At the heart of our communications, what we intend to do is connect each other to our passion, compassion and self. As weavers, we are natural givers yet we are empowered to give on behalf of our network, community or organization, it’s a great career. In fact, we don’t give out of fear, guilt, shame or a desire to gain – but rather that is our passion, our nature. If your members feel safe, appreciated, respected and important through your authentic conversations, they will stay, get engaged and be loyal.
Compassionate communications start with individuals that have been trained to understand different approaches and styles. You can train community weavers around communication templates, techniques and methods in order to hold authentic conversation and speak and act out of compassion.
Community weavers are natural observers, they sense, they listen and translate this information into a possibility, which is in the air that they consider and wait for the opportunity to present itself so that they can request of a member something that will ultimately benefit not only the member, but more importantly, the community itself.
I’ve been weaving for a while, and what I often find the most interesting is this idea or sense that we are paid to complete calls, complete cases or convert memberships. It’s the ROI chase. It becomes mission impossible really if we don’t allow our community weavers to give of themselves and express themselves in a way that doesn’t necessarily equate to quantity or ROI. Rather – we are authentic in our approach with individuals and often through being empowered, we are able to not just ‘give’ or ‘complete calls’ but actually increase engagement through requesting our members to be accountable for what they say they want in being a member of a community. If a customer is frustrated with service that they have received, we ask of them to make sure that the next interaction with a client they are calm and share their feelings and request of the agent that they are respectful of their needs and perhaps even ask them to reiterate back what they heard. I often ask members of a network to ‘give’ or ‘do’ something to ‘give’ in return to the network. Ask them to host an informal luncheon, a coffee, welcome a new member, etc.
Being compassionate, authentic and honest is cornerstone to any successful relationship. We don’t want a member to feel like our interaction is “staged” or “temporary”, but rather are setting the stage for a solid beginning foundation of great possibilities. Because at the end of the day, this notion of compassion is community and connection.
