Here are my Questions
1. How can I keep a community really valueable considering the fact that most times we have people more knowledgeable than me (who is the founder and leader) in the community
2. I often experience the stagnation of the community when I am not actively steering the wheel, like managing the operation. How can I move from here to a point where the Organization can operate autonomously?
Thanks in anticipation of your respond.
Thanks for your question. We hope that we have understood your situation and that the following suggestions are helpful.
1) Please keep in mind that it is important to recognize both your and the community’s expertise. One of the easiest ways to make community members feel undervalued is to NOT recognize their expertise and for you, or any leader, to take on the role as expert of everything. Recognizing your own limitations and overtly acknowledging how community members fill those gaps will help build trust, investment, and participation of community members. One idea is to have a meeting where you celebrate the expertise of every participant and how it can contribute to your community’s overall goals.
2) For community work to become sustainable, there must be invested stakeholders. This point works in conjunction with your first question. Acknowledge and promote the expertise of your community members and how they individually contribute to your goals. Through this effort, you may be able to identify other community members who can also take on leadership roles. Having diverse leadership representation (people who represent different parts of your community) will help keep things moving even when you aren’t able to actively steer the organization.
For both of your questions, reading through Chapters 7 and 13 of the Community Toolbox may be helpful:
Pay special attention to Section 8 on stakeholders. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/encouraging-involvement
Especially these sections:
- Section 1. Developing a Plan for Building Leadership
- Section 4. Building Teams: Broadening the Base for Leadership
- Section 7. Encouraging Leadership Development Across the Life Span
- Section 11. Collaborative Leadership
And this related toolkit: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/building-leadership
We hope you are able to identify and groom new leaders for your group who can ease your time and responsibilities and help the community grow!