Community Alchemy: Tools, Tea & Antics

In this episode

The ladies drop knowledge around the topic of communication plans, breakdowns in the planning, and our experiences on both ends of the win-or-learn spectrums. Bri sets off with what a communication plan even is and they follow up with ways they’ve both observed breakdowns in communication during projects. They dip into a few of their own vivid learn moments [neè fails] and share the reasoning behind why doing the due diligence for comms. plans can be vital for the health of your project. Finally, Bri reviews her step-by-step process for creating a communication plan [find the infographic in our shownotes]!

Show Notes

Per Webster: trust (verb): to believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of || trust (noun): a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something

Join Bri & V on a winding journey around what trust really is, how they’ve built it personally & professionally and how they’ve dealt with broken trust. As usual, it touches on the actionable as well as the philosophical; so buckle up for a ride! The ladies get personal with their stories and how they’ve woven  their presonal upbringings + learnings have become infused with their professional personas.

The meat & potatoes of this episode is 42 minutes and after the outro, feel free to listen longer for actionable steps to build trust in the workplace [semi blooper situation].

Viki’s signposts for when she’s doing the work of trust:

• Feeling of safety when requesting support at work [instead of burdening self with doing it all!]
• Actively seeking out more opportunities → which means she’s not burnt out & boundaries are in place + working
• Curiosity is being encouraged
• Viewing mistakes as learnings, as opposed to failures

Actionable steps to building trust in the workplace:

• 2 ears, 1 mouth → [listen to hear] then, ask questions
• Be real about giving / receiving feedback
• Acknowledgement
• Empowerment fueled by trust
• Encouragement of professional development
• Emotional Intelligence
• BE TRUST FIRST and model it. Then it will be mirrored back

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In this episode

Bri & Vik discuss the ways they’ve come across unmonetized incentives, the ways they work or don’t, and how others can replicate them. Bri sets off with the 3 ingredient recipe for the philosophy she adheres to around how to maximize your desired incentive: 

• What’s the prompt? 
• What’s the action to be taken? 
• What’s the appropriate reward?

Bri suggests the capacity for higher accessibility for community members through micro-actions + commitments. Incentives get to add fun and powerful layers to your community design and health! She goes on to delineate her favorite unmonetized incentive of recognition, by determining them as either internal or external and the ways to use them best inclusively. They continue on with lived and curated examples that exemplify why symbolic incentives can speak volumes to your membership. The devil is in the details!

*Apologies for the background sound of plastic bags toward the end. Viki’s boyfriend seems to be exceedingly cavalier when she’s recording and he’s in the same room :) #intentionalShade

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In this episode

Bri & V take your time today to review their [as usual] philosophical high-level thoughts on memorable event creation, how to add fun & play into events, and particularly the ways getting back into real-life events can be curated in a way to ensure they stand out! Vik chats about the assets she uses to increase engagement in events, with things like prompted cards or having breakout rooms at the forefront of meetings. They discuss the idea of viewing oneself as a facilitator, in addition to a community builder or manager. They go even further by discussing the best ways to guide an experience: authoritatively, emphatically, or some combo of both. Bri even gets into an excellent metaphor bringing back former scenes of her horse riding life [it’s a good one!] that correlate beautifully into creating a recipe list for each event that you lead/are a collaborator of. And as usual, Bri & V somehow find themselves in the space of discussion on self-development and how that relates to them bringing their better and best selves to community leadership. *Stick to the end of the episode for a funny little surprise ;)

Event Creation Recipe Example:

• Marinade | CLARITY | Purpose of event, where are attendees starting with you and where do you want them to end with you
• Marinade | Aim for SYNERGY | What are the ways we can have intentional moments that serve the differences in people within this event?
• Protein | Incorporate RITUAL | What addition can we bring at the start, middle, or end that with bring people back to the point of this particular gathering [whether it be a community, an organization, a small moai, or etc]
• Spice | Instigate INTERACTIVITY & collaboration | Discern moments where you can add in facilitated prompts or exercises where members can connect around the purpose of the event to integrate their learnings
• Veggies | Be LIMBER & pliable as much as you can | The health of your event may rely on your ability to be flexible, adaptive, and limber in the face of unexpected shifts. Lean as far in as you can; take the whole bite!
• Spice | Add any & all the tools you can
• Veggies | Find the FUN
• Spice | Reroute to PRESENCE, sacred pause & thoughtfulness as time allows | If you start to feel like you’re talking a lot or it’s feeling stale as a leader, then it’s probably tenfold for your attendees. Take a sacred pause and get everyone to shake it off and bring it back. Maybe seats change, stretches happen, cameras are off for the 60s for a bio break, breakout groups switch up, etc.

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In this episode

Bri and V have been discussing the ways in which they’ve personally sought out educating themselves for the purposes of improving their community building lenses. As it happens, those conversations branched out toward professional acumen through the development of personal awareness. We discussed our strategies of learning, the ways we can be active lifelong learners without having to necessarily follow along the traditional academic route, as well as being the model of what you want to see.

We want to know what school of life skillsets you’ve found to be beneficial in your professional life [ie. transferable life skills], people/podcasts/books you found to be helpful in your personal development journeys and how they transferred to your professional acumen → share with the link above please!

*Acknowledging the oddly annoying mouse tracking sound; we will record better audio on a regular basis!

In this epsiode

Bri & V delve into rituals and their placement within the engagement strategy. They start off conversing about their own experiences with rituals and quickly get into bisecting the experiences of ritual into two separate yet equal views. They discuss harder topics around inclusivity and exclusivity as well as appropriation in relation to appreciation. Naturally, they move into the area of intention VS impact along with the learnings they found from their missteps. This conversation is a windy road emphasizing several metacognitive as well as experiential touchpoints that are typically tense to discuss with others and the ladies hope you find impact from their conversation.

Shownotes

In this episode:

Bri & V get into the discourse around community v social media management by first reviewing their initial forays into early social media, their profile names, and the origination of their nicknames. We delve into what constitutes a community role versus a social media marketing role as well as the language and jargon that encapsulate both arenas. We review the definitions of each, what those really mean, and how they can align with each other as opposed to being seen as synonymous with each other. We touched on which departments community could live within, expounding on the idea of what community-led means, and sharing examples of responsibilities listed in newer community management roles that are hard to discern through a community lens. We finish up with 3 questions one can ask in an interview to glean a better picture of how much of the purported role is actually social media management based. Get into it with us!

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In this episode:

Bri & Viki discuss the ways they became great friends with their best ones, how they got into community management work [Peace Corps woes + family farm upbringings], and the thread or patterns through which they realized community was the commonality. They review the superpower of being a generalist by looking through the lens of the Six Skillsets. They discuss their fails, or as Viki likes to reframe, areas where they won or learned. They wrap up discussing the vitality of doing the inner work as a community manager, in order to work better with their communities.

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In this episode:

Bri & Viki talk about their life journeys up to current as community consultants. Everything from backpacking + working at hostels to growing up on a 200yo family farm. You’ll hear about their shared experiences in van living lifestyles, travel, friendship creation, what they each look for within community, and their roundabout ways of getting into the community industry. The conversation is a bit of a whirlwind and is simply foreshadowing for how Bri & Viki engage with each other throughout this podcast! You’ve been warned!

• Please forgive Viki’s audio! It improves with each episode LOL

Shownotes: