Roles that define a Community?—?Leadership and Ambassadorship

Today there are umpteen options for an individual to express oneself, including the medium that I am using now. However, the sad part is these expressions of views are confined to that of the respective individuals. The biggest drawback of today’s Digital Era if you ask me is the lack of collaboration and understanding. Today one has so many options to express one’s views, but tend to ignore the Power of Communities.

A quick rewind to the pre-digital era would see a very positive influence of community in everything that one did. Communities always brought the best out of individuals due to multifarious reasons. The simplest reason was the fact that all members of a community were aligned in working towards a common goal.

How to create a meaningful community is a complete different topic altogether. But what might be more relevant today is what I mentioned above - align the whole community to work towards a common goal. There are two important roles in this alignment: Leadership and Ambassadorship. As far as a Community is concerned these are two words are very different but have been mistaken as the same for ages. The skills one need to possess for both these roles are very different. Let’s consider each one of these separately.

Leadership

There are two aspects that lead to the success of a community, what you do internally and how you project your community to the outside world. Leadership if you ask me is key for the success of the first element. A good leader is someone who the members of the community look up to, maybe not in awe but more with respect. Marketing Gurus would say “It is 20% of what you are, and 80% of what you project you are”. In today’s world, I might agree to that to a certain extent as far as personal branding is concerned, but for Community both what you are and what you project you are, are both equally important.

My Alma Mater Model Engineering College (MEC) has always been my typical example of a Community. Far from ideal, I would call it the best community that I have been a part of, especially when I look at it from a member benefit perspective. During my four years at MEC I met few individuals who were true leaders. People who could inspire and lead from the front. People who made you work through their sheer passion and excitement for the community. They are individuals who ensure that worthwhile stuff really happens within a community. Since community is a group of individuals there would always be various activities happening within that, but to identify ones which are meaningful and worthwhile for the community, and to ensure that they get implemented, you need leaders.

So, the first step in the empowerment of a community is to identify such leaders. In majority of the cases such leaders automatically emerge as POWER is something which excites quite a few. Now that is where the other members of the community need to play a key role, to ensure that the power rests in the hands of a selected few who would work tediously for the betterment of the community as a whole and not the ones who want to just to add a badge to their resumes. MEC as a community was always blessed with such genuine leaders, ones who have worked for bolstering the strength of our community day in and day out. And the best part is MECians have always been good enough to identify the genuine ones and discard the others.

Now, an obvious question would be, if these are leaders who command the respect and understanding of other members, work hard for the betterment of their community, then what do Ambassadors do, or rather how is that role different from a Community Leader’s. My definition of Leadership might differ from that of Oxford Dictionary’s, but I believe these are two roles which produce optimal results if kept separate. There might always be an exceptional individual who could manage both, but from whatever I have seen when a Leader tries to become an Ambassador, they lose all, or majority of, the traits of a good Community Leader. To explain this better let me detail who is an Ambassador.

Ambassadorship

After graduating from MEC I was all pumped up about our community as it was MEC which gave me everything — a lot of good friends, a lot of confidence, a decent job, a little bit of engineering, etc. I was all ready to take MEC to the world college map. But lightning struck and struck hard and fast, the fact that it is not just about what you are, it is equally important to project what you are.

Ambassadors, as the name suggests, are the individuals who project and promote what your community is all about to the outside world. They are the ones who ensure that what a community is and what it stands for is known to the outside world. There might be people who argue as to why do we need to do that. Well that, if you ask me, is what demarcates a successful community from an unsuccessful one. I am sure each one of you would have seen this happen in your personal lives — either in your extended family, neighborhood, school, college or very commonly at workplace.

How many times have you heard people say that our group is the most hard working one in this company but we always get ignored when it comes to reviews, laurels and accolades. In today’s online world it is becoming more and more important to project and promote what you do. We need Ambassadors not just to showcase what your community is, but for a more important need. Ambassadors take your community to the world outside, showcase it and become your spokespersons. Ambassadors fight for your community’s cause, take constructive feedback and most important bring it back to the community and its members.

This closing of loop is a very important responsibility of an Ambassador. They ensure that whatever you stand for as a community is worth the effort and is done in the most optimal manner to help the cause. If you believe that whatever you do within your community is optimal and whatever happens outside of it is oblivious to you, that is the beginning of the downfall of your community. This could be due to ignorance, like what happened to India when the imperialist nations attacked it, or due to over confidence, like what happened to the once booming Japanese Economy. This is where Ambassadors play a very vital role in ensuring that your community is up-to-date with what’s happening in your areas of interest in the world outside of your community.

Leader — Ambassador Duo

Ambassadors are not leaders they are representatives, they are promoters, they are fast learners. They take what leaders help create, to the world outside, and loop information back to the leaders as to where their community stands in the world outside. Leaders imbibe this feedback and ensure that the community takes necessary corrective action to be showcase ready. Good leadership is very difficult to find, but once found can be easily maintained as they are always within a comfort zone of members within a community. On the contrary good ambassadorship is easy to find, but very difficult to maintain as the role becomes more demanding as the community grows. Not that leadership doesn’t become more demanding over due course of time, but then as mentioned earlier leaders are still within their comfort zone while ambassadors are outside in a world which is much more competitive, where the world is not looking at you as a leader, friend or well-wisher, but as competition.

The biggest problem in today’s world is RECOGNITION, or rather the lack of it. The Leader-Ambassador duo needs to work in tandem with a lot of understanding and respect for each other and the roles they perform. When it comes to recognition in today’s Digital Era, the Ambassador gets quite a few platforms to be recognized (of course presuming the community is doing well) while the Leader might not get that many. Now that is where a good Ambassador needs to step up the game and realize that without the leader and the community there is no Ambassadorship. So, it becomes the responsibility of the Ambassador to provide or create as many platforms as possible to recognize and acknowledge the Leader. This mutually rewarding exercise, though very tough to implement, once in place ensures that the community is on track to be a meaningful worthwhile experience for all concerned. Maybe here again the members of the community need to play a key role to ensure that they narrow down on an Ambassador(s) who ensures the above practice is in place from day one.

If you look around where you are, or into the bigger world around you, will see enough and more examples of great leaders and great ambassadors, but unfortunately very few great communities. Let’s take that little extra effort to identify the right leaders and ambassadors, create the right environment for the duo to work together, and thereby make our communities meaningful and worthwhile for all members!