Coworking Space Managers: The spark that sets the community on fire!
Anyone who has been involved in the coworking movement will be aware that the most important value for success is the community that is created, grows and collaborates within the space. On other occasions I have talked about my personal experience as a coworker or the different ways you can interact or collaborate.
A united and active community ends up generating its own relationships, activities, etc., which are usually promoted by space managers, especially at the beginning.
During recent years, I have been lucky enough to be in contact with loads of space managers through our work on Nexudus Spaces, attending conferences, or editing ZonaCoworking, the leading Spanish publication about coworking. This has allowed me to find out more about their day-to-day goings-on.
Although everyone has their own opinion, there are some characteristics that make a space manager a good community catalyst, which are:
- They strongly believe in coworking: A coworking space promoter is like a member of a start-up before they launch a new app, reeling off an elevator pitch on the advantages of coworking to anyone they come across, their friends, family, neighbours, the baker, the greengrocer, etc. A few years ago, the typical answer would be "CO-what?", but as the years go by, more and more people are familiar with the term coworking.
- They will lead the way: "We generate a trust-based, not authority-based leadership," is how África explains it, one of Arroelo's space managers, and this could be applied to many other managers. Generating trust is something that requires a lot of time and hard work. Miguel Calero speaks about managing expectations, "whenever a new coworker comes to coSfera, we try to explain to them that even though our statistics show that 90% of members end up collaborating together on projects, this is based on relationships of trust and for this to happen, people must invest time in building them."
- They take the time to get to know their community: Understanding the expectations, projects and needs of the people that form part of the community is really important to generate interactions between professionals, which could take their relationships to another level.
- They share knowledge and experiences with managers from other spaces: One of the coworking movement's main characteristics is its community openness. In addition to the shared knowledge that exists on WikiCoworking or coworking blogs, there is also a Coworking Google Group where questions are usually answered immediately by the community.
- And on top of everything, they work hard every day to make sure that the coworkers are comfortable in their space: Just like any other service, no coworking space is always perfect. There may be problems with the Wi-Fi, the temperature, noise, members that don't fit in with the community, dirty mugs in the sink, invoices to send, etc. A manager's to-do list is never-ending, but they work every day to make sure their coworking space is a pleasant place to work. Any collaboration by the community in this mission is considered welcome.
Every manager or group of managers undoubtedly has their own personality, which in most cases is reflected in the space. One of the most common challenges that managers are faced with when the space expands is effectively transferring the "know-how" without losing what makes the experience in the space something special for the coworkers.
We would love to know your experience. What do you think about these points? What are the main difficulties you face on a daily basis? How do you get around them?
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