Community leaders are the most active people, in charge of participating, organizing events, accompanying ambassadors, moderating, guiding members along the curve of engagement and participation.
How to create leaders
We as community professionals may come across people who have a lot of potential to lead. In this case, what we must remember is that we cannot force anyone to do anything; on the contrary, if there is a perceived desire to learn, we can accompany the learning process.
Identifying leaders
In order to help people with leadership potential, we must identify them and put them through 3 interviews inspired by the recruitment of leaders used by the Google developer expert program to help us realize if we have a good candidate.
Screening interview
The screening interview aims to identify if the interviewee is an active person in the community and if he/she knows about the community.
Technical interview
In the technical interview we make sure that the interviewee demonstrates his or her knowledge about communities.
Community interview
In the community interview we try to look for the reasons why the person wants to take a place at the top of the community and of course evaluate if these reasons are the right ones, because if the wrong reasons are detected the candidate will be immediately vetoed.
Onbording process
The process of integrating new leaders should be accompanied by detailed guidelines to help them improve their skills and learn how to implement values, boundaries and create psychological safety.
Be empathetic
In our leadership process as community professionals, it is necessary to have empathy for the members and other ambassadors of the community in order to better understand their situation and provide valuable assistance.
As well as remembering that our actions encourage members to move along the curve of engagement and participation. On the other hand, showing our vulnerable side will make people empathize more with us and strengthen psychological safety.
Activating passive members
All communities are interested in activating passive members, because they are the most likely to leave the community or cancel their subscription to the business. That is why we must have detailed guidelines and clear processes to drive community members to become active members.
One example is Platzi, with its program that specializes in people who have dropped out of school or are devoting too little time to education. These students are helped to organize their schedule, learn online and create exercises to boost their productivity.
Why encourage leadership
Creating and converting leaders will help the community to have people interested in its healthy growth and will be a great support for us as community professionals.
Challenge
Share what makes you vulnerable and how you are working on it.
Contribution created with contributions from: Ismael H
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