We started Mozilla community Rajasthan aka MCR, out of nothing, few of us met and our journey started, In initial days it was all about self learning and peer coaching, all of us focused on self development to have a strong team.
We coached people to enhance their skill set. I focused mainly on Javascript.
I can totally relate to 3 levels of listening paradigm when I look back.
- When we were few, I invested in self development, my decisions revolved around what I would learn, how it would impact me.
- When we went to colleges for sessions, I was more inclined to listen to students out there, moreover I focused on few students who were a bit more enthusiastic, and listened to them, their plan, their expectations, that’s how I recruited more people in our team
- When we had decent numbers, challenge was to keep everyone together, not every one was vocal enough, I needed to read between lines in the conversation we had and made sure that the other person feel that he was being listened to.
We had small meetings (offline and online) and we followed something similar to GROW. We used to push new members to give sessions on their topics of expertise, we sat and discuss the approach, I would ask them to write their action plan, their strategy, followups for the event. Then I review that and added/modified if something was needed from my side. By the end of meeting we had a clear plan and confident speaker for the event.
Once event was done I would ask new speakers to write down what they feel went good and what they can do better in next event. If I attended the event, I would note the positives and negatives, else I would try to deduce them from the excerpt from their blogs or their writings. I always believe feedback is for both sides, I would learn new things from their positives and appreciate it then also try to give them ideas how to overcome their negatives. One thing I learned was - one of the speaker said this to push audience to ask questions
"If internet explorer isn’t afraid to ask if it can be your default browser, what stops you to ask your questions!"
Mozilla Community Rajasthan is one of the biggest regional community in Indian subcontinent, I am proud to be part of the team who started the community and led it to where it is today.