Responsible leadership: Creating a culture that supports diverse, passionate communities
The following is an opinion piece on responsible leadership. It reflects on my years of experience as a community manager in tech, and personal opinions based on observations in other companies and across industries. The research articles I read are linked in line, and also in reference links at the close.
This is my personal opinion and does not reflect that of my employer.
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“Communication Leaders support fellow humans through times of transformation. Our fast-changing world requires us all to be lifelong-learners with self-awareness and humility. We believe listening, service, and a global mindset are key elements of effective leadership. We will co-create the new stories, whose shared meaning will inspire a better future.”
The skills needed to build a healthy, passionate, and engaged customer community are a unique combination of learned and intrinsic talents. It takes vision, compassion, and a deep understanding of your audience. You also need a sincere connection that makes you authentic as a peer, but with enough distance to evaluate your efforts with a critical eye.
The community members are the key stakeholders, and should feel like they are a part of something special and inclusive. In software B2B and B2C customer communities, members should feel like their thoughts, feedback, and their time is valued.
I believe that you will have success with a mission driven approach, and whether or not that mission is philanthropic or skills based, the formation of your community should have investment in and a commitment from all levels of leadership.
Building the Tableau Community
I’ve spent the last three and a half years supporting what I think is one of the best customer communities in tech. That’s a biased opinion, but I think what Tableau has done is truly special.
The community was founded by early adopters of Tableau who embraced a pay-it-forward approach to learning and sharing of information. Because they had been given the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills freely, they naturally started to share and teach others what they had learned, inspiring the next generation of data visualization leaders. These acts of service built relationships, which grew into respected friendships and strengthened social ties. It created a community.
In the 10+ years since its inception a team has grown to support these efforts. The team has brought together disparate programs designed “to help people see and understand data”, and supported community leaders as they launched their own initiatives to up-level their skills, to connect with their peers, and to further build community and personal brands.
In my role, and through my experience as a community management professional I have come across a number of companies that are building strong, vibrant communities. Many are getting it right, and it’s great to see. I have also had numerous conversations with recruiters and senior leaders all seeking insight as to how it’s done, wanting to create a similar culture rich in brand loyalty and a passionate fan base around their brand. I think it’s possible to replicate what Tableau has done, and I’m going to tell you how.
I believe that creating a vibrant, passionate, and engaged customer community comes down to building a foundation based in responsible leadership.
What is responsible leadership?
In her series, Exploring a New Understanding of Responsible Leadership, business researcher Anne Keränen writes,
“Responsible leadership emphasizes the meaning of stakeholders, and the different stakeholders that leaders need to be aware of and consider when making decisions.” The first article later states that, “the responsible leadership theory builds from the premise that sustainable development — a common societal good — is the target of responsible leadership.”
Though it may not have been intentional, responsible leadership, and an effort to include community members needs, was woven into the very foundation of the Tableau Community. The customers are the key stakeholders, and the product was designed to delight them. Additional key stakeholders included the Tableau developers and product managers who were building the platform, and marketing leaders, seeking out unique ways to engage with customers in a growing industry. All parties needs and goals were considered — as well as the potential societal good of the work they were doing and how it would help others.
Tableau employees, including senior leaders, built trusting relationships with early adopters. They gathered feedback on features and functions, listened and responded to complaints and frustrations, designed and implemented ambitious enhancements, and wove the customer needs and use cases into the product. These conversations happened at in person events, over email, and even in working sessions where developers and customers directly collaborated. This may seem strange to some, but many contributors came from an open source background where this style of sharing and collaborative software development has been normalized and so this approach was easily accepted.
Leaders both in the company and in the community approached working together with humility and emotional intelligence. They listened and they cared about each other’s needs, and they were invested in each others’ success. What further fueled this collaboration was that they were also creating something new and exciting! They were using new technology and innovative creative solutions to create a platform that was from very early on being used to support philanthropic efforts through the Tableau Foundation. The skills the customers were developing using Tableau were opening up new career opportunities, and helping them secure promotions. They were rewarded for their efforts in meaningful ways.
From the collective efforts of many came a product and a supportive, highly engaged, and passionate community that was committed to the shared mission of helping people see and understand data.
How responsible leadership can create a culture of belonging
The following excerpt is taken from the closing of Keränen’s three part series, Exploring a New Understanding of Responsible Leadership,
“From my research examples, it came down to the fundamental questioning of where business is going … The role of the community is known, but what I found to be resonating stronger, is how it can be a winning factor for the bigger picture of responsible leadership integration. Through community, it becomes easier to steer responsible leadership in the right direction. And this, feeds back to a tangible way of approaching everyday leadership.”
With a foundation built on responsible leadership, and a commitment to considering all stakeholder needs when making decisions, an investment in future leaders from diverse backgrounds, and a dedicated mission or purpose, Tableau built the foundation for a great community.
As the community grew and more members joined the pay-it-forward model thrived. It was passed on through years of feedback on “how they did it” from early thought-leaders, now looked to as guides. New members were encouraged to grow and develop their skills, and to be a part of something that felt unique and special.
The model for success used by Tableau to build a thriving customer community did not follow a traditional leadership approach. One that would feature a founder or prominent individual setting the direction or guiding the conversation based solely on their needs. Leaders emerged from all areas of the business to work collaboratively on an effort rooted in social good and individual capacity building.
Together they built relationships, strong ties, trusting friendships, and a thriving community — and a model that I hope to see replicated by more growing communities across the industry.
References:
- Exploring a New Understanding of Responsible Leadership — Part 1 — Anne Keränen is a management and international business researcher at the Martti Ahtisaari Institute, Oulu Business School, in Finland. — link
- Pay It Forward in Psychology Today online by Elizabeth Svoboda published July 1, 2006 — last reviewed on June 9, 2016
- A New Model for Ethical Leadership: Create more value for society. by Max H. Bazerman, Harvard Business Review Online, From the Magazine (September–October 2020)
- Seeking responsible leadership by Ellyn Shook and Peter Lacy at Accenture (online) — January 20, 2020
