Every strategic community of practice has a support team. This small group of people makes life easier for members. Etienne Wenger calls it “enhancing member value for time spent.” The support team organises meetings, links members, features new members on the community’s website and a myriad of other tasks that help the community to connect and grow.

Support team staff are special individuals. They should have a good reputation among the community members, be natural facilitators, understand the principles of community development and are liked and respected by their constituents. A successful support team member is defined as much by their character traits as their skills. Organisational hierarchies, however, tend to force people unsuitable for the role (wrong character traits) into delivering support team functions. While skills can be taught, the character traits are unlikely to change—you just need to find the right person. Being forced to accept a support team lacking essential character traits is a sure way to kill your community of practice efforts.

One of our clients, a large mining company, addressed this issue by forming its many community support teams by selecting the right people from the field into this headquarter function for a set period of time. These people are selected based on their natural networking capabilities, their reputation in the field and their ability to act as an effective catalyst for community effectiveness. Support team roles are sought after because they link people into new relationships at headquarters which helps to enhance their careers.

An alternative approach is to in-source the right people to serve the support team function. Anecdote is offering this service to its clients by ensuring it sources the best possible people (right attitude) to work closely with the organisation to foster its community efforts. Please contact us if you would like to know more about this new service.

Here are some the character traits a support team member should have: