Together we go
A few years ago I opened a tech meetup by saying hello and welcome to everyone, and to break the ice I asked ‘hands up who was here last time?’. About a third of the room put their hands up. Next I asked ‘Who’s here for the very first time?’ and just the one person put their hand up. As a joke (and I stress AS A JOKE), I said ‘ah good, if you’d like to stand and give us a detailed introduction to yourself that would be great - we’ve all done it’. Cue a polite ripple of laughter through the room which quickly fell stony silent as (before I could stop him) the new joiner stood and awkwardly gave a long introduction to themselves, their job history, career aspirations and why they had decided to come along. After the first few sentences it felt rude to interrupt and stop him, and after the first few minutes I’d made the mental note to curl up and die and never try that joke again in the future. When he was done I did thank him for the introduction and apologised if I’d made him feel uncomfortable, but I don’t think he came back again to any future sessions.
Joining an existing community can be a scary experience. Everyone seems to know and be pleased to see each other, and potentially you might know only one person there, if that. You don’t yet know if it’s a group you really want to be part of, or whether you’re going to be welcome there. Similarly, new members represent a risk to the community and its existing dynamics. New members could bring an awkward angle to discussions, can cause cliques to form, and lead to a general reduction in the trust amongst the group. On the other hand, we want new members to join our communities. We like to share and bringing new people to the group expands our collective knowledge, capability and influence.
So what to do? We need to make sure that we have a means of effectively welcoming, on-boarding and integrating new members into our communities. As leaders we have a key role to play here, and I’ve tried to pull together a list of particular actions that we can take to help a new member feel welcome
Introduce them - As a leader, you should set the tone. Keep an eye out for new or unfamiliar faces entering the room, and make the effort to say hello and introduce yourself. Make sure they are welcome, introduce them to people within the community, and support them in building connections with others as early as possible. This helps to reduce the length of time that they feel like the new person among the group, and enables the community to maintain its levels of trust
Share your charter - A community should have a mission for what it wants to achieve, and a charter for how it wants to behave. These agreed boundaries help new members understand what is expected of them and what they can expect from others, and allows everyone to know whether its something they feel comfortable with or not. I don’t think its wrong for me to say there are some communities that I’ve been interested in joining that I’ve chosen to walk away from as for one reason or another I didn’t feel like I would be comfortable agreeing to the behavioural standards they set themselves. This is of course the point – HAD I stayed I would not have been a comfortable member of the community, and I would have impacted on the comfort levels of those already there.
Create a shared experience - We are bound together by shared experiences. When we overcome adversity or go through a difficult experience together, we build a connection together based upon it. When we do something that we enjoy together, we associate that enjoyment with the people we experienced it with. Welcoming new members is a great opportunity for having a shared experience together, to renew bonds of community together and establish new ones with those who have just arrived. And before anyone gets carried away I’m not talking about college frat-house hazing (I mean, its sort of the same thing, but it sounds pretty dysfunctional and weird to me), do something TOGETHER. Go for a meal. Do an exercise together. Do some experiential learning. I don’t know – do karaoke or something if that’s your thing. The point is that you do something and you do it together, and you begin to build trust and community with each other.
Give a gift - My laptop is covered in stickers. I once handed back a laptop when leaving a job where every inch was covered in stickers, and the IT Manager looked at me with a ‘what on Earth am I supposed to do with that?’ look on his face. They aren’t just any old stickers though – each one is from a community I’m part of, a meetup that I attended, or a conference that I went to. Each one is a memory When I see it, it reminds me of something fun I did or that I’m part of. When someone else sees it, they know the type of things its going to be easy to talk to me about. When I see someone else who has one of the same stickers as me, I know we share a connection point together. More than that though, the act of giving is something significant. Giving something, however small, can have a powerful impact on the recipient as it is an act of kindness towards them showing that they are cared about. Depending on budget, if you can give a sticker, a t-shirt, a notebook as a gift, it becomes an act of welcoming and an article of belonging to the recipient.
Get them to contribute - The value of new members joining the community is that they bring something new to the collective capability of the group. Each member is the unique sum of their past experiences, and every new member brings something new and valuable that didn’t exist before them. As the leader, your role is to help get them to the point where they feel safe and comfortable enough to share it with the rest of the community. Some may find this easier than others. Some will be ready to run a session within a couple of meetings, some may need your support to even get them to speak up by asking a question or making a point in a discussion. It doesn’t matter what it is, the important thing is that they do it. You can trust your community to welcome their contribution so your new joiner will know they have done the right thing by speaking up. Years ago I heard a story about Facebook (and I hope its true because I’ve told it to literally hundreds of people since) that when a new software developer joined, on their first day – regardless of seniority or past experience – they would get them to push some production code. Didn’t have to be anything earth shattering, but it was something that from day one they could go home and say to their friends and family ‘see that bit there? I did that’. Contributing to something writes the first line of our story that interweaves with that of the wider community, and it’s the point where we start to belong there.
Welcoming someone new to your community is a fundamental skill for any community leader, and getting it right or wrong can be the difference between someone joining and being a valued member for many years and someone leaving during the break having been forced to stand up in front of a room full of strangers and feel awkward.