Five Pillars of Community: Personal Value

Establishing the Pillars of Community within member-driven organizations is vital to their success.

Having a strong community encourages and activates the full potential of the communities you are trying to build and serve. How do we create strong communities?

As featured in Why Community Matters series with Kiki L’Italien of Association Chat

Join us over the next several weeks as we answer this question and feature each of the five pillars in JUNO’s Five Pillars of Community: Connecting Humans for Organizational Growth, available for download here.

It is vital that organizations understand and offer roles that not only fit each individual’s strengths, but offer positions that give Personal Value, our third community pillar. Organizations must understand what exactly they are requiring individuals to do and how to reward them accordingly. Pillar three is a big one because rewards must outweigh the requirements. Companies are always asking people of their time, money, relationships and efforts. If you really think about it, organizations are asking a lot from their employees, but that ask also needs to reflect the personal value for those individuals.  

Associations have to ask: “what reward are we giving our people that is outweighing the requirements we are asking of them?”  If companies cannot define the rewards in their business, those communities are facing a direction that they may not want to go. It is important to swing back around: ‘How is our vision doing? How can we build this up? Are we clear in our needs from our people, and what are their opportunities? Does this reward outweigh the requirements and, if not, how can we make that happen?’

One of the greatest rewards you can ever give someone is personal value. It is important to understand that personal value is just not a paycheck. Paychecks are easy to replace by simply looking for a new job. Personal value must come in different forms, such as letting someone know why they have been picked for the job or offering educational opportunities for their own growth. Going above and beyond for our employees and making them feel like they are a part of something far greater is an everlasting motivation over a nice paycheck. The reward of being needed is far greater than the reward of monetary things. Monetary is transactional and fleeting, but being needed is so much more powerful and fulfilling.

When a community member knows that they are valued for the survival and the success of the organization, they will always be exponentially more engaged. Emotional connection drives individuals, and simply letting community members know how well they are doing is unbelievably motivating. Establish messaging and marketing that explains the whys and the benefits rather than what is offered to them in return.

Once organizations establish vision and direction and understand what exactly they need from their members, they can then ask: “Are our rewards outweighing the requirements?” If so, that community is in a better position to grow, excel, and be more sustainable in the long run because they have people who know why they are there and why they matter.