*This entry is a continuation of 3 Role Types: Observer.
Thus far we have established that the foundational roles of someone looking to join a community are:
- Observer role.
- Participant role.
- Contributor role.
Each role comes with its own context, expectations and appropriate actions; and if we can make those easy to understand, follow and execute it makes creating a wonderful experience more likely.
Let’s dive a bit deeper into the Participant role.
This roles purpose is to answer the questions: can I trust them and do I belong here?
After we have the green light that there is no immanent threat, the best way of verifying trust and belonging is through experience.
Participation is the best way of experiencing.
In this web3 community context participation is where the member gets more value from engaging in an activity than the community gets from the members participation. For this ratio to be successful a few things must happen first.
- Doing the Strategic Empathetic work of understanding your ideal member’s intent.
- The discord environment must be structured to reflect those intents.
- Have the human infrastructure to support that environment.
The next most important element is showing up as our best selves consistently. Showing up consistently in a way that cultivates the ideal culture for the community will give ideal members the signal that we are the real deal.
This is not easy, and often where we see member experience design slip. It’s unlikely that they would they choose to participate with their energy, time, skills, context and ideas if the signals of culture for forward motion (us) don’t show up.
When the right context for participations has been designed, the culture cultivators show up consistently and we’ve made it it easy for the members to participate, we can let go.
It is now up to our ideal members to decide: are we the real deal and do they belong? Can they trust us with their time, energy, skills, contacts and ideas?
Once they have chosen to participate, want to stick around and are getting exactly what they need from the community, we have the opportunity to reveal the door called contribution.
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