Your Coaching Community Is A Superorganism

In ‘The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr identifies a question that runs unconsciously in every human brain when they enter a new social space:

“Who do I have to be in this superorganism to gain status?”

It’s not something that we consciously ask.

We don’t think about joining the gym talking it over with our partner in the kitchen and ask, ‘Is it going to work for me, or will I not know who I need to be in that superorganism to gain status?’

But it is a question that’s running in the background constantly with other questions like what behaviour gets rewarded here, what gets punished, who has status and how did they get it, what do I need to do, say or become to belong here.

We often think that status is about vanity when actually it’s part of our survival programming. For most of human history, being expelled from the group meant dying. So we are wired to find and follow the rules of the group. The problem is most groups, particularly most coaching communities, never actually make the rules visible.

Lots of coaches say that they have a community. Actually, what they do is they have a WhatsApp group chat or a Facebook group. A community is more than a collection of people’s phone numbers.

If you want to run a successful community, know that every new member who joins is running the question, what do I have to be here?

They’re going through old messages and watching who gets recognised, who gets ignored, what are the unwritten rules, what are the things that we all joke and laugh about, and if they can’t find them? Three things happen:

1. They disengage. The status game is too unclear, so they stop playing. They might lurk, they don’t post, they don’t attend events, they don’t participate, and eventually they quietly leave, and you wonder why they weren’t a good fit for what you did.

2. They create their own rules In the absence of a clear set of rules, people will invent their own. They might start competing on the wrong metrics to try and show off, they might dominate conversations, seek attention, bring it all back to them, and you end up with a culture that you didn’t actually design.

3. They perform instead of participating When people don’t know what genuine engagement looks like, they pretend. They post what they think you want to see. They ask questions that sound good but aren’t their actual questions. And they perform membership of the group rather than actually feeling like they are members.

In all three cases, the community suffers. And the coach usually blames the members.

‘They just weren’t engaged.’ ‘Some people don’t want to do the work.’ ‘Community isn’t for everyone.’

Maybe.

Or maybe you just didn’t tell them the rules.