Key roles in a community of practice

No matter how much external support they receive, all communities of practice ultimately depend on internal initiative for their development. All successful communities of practice have some members who take a “nurturing” stance toward their community. Not only do they participate as members, contributing and benefiting like everyone else; they value the existence of the community and are willing to invest themselves actively in enabling it. Community leaders take such a stance, but they are rarely successful over the long run unless they are joined by a core group of others who in their own ways contribute to nurturing the community.

This leadership in a community of practice is not of the leader-and-follower type. It is diverse and distributed. Rather than think in terms of leaders and followers, it is more useful to think of roles in a community of practice in terms of an ecology of leadership. In this ecology, everyone can potentially take a different type of leadership role.

Some roles correspond to clear functions in the cultivation and support of the community. These include:

▪ Community leader: running the day-to-day functions of keeping the community going, connecting with members, and making sure they are engaged and receiving value

▪ Core group member: member dedicated to the development of the community, helping leaders with various tasks

▪ Chapter leader: acting as a community leader for a local chapter and connecting it to the broader community

▪ Practice group leader: leading a practice group can take different forms depending on the type of group it is, ranging from lightly facilitating discussions to project management

▪ Mentor: taking newer members under their wing

▪ Welcome wagon: welcoming and inducting new members

These types of roles are usually assigned explicitly to a member or a group, who are then expected to fulfill the attendant responsibilities. The process of assigning roles can be more or less formal, reflecting the spirit of the community and the culture of the organization:

▪ Tacit. Members take on a role as part of their participation in the community, whether recognized or unrecognized

▪ Self-selection. Members volunteer for roles, either because the role interests them or out of “good citizenship”

▪ Nomination. Members are often asked to take on a role by other members who think they would be good at it

▪ Rotation. In some communities, people take turn assuming roles that involve extra work

▪ Election. Some communities organize elections, with candidates

“running for office”

▪ Mandate. in some organizations, key roles are assigned to people as an organizational mandate. While this process usually ensures that the person will have enough time formally assigned to the role, a mandate may not ensure the legitimacy of the person for their role in the eyes of the community. An organizational mandate can therefore be used to formalize one of the processes above.

In addition to these assignable roles, there are lots of unassigned or emergent roles in communities of practice. These include someone with expertise in an area, someone who provides a connection to another practice, someone who always see the positive side, someone who is always very critical, someone who tend to bring in wild ideas, etc.

Social learning leadership is a delicate art and works quite differently from the traditional hierarchical structures and responsibilities that people are used to. It entails balancing demands in tension, such as managing the

process in a focused way while also taking advantage of emerging opportunities; being forceful about driving the community forward while also inviting others to contribute; and performing visible tasks while also building relationships and keeping the pulse of things in the background. People who take on such roles are often volunteers who do it out of personal passion, and it is therefore important to provide a context in which they can grow into all the subtleties involved and be valued for what they contribute.

Generative culture, emergent leadership We find that opportunities for people to take leadership within the community helps to build confidence in their professional role.

As Disha’s story at the start of the book shows, as a software engineering graduate with a passion for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning since college, she wasn’t sure how to immerse herself in that field when she first started working at JPMC. She found that joining the Ignite AI / ML community in Mumbai helped her get used to working life while learning about topics that fascinated her.

In time, she developed her skills to the point where she won first prize in a ‘ML Mayhem’ contest sponsored by the community. This gave her such confidence and inspiration that she became a co-community lead and helps others to learn in a safe, inclusive environment.

We have been able to curate a number of experiential stories like this, and share them using our ‘Highlight Your Ignite’ series of articles.

On the identification of the members of a core group The CCHN has been unable so far to take a clear path towards a more distributive leadership in the CoP. In view of the regional distribution of the