Connections with a purpose: conventional communities work because members share expectations and goals, and strive together to create a better future. With the right leadership and management, online communities can do the same thing.

Communities are interdependent relationships that exist for a purpose. They flourish when they deal effectively with issues. Twenty years ago, the IABC Research Foundation initiated a study that concluded that successful communication was built on relationships and was achieved through two-way symmetrical communication. Today, online social networking offers new opportunities to build relationships, and these virtual communities are changing how we tackle chronic communication issues such as leadership and trust. We are seeing a new role for communicators within these online communities. That changes how we view and conduct our business of relationship building.

In the Western world in the latter half of the 20th century, there were unprecedented declines in citizen participation in almost all social organizations, from clubs and associations to political parties. Communities in decline were attributed to declines in social connectivity. People became spectators of life, not participants.

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As we entered the 21st century, we witnessed the emergence of a new type of community: the virtual community, where networks were formed and relationships grew. In less than 10 years, membership in social networking sires has grown to millions, larger than the population of many countries. We can attribute this growth to the power of communication and the relationships it fosters. As professional communicators, we are learning what works and what does not as we watch communities appear and disappear online. With these lessons, we are uniquely positioned to lead the way.

Connecting to create a better future

Virtual communities are no different from the communities our parents participated in. They are developed on the same principles as conventional communities, and they work because members share expectations and common goals. Most communities consist of smaller groups of people who collaborate around common areas of interest and link to the larger group's purpose. With the right structure, purposeful communities are about something members care about.

When communities come together, individuals have a sense of connection, and they create a future that is different from the past. Online communities do the same thing: They connect people with a purpose. The only thing that has changed is the mechanism and its universal availability, accessibility and independence from geographic and perhaps economic constraints. The Internet has created an environment within which new communities are born and people connect to create a better future.

Let's look at a couple of examples of what can happen today that could not have happened a few years ago. Kiva.org is a site that allows you to lend money to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world, empowering people to lift themselves out of poverty. Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty; it constitutes a community that has a specific purpose and seeks to create a better future. This is a community that can only exist online. Its list of supporters reads like a who's who of the corporate world, but it succeeds because of individuals--its field partners donate amounts ranging from US$25 to millions of dollars. There is a place for everyone who wants to link to the purpose.

Closer to a communicator's professional heart is Spot.Us. This is an open source project that pioneers "community-funded reporting." Through Spot.Us, you and I can commission journalists to investigate important and perhaps overlooked stories. Anyone can create a news "tip" about an important topic they think should be reported on. This is often related to the question "What are you passionate about?" Spot.Us works only with freelancers. It cannot support staff writers. This community brings together two disparate groups: those with a story to tell and those who want to tell a story well. Blend a common purpose with interconnection and a new community is born.

Leaders vs. managers

Spot.Us was founded by a 23-year-old entrepreneur named David Cohn. Cohn wanted to make sure journalism survives the death of so many of its institutions, so his web site "allows an individual or group to take control of news by sharing the cost to commission freelance journalists." Cohn provided the leadership that connected his followers while at the same time enabling those followers to lead themselves. He helps others set up similar communities around the world. His is an example of "servant leadership" as opposed to "command-and-control leadership."

Communities are best built with servant leaders who demonstrate the characteristics described by Larry C. Spears, an expert on the topic and the president and CEO of the Larry C. Spears Center for Servant-Leadership in Indianapolis, Indiana. Servant leaders listen, are empathetic and dream great dreams. These leaders have foresight and commitment to the growth of people.

This, we believe, is the leadership style that builds thriving online communities.

While leadership enables communities to thrive, good management is what makes an online community function. The management of an online community involves a process to accomplish community goals. An online community manager plans, directs, organizes and evaluates to ensure the community can connect and collaborate. The manager also tracks goal attainment.

So what role should a communicator play in the online community? The online community can thrive only if the communication among its members is effective. Its strengths lie in the collaborative and sharing nature of the community as it seeks to achieve its purpose. This suggests that it is the conversations, not the speeches, that feed the interconnectedness of the community--in other words, two-way symmetrical communication. This, the IABC Research Foundation study says, results in the relationships that are a prerequisite for an online community to exist, which would indicate that the optimal role of the communicator is one of a manager building relationships, with communication strategies that achieve a purpose or deal with issues.

Can and should the communicator also assume the role of leader? Yes, if he or she is the person who is dreaming the dreams and creating the common areas of interest that serve the purposes of the community. But what is mission-critical is the communicator as manager.

Solving communication issues

What are the implications of this evolving role for the communicator in a world of online communities? Consider two chronic problems that communicators face: leadership and trust. Many communicators have floundered seeking solutions to perennial concerns that persistently haunt our organizations--that of inconsistent, confusing and/or absent leadership at all levels, and the loss of public and employee trust and confidence. Trust weakens with each wave of negative publicity and debate about dishonesty, scandal and outrage.

Let's look at the internal communication data describing these issues that online community strategies can address. TWI Surveys has maintained a data bank using survey data collected from organizations for the past 12 years. The data cumulatively represents the views of hundreds of thousands of employees in organizations across Canada and the U.S. As each survey is completed, we add the data to the bank and recalculate the long-term averages. From 1997 to 2009, two findings are consistently lower than most CEOs and communicators want to see. They are:

1. Organizational trust as reflected by employees' sense of openness and willingness to share (safe to say what you think) and the leadership modeling seen (or not seen) by employees. Just less than half of all employees feel favorably about these concerns.

For servant leadership to prevail, a sense of stewardship (trust), listening and transparency must be shared across the organization. 2. Clear direction from leadership--the sense of purpose, direction and conceptualization of the dream is shared throughout the organization, and employees feel the organization's concern for their well-being. Less than half of employees surveyed responded favorably to these items.

For servant leadership to prevail, employees must feel a sense of leadership empathy and a shared confidence in the plans and expectations of a better future.

This survey data provides a finite place to start in dealing with organizations where leadership and trust issues exist. The communicator has a specific agenda to address, but the communication strategies will focus on conversations, not dissemination and broadcasting. Dealing with these issues within online communities requires servant leadership. The communication management tasks involve monitoring and tracking online conversations, facilitating participation in those conversations, coaching, articulating messages and strategy, and evaluating outcomes and impact. The communicator's role is to support leaders as they express the dream and the purpose of the community.

An immediate agenda is to generate participation in dialogue about plans and priorities. Capitalize on the opportunities provided by the social networking tools available. The tools do not create or maintain communities; behaviors do.

Author Peter Block makes two points for leaders, communicators and followers:

"To create something new, we have to invert our thinking. Followers create leaders. Students create teachers."

"If you want a future that is distinct from the past, you have to be with people you aren't used to being with and have conversations that you are not used to having."

Our professional lives are changing in ways we have yet to appreciate, and these changes are inevitable. But one thing will not change: Successful communication is still based on the relationships we create and build.

by Ryan Williams and Tudor Williams, ABC, IABC Fellow

Tudor Williams, ABC, IABC Fellow, is principal of twisurveys, an organizational research and strategy development company specializing in employee, association member and customer research, in Delta, British Columbia.

Ryan Williams is president and research director of twisurveys, specializing in organizational and behavioral research.