My friend, Shirley Anderson, host of the Coaching Salon, is one of the people I consider to be a great community builder. Shirley brings together coaches three times a month to learn about all things related to coaching–from building a coaching business to sticky situations with clients to honing coaching skills. Twenty or more coaches show up on each call and the amazing thing is most of them participate in one way or another–there are very few lurkers.
After each call, Shirley sends out notes taken during the call to her distribution list of 800+ people. In this week’s notes, here’s how she started out:
Hi Coaches:
Oh, my gosh, what a conversation!!! I simply have to shut up so the brilliant people on the Salon can talk more. Remind me of that, will you, friends?
Those who know Shirley know that she is being completely sincere. The mark of a great community builder is someone who can encourage the conversation to extend beyond themselves, where it’s a many-to-many conversation. They do this by making others feel good about their contributions to the conversation, and bringing out the best in others. Shirley is masterful at this.
And while Shirley makes it look easy (listen to any of the recordings of the Coaching Salon and you’ll see what I mean), it’s not. It requires the community builder to be egoless, in service to the larger conversation.
The payoff is that the conversation becomes generative–1+1+1 = 10. And soon, the community creates the conversation, not the community-builder.