Not enough to ask nicely
When I first started out building communities I was amazed at how generous people were with their time energy and expertise.
A long time ago I used to write for reviews of Xbox games for a gaming website, and would find myself reaching out to game producers and large companies to try and get hold of review copies of games to write about. It was really hard work. When much later I was trying to find speakers, sponsors or even on one occasion a venue for the meetup I was organising, I was really surprised at how easy it was. I found that I kept asking for things and people would agree, and then I’d ask for more and they’d agree to that too. I used to think it was because of all these skills I’d built up and I would be very pleased with myself and, when asked how I’d done it, would reply smugly ‘it’s amazing what you can achieve just by asking nicely’.
Aged and weathered as I am by time and experience, I try and avoid saying that now.
Let us be clear – for the most part communities exist and thrive throughthe generosity of people volunteering to give up their time and expertise with the expectation of nothing in return, because they are good people. We know this to be true, because if like me you attend a community session or a meetup or whatever only to find someone attempting to sell you some shiny new fantasamagorical tooling solution, it feels like you’ve been tricked. Tricked into a pressure closing session by a sneaky time-share salesman, when all you wanted was to learn and be around likeminded people. Were it not for people prepared to give up their own time purely for the good of the group, I would expect that most communities of practice would simply die off. These people are kind hearted and generous, and most importantly they do so because they care about the success of whichever community they are supporting.
All too easily, this generosity can be exploited. A leader’s role is often to look beyond the borders for opportunities that the wider community can learn from, and to pull them to the middle where otherwise they would go unnoticed. A certain amount of silver tongued influencing is required for this particular task, and ethically its important that a leader knows where the limits are. Secret time – in the past I’ve asked people to give up their time, travel to my community, spend time with us for an afternoon and then deliver a banging community session at the end of it, all with a promised offer of reciprocation that we both knew they didn’t want and 50% of us were too polite to turn down. But they did it anyway, because they were good people, and I was amazed by what I could get away with by asking nicely.
Now I’m not saying that everything should be transactional and no one should do anything for free or without the expectation of something in return. What I’m saying is that a good community leader should know how to do these things responsibly, and to ensure that wherever possible the person giving up their time benefits in some way from doing so. I will still ask nicely for people to volunteer their time and expertise, but I would like to think that I now only do so responsibly – I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something that I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself on the same terms, and if they offer to do something I consider to be above and beyond what I would be prepared to, I will offer something in return to try and make it more worthwhile for them.
Below I’ve tried to pull a list together of some ideas you could offer in exchange for a persons time in joining your community…
Does your community have a sponsor or other form of funding that at least could pay for your speaker’s travel expenses? I’ve even seen communities that have set up a cooperative fund of their own donations to pay for someone’s time or travel to visit them.
If their time allows, are you able to offer them some form of learning experience before or after they provide a session for your community? If your community is based or sponsored by your employer, how would they feel about letting the speaker come and see what you’re working on? I’ve previously run a company-sponsored meetup where we would give presenters the option of spending the day in our office with one of our teams, and we would schedule some of the more enjoyable work activities for that day so they could learn from our practices.
Are they active in a community of their own? Could you offer to do a session exchange in return from something that either you personally or someone within your community has skills in? This has the added bonus of providing the opportunity to expand the knowledge of your community by advancing capabilities that already exist – being asked questions by a different audience helps us grow and build a more rounded understanding of the skills we already have
If you really can’t afford to pay them for their time or travel, is it something they can provide virtually? In a world where virtual and hybrid communities are now commonplace, the opportunity to have someone join virtually is (sometimes) much less of an ask than asking them to join in person
Are you able to meet a need for them? When trawling social media I’ll occasionally stumble across someone who is looking to practice an upcoming conference talk, is prototyping a new tool/workshop/practice and needs a feedback group, or even someone who is reaching out looking to learn. I was once able to invite an industry expert to an hour long discussion with my community as they wanted to learn more about the differences between testing hardware and software, and we had the capability to help
One of the most exciting parts of building and leading communities (in my opinion anyway) is the way that you get to help bring about amazing experiences for your community’s members – experiences that in most cases they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have. It can be too easy to get tunnel vision towards your own/your community’s goals and agenda, and lose sight of what is the right thing to do. It’s an important leadership skill to care about the interests and wellbeing of those beyond your community, and to make use of its capabilities and skills to benefit others too.
One More Thing…
An example that I would like to draw people’s attention to of ethical leadership in this area is the Ministry of Testing’s speaker policy, ensuring that no one who speaks at their conferences has to pay to speak.