I’ve been managing the EMC Proven Professional Community and the outlying social media ecosystem we’ve created for the community for a little over six months now. Maybe in another post I’ll talk more about what we are calling the social media “ecosystem”, but today I want to talk a little about our community.

I’m so lucky to be managing this community, because the “community” already exists. Everyone who is an EMC Proven Professional holds an EMC Proven Professional certification. The profile of someone who would hold this certification is someone who is very technical, very experienced, this person is probably running the IT systems power your credit card data, your hospital, your bank, your university, your business. They are smart, driven, and what most folks would consider to be hard core geeks. These folks already have a community – I was lucky enough to be able to be one of the people building an online community to make things easier for the community to interact online.

One other thing – I hold EMC Proven Professional certifications. I’ve worked in data center situations supporting SANs and 3 tier web applications. I’m a geek. In other words, I’m an insider.

What is an insider

From a sociological, ethnocentric viewpoint, an insider is someone who belongs to a group. To be an insider you must be fluent in the group’s language, customs, culture, rituals, and history. Because of your fluency with these things, you are accepted as an insider to the group.

What is an outsider?

An outsider is someone who is not fluent with all of those things. When I listen to the frustration of my #lrnchat (education) friends about IT, it is obvious to me that they are outsiders to the IT world. And IT are outsiders to the learning world – the business they support.

What is a visitor?

A visitor is middle ground. They know enough to know that they are not an insider. But they may have business to conduct with a community so being a complete outsider is not really an option. So they learn enough of the language and the culture to order a beer and hang out in a bar. They are ok with not pretending to be an insider, and the insiders accept them because of this.

What does this mean for community?

In my case, I straddle the technical community that I am a member of with the education community. I think EMC does it right – the people developing education are all members of the technical community that makes up our audience. That’s right – the people who write EMC instruction are SMEs (scandalous I know!!)

But now because I’m working more and more with marketing people because of the social media work I do, I’m finding myself teaching my new team mates how to become visitors to our technical world. Techies, just for the record – marketers are worried that they sound like marketers for you (at least the good ones worry!).

After my visit to Montreal this weekend I have a new appreciation for how they feel. I had to get gas – and I USED to be fluent in French (long long ago…). I was so nervous and felt so stupid trying to speak French. I know I sounded ridiculous – and probably like a Southern hick. I was grateful when I was in Tim Horton’s that the teen behind the counter started speaking English.

I was a total outsider. I knew it. But I tried to speak the language – and that opened the door for me to step up to visitor status. And this is the point for communities:

• Number one – know your audience. Know the community you serve – research their language, their customs, their rituals.
• Number two – try to speak their language. Don’t pretend to be an insider though, that is the easiest way to be branded an outsider. Respect the language and culture. Acknowledge the fact that you may never be an insider. That way the community will ask you for the rest of your order in your native language.

Never be an outsider – try to get to visitor status. Insiders, help new people that try to learn become fluent enough in your language and cultures to communicate – its the only way to open your community to new ideas. And people trying to become visitors – realize no one wants to be preached to, work hard to be something other than an outsider.

Lots of ways I’m thinking of branching this conversation…..the activist in my has lots of stories to tell.

I have blogged about my experiences at the Simmons School of Management Leadership Conference. One session had me boiling inside – and they didn’t even have a Q&A session! I thought I’d write a bit about the session that bothered me, and why it bothered me, as the themes are very important in a connected world.

The session was a Leadership Seminar led by Annie McKee. Many of the first statements made were very good. For example: we are living in a time of profound changes that are reshaping the social structures around us. And these shifts are causing the basic systems that had been in place to crumble as they become irrelevant.

Ok, so far I could agree with it all.

Then the conversation started to focus on what makes a  good  leader. Statements such as “leaders touch our hearts” and “good leaders move us as complete human beings, they move our mind, body, heart, and spirit”. Hmm, ok, maybe I can buy that.

But then things were said that fully engaged my resident oppositional attitude:

Humans are good at reading social cues

OK, that is just not true. EVERYONE is not good at reading social cues. For instance, adults on the Autism spectrum may not be able to read social cues. Plus, social cues are tied to culture. If you work in a global organization, you may be good at reading the social cues from your own culture, but if you are on the other side of the world working — there is a chance you miss certain signals because they aren’t relevant in your culture.

But, not everyone is as sensitive to this topic as me, so I kept listening. Then I heard this:

Good leaders know how to draw people to them, and how to use and manage emotion in a positive way

OK, so good leaders can manage their emotions, use emotions to influence others, and are good at reading social cues. Basically they can’t have any sort of Executive Functioning Deficit. The things listed as signs of good leaders are the opposites of symptoms of many disabilities.

Then the conversation switched to the discussion of mirror neurons:

Mirror nuerons are what make us physiologically attuned to pick up social cues

Well that is not exactly what mirror neurons do. Marco Iacoboni, the neuroscientist best known for his work on mirror neurons, had this to say about the hype:

I think there are two key points to keep in mind. The first one is the one we started with: mirror neurons are brain cells specialized for actions. They are obviously critical cells for social interactions but they can’t explain non-social cognition. The second point to keep in mind is that every brain cell and every neural system does not operate in a vacuum. Everything in the brain is interconnected, so that the activity of each cell reflects the dynamic interactions with other brain cells and other neural systems.

So mirror neurons have a specific specialized purpose for interpreting actions, not non-social cognition. Of course the first thing I thought when these neurons were mentioned was: what about people on the spectrum? Are their mirror neurons broken?

The final straw in the presentation was this statement:

If you lead, how do you make emotions contagious across the airwaves?

This is just crazy. You can’t just send emotion over the airwaves, you have to be sure you are transmitting over a frequency that can be picked up by everyone you are supposed to be leading. So this means adjusting that frequency so that people on the autism spectrum, people from all cultures, countries, and creeds are able to receive the signal and decipher it.

This presentation cut to my core for several reasons:

• My daughter is on the spectrum. I would never her want to be at a professional conference where someone said she was “broken”, or even “dangerous”
• I think culture is vital to innovation. Perhaps this presentation would work if we had a pan-global identity – but we don’t. We have to work at making our intentions known, and cutting other people slack when they don’t “get” us right away.

I’m more convinced than ever that there is a great need to educate people about what it means to be on the autism spectrum, and how by just changing our views of “broken” and “dangerous” can enable very smart, focused, creative people to contribute even more to our society.

That is one way I hope to show leadership in the future.

Classes started for the Spring semester. One of the classes I am taking is Inquiry and Measurement. Its about the research methods & resources used to conduct good scientific investigations, and how to measure those findings (broadly paraphrasing the syllabus).

One of the books for the project is Researching Real-World Problems: A Guide to Methods of Inquiry by ZIna O’Leary. The first chapter had an interesting diagram of hierarchy of change that made me think of my ongoing thread about using blogging for reflective learning.

Here’s the diagram:

O’Leary says

the process of conducting research is in itself a learning journey that should have an impact on the researcher; conducting research is professional development.

As you go up the hierarchy, research impacts practice, then programmes, and finally policy. All of the steps are encompassed by culture. So as research affects each of these steps, it also has an impact on the organization’s culture.

Is it possible that blogging is one way to research for professional development? As you get better at finding and reflecting on the information you find researching blog posts, you can then start affecting change up this hierarchy of change. O’Leary says conducting research at the professional development stage provides the following benefits to the individual:

• An opportunity to engage in problem based learning
• An opportunity to engage in action learning
• Enhance communication skills
• Develop Research Skills
• Produce new knowledge

Wouldn’t you say that blogging also provides all of those opportunities to people? So can blogging also work its way up that hierarchy of change, including to the point that it changes an organization’s culture?