In October 2019, we focused especially on Leadership & Careers in TheCR Network content & programming. What does that mean exactly? That means we held several Roundtable Calls, forum discussions, questions, and polls that focused on aspects of leadership and community careers.
What did we learn from these discussions?
In a nutshell, we learned that, while we may have different definitions of what makes a leader, we do think of ourselves as leaders, we just need to embrace and leverage the influential power that we have. As one member put it so eloquently: we need to show that we're indispensable rather than irreplaceable.
But we're not going to stop there, here's a little more about what we learned from a few pieces of this thematic content & programming...
October in TheCR Network: Roundtable Calls
Our first Roundtable Call on the topic of leadership & careers was with the Director of News Innovation and Leadership at Craig Newmark J-School at CUNY, Anita Zielina, and discussed leadership, mindsets, and culture.
As Anita was a guest from outside of the direct community space, we were able to open up a discussion around the overlaps of other industries like journalism (which we've also talked about here and here) and explore what we all have in common.
On this call, we discussed a variety of topics like:
- The importance, benefits, and make-up of interdisciplinary teams
- The intersection of innovation, organizational values, digital behavior, and culture change
- User-/Member-centric perspectives
This was a robust conversation and I took away several key points from the call. It first helped reinforce that we need to build relationships not only with members of our teams and communities, but with members of other teams across the organization. The more collaboration and cross-functional team building, the better and more well-rounded our work will be, benefiting all areas of the business.
I also reflected on how culture plays a pivotal role in our decision-making and the success of our programs, no matter what those programs are. We need to be able to speak the language of our leadership in order to get the funding and support we need, but we also need to match the culture of our organization in the work that we're doing. We all know that culture is a key part of community, but we need to remember that the culture of our organizations matter and should be acknowledged in our community strategy as well.
If you want to listen to the conversation, you can find an edited recording of the Roundtable Call here.
Keep an eye out for the Roundtable Report coming soon.
Our next call focused specifically on community careers through the lens of @Marjorie Anderson's career journey.
We got to speak with Marjorie and hear about a variety of topics such as:
- How she got from her starting role to her current role as Manager of Digital Communities at PMI
- How her community team is structured
- How and where she made relationships with leadership, mentors, and colleagues
- How she suggests finding, applying, and measuring the efficacy of resources
- How to advocating for your own professional development, especially in organizations with no clear career path
Some of the larger takeaways from this call stemmed from the notion of making yourself indispensable versus irreplaceable. You need to advocate for yourself and bring a level of proactivity if you want to progress in your career, but you also need to collaborate and work with others around you to build the relationships and connections that will help you succeed. You don't want to be the only one who knows how to complete a task, but you want to be the one that people go to when they want to learn how to do that same task.
This was a great case study of career progression in community and would be a great listen for anyone who is looking to advance their own careers.
If you want to listen to the conversation, you can find the edited recording of the Roundtable Call here.
Keep an eye out for the Roundtable Report coming soon.
Another Roundtable Call that we held honed in on how we can upskill and advance our careers through community conferences.
As an annual tradition, we used this Roundtable Call to review conferences that members have attended this year, gather feedback, curate positives and critiques, note yearly trends, and create a wishlist for the following year.
On this call, members shared their thoughts around three key conferences:
- Khoros Engage 2019
- CMX Summit 2019
- TheCR Connect 2019
A takeaway from this call is, while we enjoy going to tool- or vendor-specific conferences, we also yearn for industry- or use case-wide conferences (like CMX Summit and TheCR Connect) as well. A healthy mix of the two can help balance our knowledge and information, but going to more than one conference isn't always feasible for all people.
If you want to read the collaborative notes taken about these conferences, you can find them here.
You can check out the 2019 Conference Calendar and add your notes for 2020 conferences here.
What Did You Think?
For the length of October, we opened up a poll that asked a simple question: "Do you see yourself as a leader?"
Well, let's see the results...
While many community practitioners struggle with getting buy-in, resources, and support from their organizations, the vast majority of the members who answered the poll do see themselves as leaders. So, while they do see themselves as leaders, there is still a disconnect between that recognition and leveraging the power that comes with leadership.
As we learned from the State of Community Management 2019, community leadership is unevenly distributed. That means that community leaders (and yes, we are leaders!) are seeing a couple of different factors:
- Inconsistency in roles creates uncertainty
- Lack of business skills creates vulnerability
But, while we're seeing these more negative factors, we're also seeing one big positive: Advanced strategies address risk. By shoring up our strategic and business skills, we're more likely to be able to prove community value and received approval and resources for our roadmaps.
Over the month of October, we've heard from different people that all say the same thing: our skills and relationships are key to our success in our roles. We need to prioritize business and strategic skills as well as cross-functional relationships in order to see the success of both our community programs and our community careers.
So, Where Do We Go From Here?
As you'll hear a lot in TheCR Network, this is not the end of the conversation, but just the beginning.
We opened up this can of worms with our third key finding in the SOCM 2019:
"While the success of communities is exciting, with that success comes growing risks. Community leaders are often still isolated from business decision-making and those involved in business operations often don’t understand communities. As communities become more integrated and influential this disconnect is creating ever greater risk. Communities are impacting organizations in a wide range of ways but they are not institutionalized, leaving them vulnerable to small changes in leadership."
And while we might not have all of the answers yet, we're working toward them. At TheCR, we're furthering our Community Careers and Compensation research to explore this area more deeply.
In TheCR Network, we're continuing to ask these questions surrounding careers, leadership, and culture, as we know situations are always changing. We're always looking to add to the Community Careers Resource Bundle and we constantly refer to the Community Maturity Model Resource Bundle as a way to measure our work strategically.
As we said, this is by no means the end of this conversation, so if you have something that you'd like to share or ask in TheCR Network, drop a comment below. We'd love to hear about it!
If you're not a member of TheCR Network and you're interested in this conversation, please reach out. We're happy to discuss how you can get involved!#2019_CMGTComesofAge#2019_MindsetsSuccess#leadership#culture#community management
#careers