CommunicationRole

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Inter and intra-organizational communication is facilitated by a number of roles. Over time, people have discovered a frequently occuring set of such roles:

CommunicationStar?s have many links to other people; they are well-connected. One may be an internal communication star, useful when one needs advice or help within a group or organization, or an external communication star (in effect, a multi-BoundarySpanner?), useful when important services are required outside the group. These are the living rolodexes that one goes to when you don't know where to find information, but they might know someone who might know someone. In other words, they are the sources in the SocialNetwork?.

CentralFigures emerge in many communities. These are the small number of people, often a single person, that represents the entire group, both internally and externally to others. This person's functional role is to be the uber-CommunicationStar?. They connect all the disparate groups together into a larger movement or community.

LocalExpert?s are the knowledgable people in a group who provide the first line of help when one needs advice for work-related or topic-related problems. They are the sinks in the SocialNetwork? (i.e. everyone wants to know them). Bad local experts manifest as KnowItAlls.

GateKeeper?s facilitate external information into the group. They read a lot, attend conferences, take workshops, and otherwise are ravenous for new information. They function as the trend scanners for the group, the "heads up" people. Based on their broad scanning, they introduce information occasionally they consider useful for the group.

BoundarySpanner?s transfer knowledge across organizational boundaries. They are needed when groups are highly specialized and thus each of their own vocabulary. Consequently, they are good at translating concepts from one jargon into the other so that people inside the group can understand outside information on their own terms, and thus they hopefully might accept it, and vice versa to external groups. See GluePeople.

EarlyAdopter?s follow the Theory of Diffusion of Information. They are willing and confident to take on new innovations or technology because they enjoy taking risks for the thrill of the new. As such, they serve to take on the full risk themselves of trying out a new idea, whilst providing the feedback others need to evaluate whether they want to adopt this idea themselves. However, others should be wary that EarlyAdopter?s evaluation of new ideas may be skewed by the HaloEffect? of their newness rather than their actual merit.

An InvisibleCollege? was famously discovered in academic research. The study found that only a small, well-defined core group account for most (i.e. at least half) of all research published in a given field. In fact, roughly the square root of the number of participants in that field form this core. These academics cite each other, keep in close touch with each other, share publications, and collaborate. However, other research has shown that while one does not cite their friends, one often cites their friends' friends.

SocialWorker?s value people and personal relationships as humanity's greatest resource (see also Synergy). As such, they seek to cultivate and maintain strong relationships both within and between communities, and often help mediate conflicts when they arise. SocialWorker?s always attempt to ModelDesiredBehavior and AssumeGoodFaith, making them exemplary representatives of their communities elswhere in both CyberSpace and MeatSpace, albeit in a formal or informal capacity.

A CommunnityOrganizer? is...

Effective Founders are many of these simultaneously, although that is not necessary. One need only be good at building a SocialNetwork? and setting the agenda to steer this network to some useful end. Further, one should target the CommunicationStar?s as it is not who you know, but who who-you-know knows. It's more efficient to know many stars than it is to be a star.

Many of these roles (gate keeper, boundary spanner, communication star, even early adopter) are fulfilled by the ResourceInstigator? personality: [1]

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CommunicationRole

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