Marie Connelly is not a Guru.

The topic of training for community management has been coming up quite a bit lately, and after a #cmgrchat back in November, it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about.

As you likely already know, The Community Roundtable, WOMMA and ComBlu will begin offering training and certificates for three levels of community management later this month. (Full disclosure – I recently joined The Community Roundtable, and while I haven’t been involved in this project, it probably goes without saying that I wouldn’t be a member if I didn’t think they were providing a valuable resource to the field of community management.)

It seems as though reactions to the new training program have been fairly mixed, at least within our own little bubble. Jeremiah Owyang and Connie Benson (who’s an instructor in the program) have some good posts about why this program matters, and what it is or isn’t setting out to accomplish. Without belaboring the point, there are a few things I want to add to the conversation here:

First, don’t worry about the certificate.

All due respect to everyone involved, but I think the certificate part of all this may end up being a bit of a red herring – what really matters is the training itself. Plus, I think certification implies a level of technical competence in a field that may not be as relevant for community management as it might be in other areas, especially on the web.

I also think fears that a certificate or some kind of formal certification will have a significant impact on the way community management positions get filled are probably unfounded – as anyone who’s hired a community manager can tell you, experience counts for a lot.

No really, you can teach empathy.

I won’t pretend my English degree qualifies me to dive into the nature vs. nurture debate, but I really was surprised by the “you can’t teach empathy or compassion” reaction to the idea of preparing people for a career in community management.

I’m not trying to be glib, but I honestly can’t think of that many people I would describe as completely devoid of empathy. Perhaps I’m grossly underestimating the number of sociopaths interested in a career in community management, but I think by and large, the first step to being a successful community manager is, you know, actually wanting to be a successful community manager. (Okay, maybe that was a little glib.) It’s by no means the only necessary skill or qualification, but it does strike me as a pretty important one.

In all seriousness, I think empathy is often a function of context, both in terms of setting and subject matter. Health is something I’m pretty passionate about, and I’ve spend a lot of time immersing myself in the world of patients and practitioners, attempting to understand the challenges they face here in the US, and around the world. That’s not something I knew anything about when I started working in this field as perfectly healthy 23 year old, but the more I learned about the challenges and obstacles people encountered in accessing and providing care, the easier it became to empathize with situations outside of my own personal experience.

So, yes, there is some basic kernel of empathy that you need to have in order to be able to say to yourself, “Wow, that must be hard,” but I’d like to believe that most of us do possess that, and if someone wants to activate it, and spends the time and energy identifying opportunities to exercise that skill, I really do think there’s a strong likelihood that they’ll succeed.

Why not help them learn how to identify those opportunities?

Speaking of which, let’s stop reinventing the wheel.

When I first heard about this program, I thought, “I really wish this had been around four years ago.” Many (if not most) of us who have been doing this work for a little while are largely self-taught community managers. We learned from our experiences and our failures, and from whatever we could find out there on the web from other community managers. If you were lucky (and I was very, very lucky) you may have had an opportunity to learn from managers, coworkers and employees who all had some experience in the field as well.

Here’s the thing about experiential learning, though – it’s invaluable and hard won, but it is hard won. And honestly? Not everything needs to be hard. Let’s help make it easier for people trying to figure out things like what metrics they’ll want to track, or the basics of social listening tools, or how to put together an editorial calendar that’s appropriate for their organization.

When you have to figure out–and advocate for–all these things on your own, it takes a lot longer to get them done. That’s time not being spent on your Someday list of to-dos and features.

Selfishly, I want to see more of what’s on that list for other community managers. In my mind, that’s the biggest potential for a program like the one The CR, WOMMA and ComBlu have put together: it can help all of us move forward as an industry. We all learn and benefit from innovative community solutions and creative implementation ideas – so let’s get more of them.

What’s next?

Clearly I’m a fan of the idea of “community management training” generally, but it’s worth pointing out that the syllabus for the WOMMA Community Specialist level is pretty impressive – it looks like three weeks of solid fundamentals from people who really know what they’re talking about.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see what’s covered in the Community Manager and Community Strategist levels and where things go from there, but on the whole I think training is something we should all be talking and thinking more about. As our communities and organizations grow, our community teams will need to grow with them, and how we build our own teams and mentor those new to the field matters: the success of our industry depends on us doing it well.

One of the things I find most interesting about the field of community management is the wide range of backgrounds and experiences that people are bringing to the table in this role – there are a lot of different ways to prepare for a career in community management and social media, and I think it’s encouraging to see such a wide range of perspectives represented.

While most of what I learned about community management came from, well, being a community manager, there are a few things that really helped me out along the way.

In (roughly) chronological order:

Having lawyers for parents - few things prepare a person for making logical, persuasive arguments better than a lifetime of practice debating with lawyers.  It sounds a bit silly, but I’ve realized that everything I learned from years of trying to convince my parents to let me take the car, or extend my curfew, were the same skills I use now in working with community members and companies looking to get involved in social media – anticipating concerns, seeing multiple sides of a situation and proving yourself to be a trustworthy mediator are all important tools in the community manager’s kit.

Wearing an apron to work – Most community managers I’ve met have had some prior experience with customer service.  Mine was working “rush” at a college bookstore.  I had the apron, the nametag, and a whole slew of people angry at me personally for denying their requests to return books without receipts. Turns out, working in a customer service role is always an adventure – and that’s true whether you’re talking to people face to face, over the phone, via email, or on Twitter.

Studying English in college – Spending four years answering the question, “What are you going to do with that? Teach?” wasn’t a blast – but over the past three years, I’ve been consistently surprised by how relevant my degree has been to working as a community manager. On the most basic level, four years of writing essays is pretty good practice for finding an effective written communication style.  But one of the most important things I learned as an English major were the analytical skills necessary for close reading: identifying key themes and making connections between texts, authors, and different time periods.  As a community manager, I’m still reading closely, it’s just that now I’m looking for common themes and conversations about specific health topics, or for connections between different health communities.

Of course, there’s nothing like learning by doing, but it never hurts to have a good foundation to build on.

I’d love to hear from other community managers out there – what do you think best prepared you for this role?

Let it be Alexis Madrigal’s response to Zadie Smith

As an English major, and an occasional student of linguistics, I was particularly fond of this quote:

“If your vision of the past language is mostly Melville — the stuff that’s endured — then, yeah, English seems like it’s in damn sorry shape. But if it includes all those other low and middle-brow writings, the bad letters, the telegraphs, the stupid poems, you end up with a spikier, less formal take on language. Consider that in 1870, 20% of the population was illiterate. Surely, on that basis alone, we now live in a far better place for words.”

While I find myself having less and less interest in Facebook personally, Madrigal’s points are both compelling and well written.  It is not an article to be missed.

The lovely folks over at the Metaverse Mod Squad beat me to the punch on the title of their recent post, “Listening and Hearing Aren’t the Same Thing“, but I wanted to go ahead and add a few thoughts of my own the matter, since it’s something I’ve been noodling on for the past couple of months.

I feel like the most common piece of advice given to companies looking to get involved in social media is “LISTEN FIRST!”

It’s obviously not bad advice, and there is a whole industry dedicated to supporting the growing need for social listening.  I think it’s important to stress, however, that listening is worthless if you’re not ready to hear.  Listening is great. It’s an extremely important first step to any social media program or initiative, but it’s an inherently passive activity.

Hearing, on the other hand, prepares you to take things to the next level.

Hearing means:

• Letting go of what you think you know. The online world is remarkably similar to the offline world, right? So, how much do you enjoy being stuck next to the guy at the party who thinks he knows everything you’re going to say? If you go in looking only for confirmation of your preconceived notions – that’s all you’ll get. You’ll miss out on an incredibly rich opportunity to learn new things and you’ll make it that much harder to create a genuine conversation online.  When you’re really hearing what your customers have to say, you’ll find new and surprising insights where you least expect them.
• Seeing yourself in context. Whatever product or service you offer, it’s only one part of your consumer’s world.  This is something I see every day in online health communities. Maybe a medication only treats one symptom of a multi-faceted disease. Maybe insurance only covers a certain number of pills a month. Whatever the context is (and it certainly doesn’t have to be related to health!) – be prepared to acknowledge it when you reach out to your customers.
• Showing your work. Unless you’re prepared to do something with all this information, the fact that you listened at all is of little benefit to you, or anyone you listened to. Let your customers and community members know that they’ve been heard by showing them the changes you’ve made. Likewise, be careful of the reverse – don’t ask for feedback if you’re not really prepared to hear it.

Truly hearing what your customers and community members have to say about you, across the social web, is the foundation for any strong social media program – so if you’re listening, make sure you’re really hearing too.

What else does hearing mean to you?