This post
This is a #-series about the fundamentals of community. My 'why' for writing the series - is that I want to see more community happen throughout the world. I do it because I believe that community is good for people. Does this resonate with you? 🙂 Then read on and join the discussion 💬
Main idea in this post. Hostmanship is one key activity to bring communities alive. If your community is stuck, this is one of the first places to look.
What we will cover in the post:
🤯 Big frustration - why aren’t my members more active?
🔓 potential unlock - use the ‘party metaphor’
☠️ a plan to totally ruin the party you are hosting
💭 What’s holding you back? (tips for unlock)
🚣🏻♀️ Keep working on your hostmanship, it will unlock community
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During my years in the community space the same question keeps coming back:
🤯 BIG frustration - why aren’t my members more active?
Why aren’t my community members getting active? It seems I am doing everything I can, but it just doesn't take off? Why are they so passive?
There is a lot of frustration out there.
Why does everybody else seems to succeed and I am not? Why does everybody else seems to have the keys to community building while I don't have them?
We all feel this from time to time as community builders - where are the keys? Why doesn’t community happen?
🔓 potential unlock - use the ‘party metaphor’
Visualise a great dinner party. What makes the party great?
🙂 People - we need guests. One is enough but more is better
👋 Welcome - people need to be greeted at the door
👍 Belonging - people need to be seen and affirmed during the party
⛹🏽 Contribution - the guests will start to discuss, picking up small tasks such as preparing food, setting the table
🧪 Variety - the party will transition through different phases, people will be different (thank god!), different sensory stimuli such as music, voices, food and drinks will happen
🔥 Energy - when the vibe is right, you can almost touch the positive collective energy in the room. This is addictive.
👨🏻 Guidance - hosts at the party need to guide, tell what's next, bring people together, intervene if someone endangers the safety of other guests
So people arrive, feel welcome, they get seen and later on a pat on the shoulder by the host, they start to interact with other guests, they pick up a task, they look happy, they experience all kinds of variety, they feel the energy and its all safely guided by the host.
And the reaction is:
YES! 💭 I will be back!
At the end of the party you feel accomplished and rewarded.
☠️ Lets polarize and create a plan to totally ruin the party you are hosting 😎
Let’s go:
☠️ invite too few people
☠️ don't greet them at the door, just let them slide into the party with no clear "inside/outside"
☠️ don't interact with people. And low and behold - don't introduce them to each other, don’t affirm their positive contributions, don’t intro them to small tasks
☠️ don't listen to the energy in the room to make decisions on how to navigate
☠️don't tell people what's next. Don't intervene if bad threatening behaviours happen, why should you care?
☠️and finally - try to take over... People are not here to meet each other right? They are here for you - so go on, hold a long speech that interrupts the interaction of others and keep interrupting others with speeches
Ok, confession time… I fail all the time 👆
Well, at least I forget myself on parts of this all the time. There are no gurus, and a perfect host is a person with
no ego 😇
coordination skills of an astronaut 👨🏻🚀
the compassion of a buddha 🧘🏾♀️
But when I succeed focusing on the role of the good host - dinner parties and yes, online communities - thrive.
🚣🏻♀️ So, keep working on your hostmanship, it will pay dividends for your community
So my humble advice is to keep focusing on your own and your cohost’s hostmanship
👉 Find inspiration from videos such as this:
👉Observe and understand good events and parties you go to. Even seek them out to understand them
👉 think back to moments where magic gatherings happened (maybe it was your aunt’s family dinners, maybe it was your coffebreaks at work)
🤔think about how you can recreate this and commit to do this daily, weekly and for the long run.
This will all help you unlock your community. In addition work on your blockers:
💭 What’s holding you back? (tips for unlock)
👉 You get nervous and start churning out content yourself. We are taught to deliver to be accepted, but here the delivery is hostmanship. The delivery is to step back. I see many community builders get into “blog-mode” and churn out content. This is valuable. But if community is what you want, you need create the foundations for others to contribute. Get out of the way, but be there to direct good energy.
🔓Unlock: scroll the community feed, if you show too often 🙂🙂…🙂, something needs to change. Get allies and see if they can help you get the ball rolling instead. Rethink purpose in your posting - are posting as ‘content’ or as ‘discussions’?
👉 You don’t have processes to greet and affirm new members. I know, this can be overwhelming, just as being a host at a party. Welcoming new members can feel like work, but also a chance to meet someone. Try to build a routine around it. Recognise that it is key and high value minutes to spend.
🔓Unlock routine: ask new members to 👋 intro themselves to each other
👉 Your community lacks small icebreakers and activities for people to connect. Design them, just as you would at a dinner party. How get people to mingle? Pair people for small tasks? Make it easy for members to speak up?
🔓Unlock: get people to ask questions, start forum threads where they ask for help. This is super for activation. People will amaze you jumping in with their help 🙂
Final thoughts
Hostmanship is a mental unlock. It is about understanding the role. Once you have understood it, it takes away a lot of pressure. It also changes time for many community builders - you must spend more short snippets of time in your community, give constant attention. This is very much about organising. And being there for the consistent long run, not burst activities.
So be a host, observe how your aunt runs the dinner and copy her 🙂
Like this? Then 👉
more to come in the # community fundamentals series…
culture and rituals ⛩
moderation hacks 👮🏿♀️
matrix - what platform to choose 🧪
emerging business models 💰
mega trend - passion economy 👨🏽🎨
mega trend - remote work/companies as communities 🚀
mega trend - health care through community 🏥
mega trend - product communities 📦
community unbundling capitalism + questioning the city 🔮
AND whatever you tell me to discuss 🙂- we create this together 🙏
Remember: my purpose with this series is to create more togetherness through community. If you share this purpose, raise your hand 👋and we discuss 🙂
👉Like this 🙂? then…