Give and Take
Exploring the value of contributors and consumers amongst your community's membership
People’s motivations for joining and staying with a community of practice differ wildly. Some people join principally as a means to learn from other likeminded people, others because they are lonely or isolated in their role and want to be around others who care about the same things as them. Still others join a group because they have ideas that they want to share – things they have learned or benefitted from, and want to tell the world about. Many have a desire to help shape their craft or domain as a force for good, and seek to find an audience of similarly inclined people to share it with.
When I talk about community membership with people, I ask them to think about their members as consumers and contributors. Consumers are those who come along to a session to learn and to listen – they don’t necessarily have anything that they want to (or at least feel comfortable to) share with the group, but they know that by being part of it they will grow and get better. This is great, because these members are increasing the collective capability of the community. They take what is being shared and they use it to improve themselves and the spaces around them. These consumers generally make up the majority of the community, and as a leader its important that you pay attention to their needs – consumers are the key to the community’s ability to influence the world around it. They are taking what’s being shared in the hope that they can be better at what they do, and increasing the reach, influence and value that the community brings to the team, company, industry or even country that it belongs to. A leader can make sure that consumers are getting value by ensuring variety in the types of sessions covered; making sure that the content and subject matter is varied and well rounded means that the focus of learning is broad and therefore inclusive of everyone’s needs. They can do this by soliciting feedback from the community about what its wants and needs are, and ensuring that they are being met.
On the other side of the discussion we have contributors -these people are the ones who are bringing new things to the table for the community to learn from. They might be subject matter experts with a particular skillset, technology or capability, or they might be an invited guest coming in to do a one off session for the group. Alternatively, they might be one of the more vocal members of the group – the ‘yes and’ members who see the value in what’s being discussed and how it can be built on to turn potential and theory into reality and practice. The ones who speak up and ask questions and share alternatives that will add to the discussion, leading to better learning for the whole group. Although by definition there will always be fewer contributors than consumers in a group (otherwise we’d all just be screaming our expertise into the void), it’s important to make sure that they’re there and they’re being looked after. A shortage of contributors will result in the community’s ability to learn becoming lopsided – if everyone learns from one person and only one person we really only hear one viewpoint, and we lose the value of social learning in the community. As leaders, our role here is to be aware of our own personal preferences and the expertise landscape of the community, and make efforts manage them and broaden it respectively. Understand what the community is collectively good at, and what it needs to get better at. What are its needs? Who can you bring in or who could speak up to help meet those needs? What can you do to ensure that the discussion is well rounded and not biased towards or against certain points of view?
When many communities start out, there is often a temptation for the leader (de-facto or designated) to feel its their responsibility to be the main contributor. That as the person who is the driving effort to get the community up and running, they have to be the one with the most to share. This may in many cases be true, but it is not a sustainable long term state. Having one leading voice contributing to the discussion inhibits the social learning ability of the community, and can quickly become boring to a portion (or all) of the membership. A key responsibility of a leader is to augment their own contributions with those of others, in order to make sure the group (themselves included) is able to grow in a well-rounded manner and ultimately be more successful on their learning journey together.
That’s it for this week - sorry its been a while, life has been a bit hectic recently and its been hard to find time to sit down and come up with anything interesting to write about. Hopefully things will be becoming a bit easier and I’ll have some more stuff to share soon :)
Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)