Chapter 4: The Community as Members and Memberships

This chapter focuses on individual members’ roles in the community component. It speaks to the importance of engaging members to create the community component. The authors stress the importance of recognizing and supporting members’ communication and learning styles, valuing the individual cultures they bring, and recognizing the challenges of multi-demographic communities. The authors also reassure readers that the ebb and flow of members to and from the community is natural. The chapter speaks to the challenges of building a shared purpose and goals among individuals.

In the traditional community of practice (CoP) literature, members of a CoP are assumed to be homogeneous because of the context in which they come together. It is a reasonable assumption when we focus our attention on organizational communities. This assumption that all the trees in the forest are the same may not hold once we look beyond the organization. Members may come to a CoP because they have a particular interest or goal in common. However, they also bring diverse attributes and characteristics to that community. It is often necessary to negotiate these differences to create a community membership that can collaborate, develop a joint vision and a shared repertoire, and learn together. We know from the literature on teamwork that diverse teams start more slowly but produce more effective outcomes. Similarly, it is essential to understand what it means to form a membership – to create a sense of belonging and purpose with other members. The authors aim to address some gaps in the traditional literature to create more cohesive and effective communities.