start to wane in terms of new users in their community that they just release new functionality to the site. WHAT? Excuse me? A shiny new button is going to solve what is likely an engagement issue? It’s easy to get distracted by things that seem like an easy fix that have nothing to do with the bigger picture. You can’t let that happen. Functionality upgrades should be saved for when you’re introducing something that’s going to really make a difference in your community – not for when your new user numbers are slumping. This sort of thinking is all a part of the engagement trap Rich Millington talks about.  By staying focused on what will really drive value and behavior change, you stay more connected to the overall strategy and to delivering value your members need/want.Ask questions if you don’t knowRemember that whole thing about change being constant that I was referring to a few paragraphs back? Well, it can also be confusing, especially when you’re trying to stay aligned. Think about a time when you’ve been in a meeting or have had a conversation with someone and you thought to yourself “wait, that’s not what Sue told me last week!” Or the week before that. Or the month before that. If you’re not clear on direction, ask questions. The worst thing you can do is either make an assumption and be wrong OR just move forward without being aligned at all. You risk compromising the integrity of your program, calling your credibility into question, or (worse yet) losing the confidence of your members because they’re not having a connected experience. If there’s any confusion on which way to go, figure out who you need to talk to and go do it.Be proactiveOne of the issues we can run into as community builders, as I elude to earlier in this post, is thinking we don’t have any influence, so we wait for direction. No one knows your community better than you do. You work in it every day. You see the conversations your members are having. You know how they feel about your association and your community. You know what they want and what they don’t want because they tell you. You are sitting on a gold mine of knowledge and waiting for someone to come and tell you how to sync with the rest of the organization is downright foolish. If community members are surfacing solutions that could help solve your association’s membership renewal issue, tell someone. If you notice that there’s heavy conversation around a specific topic within the community, let your content team know. These are all insights that you, as a community builder, are intimately tapped into because of the nature of the work that you do. Furthermore, much of the information that you’re privy to can help solve for some of the issues your association is trying to solve. Why would you wait for someone to come and ask you for that information? This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the value the community program offers and show that you are a strategic partner in the success of the association and to the members you serve. If you’re not being proactive in this sense, you’re missing the boat.One of the important things to remember in all of this is that, if you play a part in any way in the success of your community program, you have a responsibility to help connect the strategic dots on many levels. It’s not always easy to show the value of your community, but when you are having conversations, asking questions, and offering solutions where others may not have seen them because of the unique perspective you have, you are stepping into that responsibility and ensuring strategic alignment where it may have been lacking before.Let me know how you’re currently making sure that your community program is aligned. What are you doing that isn’t part of this list? Reach out and let’s have a conversation.