The Power of Leveraging VIP Relationships for Community Success

The Secret to Thriving Communities: Focusing on These Three Areas

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about."?

– Margaret J. Wheatley

I have failed. But it is a secret. From the outside, the Airbus Africa Community (AAC) is thriving.?

I have been struggling since the pandemic to keep it flowing. I am running and supporting initiatives like Makers Nord Sud and Club KESHO .

It has been mainly a one-person show. But not the one I was looking for.?

Yes, I already have the title for my Mad show: The One Mad Show.?

But I am still working on the content of that show. So let’s say I am living a life worth telling.?

Back to our story about me and my AAC.?

With some colleagues, we launched the community back in 2017. We organized two forums in 2018 and 2019. Then, in 2020, we were shattered into a galaxy far away.?

Most of our activities have been around changing the narrative of Africa within our company, Airbus.?

We also want to inspire the next generation of aerospace engineers on the continent through an outreach program called Fly With Me.??

We want to share our stories back home when we go on holiday. So we pay it forward from a remote village in South Africa, Zambia, to a big city in Kenya, Nigeria, or Senegal.

We were able to do it. Some of our members did it. Yet with Covid-19, I am struggling to make the community rise again from its ashes.?

No, I am not alone as a core member of the community. Yes, I have felt alone for the last three years.?

The fact that our members are not returning after the pandemic is a crucial question to ask before creating any community. Unfortunately, we never really asked the right question.?

We told our members: to come and contribute to projects around education in Africa.?

The following question our members have been asking is:?

What’s in it for me?

They don’t see the value that the community is bringing to them as individuals. And we missed it as the core team of the community, me first.?

What is the value of a community for its members?

Value has many definitions. In the context of a community, it can be defined as a state of change for the members.?

There are three areas where that state of change happens:

- Emotions: people feel different emotions when in your community,

- Gained Insights: your community is a source of great insights,

- Paradigm shift: each time they interact with your community, your members have a paradigm shift around some of their beliefs.

None of their shifts are happening for the AAC members.?

And there may be another thing we missed: building personas for our community members.?

Personas are often used in marketing to define some groups of people who are the target audience. They are created based on many criteria depending on the community's objectives.?

I recommend the great book of my friend Adrian Speyer , The Accidental Community Manager, for more details.?

Having personas is also vital in building thriving communities.

Now let’s paint the persona of a regular AAC community member. They are generally Black people from Africa who migrated to Europe to continue their studies or find better work opportunities.?

They worked their way through many challenges to be hired at Airbus. They work a lot to find their place both in their Western communities and that international corporation, Airbus.?

Often not only do they have to support their family in Europe and build a better future for their kids, but they are also pillars back home.?

As a result, the African diaspora is one of the prominent donors in the continent.?

Some of them might raise the ranks in a pyramidal organization. But, long story short, the AAC members are giving a lot privately and professionally.?

And they are paying a lot for being high achievers abroad, mainly in mainland Europe.?

The AAC tells them you have arrived but are not finished yet. Join us and share your success with the community again.?

They say to themselves:?

Gush, when can I be part of something where I can just be me, and somebody can do something for me??

Great communities are partnering with VIPs, some special ones:

1. Values,

2. Ideas,

3. People.

Thriving communities invest in those three key areas.?

1. VALUES - Value is not seen here as the value your community brings to its members. Here it is all about the fundamental values that define your community and the foundations to build the mission and vision of your community.?

Great communities invest time to create their value system as a backbone to everything else.

In the AAC, we have never really defined our values. I can nail it down to one value: contribution in any shape or form. That could be an exercise we can perform for our rebirth.

2. IDEAS - Great communities are fertile soils where you plant the seed for great ideas. Each community member can be the gardener who brings some life water into the conversation.

You need to align those ideas with your values system.?

In AAC, our ideas are about changing our European colleagues' perceptions of Africa.?

Other ideas are about initiatives we could launch to inspire the next generation of young Africans. Unfortunately, we tried and failed to have ideas around the positive business impact on the community.?

3. PEOPLE - Community is about creating a safe space where people with a shared vision unite their forces to change their world.?

Yet often, many communities are not equipped with the means to invest and grow their members.?

A community is not in the profit business. A community is rooted in the people's business first.?

Every other benefit downstream will be reaped once we plant the appropriate seeds in the heart of our members.

In AAC, we have the drive to create a safe space. Yet we failed to understand that our members were there first for themselves.?

We were pushing them to give more once again. Instead, they only wanted a space to come, rest and reset.?

Final Thoughts

In the coming months, we will relaunch our community. We will not start from nothing. We will start from the experience of our failure pre-Covid19. We will invest in our VIPs (Values, Ideas, and People).

Partnering with those VIPs is a sure way to create a change of state in the minds of our members. We want them to experience vivid emotions, exchange great ideas and have a paradigm shift about being at the receiving end of the spectrum, just for once.

Stay tuned for the AAC 2.0.?

Reset status: Ok

Reboot: Ok

Loading VIPs… ongoing.

And you, are you ready to build a thriving community thanks to the right VIPs?

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