Introducing Community Management

Training
 Be able to explain and give
examples of the types of training
that can be offered within an
organization.
Learning Objective
 Technical or Technology Training
• Technical training is a type of training meant to teach the new employee the technological
aspects of the job.
• In a retail environment, technical training might include teaching someone how to use the
computer system to ring up customers.
• In a sales position, it might include showing someone how to use the customer relationship
management (CRM) system to find new prospects.
• In a consulting business, technical training might be used so the consultant knows how to use
the system to input the number of hours that should be charged to a client.
• In a restaurant, the server needs to be trained on how to use the system to process orders.
Let’s assume your company has decided to switch to the newest version of Microsoft Office.
This might require some technical training of the entire company to ensure everyone uses the
technology effectively.
• Technical training is often performed in-house, but it can also be administered externally.
 Quality Training
• .Quality training refers to familiarizing employees with the means of preventing,
detecting, and eliminating non-quality items, usually in an organization that produces
a product.
• In a world where quality can set your business apart from competitors, this type of
training provides employees with the knowledge to recognize products that are not
up to quality standards and teaches them what to do in this scenario.
• Numerous organizations, such as the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO), measure quality based on a number of metrics. This organization provides the
stamp of quality approval for companies producing tangible products. ISO has
developed quality standards for almost every field imaginable, not only considering
product quality but also certifying companies in environmental management quality.
 Quality Training
• ISO9000 is the set of standards for quality management, while ISO14000 is the set
of standards for environmental management.
• ISO has developed 18,000 standards over the last 60 years1. With the increase in
globalization, these international quality standards are more important than ever for
business development. Some companies, like 3M (QAI, 2011), choose to offer ISO
training as external online training, employing companies such as QAI to deliver the
training both online and in classrooms to employees.
• Training employees on quality standards, including ISO standards, can give them a
competitive advantage. It can result in cost savings in production as well as provide
an edge in marketing of the quality-controlled products. Some quality training can
happen in-house, but organizations such as ISO also perform external training.
 Skills Training
• Skills training, the third type of training, includes proficiencies needed
to actually perform the job.
• For example, an administrative assistant might be trained in how to
answer the phone, while a salesperson at Best Buy might be trained in
assessment of customer needs and on how to offer the customer
information to make a buying decision.
• Think of skills training as the things you actually need to know to
perform your job. A cashier needs to know not only the technology to
ring someone up but what to do if something is priced wrong. Most of
the time, skills training is given in-house and can include the use of a
mentor.
 Soft Skills Training
• Soft skills refer to personality traits, social graces, communication, and personal habits that are used to
characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills might include how to answer the phone or how
to be friendly and welcoming to customers. It could include sexual harassment training and ethics
training. In some jobs, necessary soft skills might include how to motivate others, maintain small talk,
and establish rapport.
• In a retail or restaurant environment, soft skills are used in every interaction with customers and are a
key component of the customer experience. In fact, according to a Computerworld magazine survey,
executives say there is an increasing need for people who have not only the skills and technical skills
to do a job but also the necessary soft skills, such as strong listening and communication abilities
(Hoffman, 2007). Many problems in organizations are due to a lack of soft skills, or interpersonal
skills, not by problems with the business itself. As a result, HR and managers should work together to
strengthen these employee skills. Soft skills training can be administered either in-house or externally.
 Professional Training and Legal Training
• Professional training is a type of training required to be up to
date in one’s own professional field. For example, tax laws
change often, and as a result, an accountant for H&R Block
must receive yearly professional training on new tax codes
(Silkey, 2010). Lawyers need professional training as laws
change. A personal fitness trainer will undergo yearly
certifications to stay up to date in new fitness and nutrition
information.
 Team Training
• The goal of team training is to develop cohesiveness among team members, allowing them to get to know each
other and facilitate relationship building. We can define team training as a process that empowers teams to
improve decision making, problem solving, and team-development skills to achieve business results. Often this
type of training can occur after an organization has been restructured and new people are working together or
perhaps after a merger or acquisition. Some reasons for team training include the following:
• Improving communication
• Making the workplace more enjoyable
• Motivating a team
• Getting to know each other
• Getting everyone “onto the same page,” including goal setting
• Teaching the team self-regulation strategies
• Helping participants to learn more about themselves (strengths and weaknesses)
• Identifying and utilizing the strengths of team members
• Improving team productivity
• Practicing effective collaboration with team members
 Managerial Training
• After someone has spent time with an organization, they might be
identified as a candidate for promotion. When this occurs, managerial
training would occur. Topics might include those from our soft skills
section, such as how to motivate and delegate, while others may be
technical in nature. For example, if management uses a particular
computer system for scheduling, the manager candidate might be
technically trained. Some managerial training might be performed
in-house while other training, such as leadership skills, might be
performed externally.
 Safety Training
• Safety training is a type of training that occurs to ensure employees are protected
from injuries caused by work-related accidents. Safety training is especially
important for organizations that use chemicals or other types of hazardous materials
in their production. Safety training can also include evacuation plans, fire drills, and
workplace violence procedures. Safety training can also include the following:
• Eye safety
• First aid
• Food service safety
• Hearing protection
• Asbestos
• Construction safety
• Hazmat safety
Describe community education
and training in the context of
community development
Learning Objective
Why Management Training for Communities?
• In organizations (corporations, profit enterprises, non profit agencies, clubs),
management training results in far more than some skills transferred to individuals; the
organization itself becomes stronger, more effective and purposeful in its goals,
methods, and identity (more organized).
• With appropriate management training, so too can communities. Management training,
along with social animation (community participation promotion), empowers communities.
• Sustainable development, the empowerment of low income and disenfranchised groups
and categories of people in urban and rural communities and neighborhoods, in the
provision and maintenance of human settlement facilities and services, is the broad,
overall goal of a community management programme.
• The primary methodology is training, but not training in the orthodox sense of running a
training institute to teach skills to trainees who then each leave with a specific set of
techniques. This is training, through individuals to be sure, but not only for those
individuals but for the empowerment and increased effectiveness (in self development)
of their communities.
 Not "Once-And-For-All" Training
• The training itself is part of a process of empowering communities, not just
skill acquisition for trainees. That process takes time; all community work is
time consuming.
• Trainees need ongoing support plus a forum to share experiences with each
other and produce solutions to problems encountered in the field. Thus the
training must be ongoing, and continually revised to meet changing conditions in
the target communities and among the trainees.
• Community workers of all varieties need to be frequently revitalized. To combat
discouragement that they may acquire while they work among their target
groups and communities, they should routinely come together with colleagues
doing community work elsewhere, to share ideas and encourage each other.
• As well as learning new skills, they can share information and encouragement in
the context of ongoing training. Training should not be "once-and-for-all."
 Training as Organizing
• The notion of training that goes beyond the orthodox concept of
transfer of skills will be explained. This is training as
empowerment, or capacity building, of the group as a whole,
which transcends the abilities of the individuals in that group.
Essentially, this means using the training sessions for organizing.
See Organizing.
• Organizing includes: (1) creating new organizations where none
existed before, or (2) reorganizing currently existing organizations.
• There are two kinds of organizing that may overlap: (1) organizing
for decision making, and (2) organizing for more effective action.
Assessing the Community Situation
 Community
Gathering; • The community should not just be
Raising Awareness: given resources; that
creates dependency upon outside
donations. It should be given
encouragement and advice how to
obtain resources. This includes
provision of management
training aimed
at strengthening the ability of
residents to take decisions, identify
resources, and meet community
objectives.
 Sustainable community
development is the long term
goal. A community project
should only be the start of
a social process.
• The community management trainer must encourage
community members to take advantage of successful
completion of one project to decide upon doing another one,
and stimulate a long term developmental process. While the
immediate objective of a community may be the
construction, extension or repair of a human settlements
facility, the goal of the community management trainer, like
that of the animator, is the increased capacity,
empowerment and sustainable self reliance of the
community.
• The management trainer, like the animator, uses the desire
for a community facility as a motivating factor in the
empowerment of that community. Management training is
not some formal course that simply imparts management
skills on individual trainees. It is integrated
with mobilizing and organizing of a community to act so as
to help itself, to become more able to make decisions about
its own development, and to influence its own destiny.
 Training for Action
• If you want to learn something for the sake of learning it, go
to a philosophy professor at the university. Our reason for
training is to produce certain actions. There are no
examinations; the test of its effectiveness is the action that
results.
• The test of our training effectiveness is the degree to which
the target communities are strengthened (capacities
increased, self reliance improved). An indicator of that
increased strength is that the community organizes to engage
in self help actions.
 Our purpose of training is six fold:
1. Awareness raising (there is a problem);
2. Information imparting (but there is a solution);
3. Skill acquisition (how to solve the problem);
4. Encouragement (take courage; do it);

and, most importantly,

1. Organizing (Effective organization)
2. Mobilization (Action).

We can justify our training only from the

community action that results from it.
 Community Participation, Animation and
Management
• Social Animation promotes the activities of a target community, with a view to the community
taking more responsibility for its own development, starting with decisions about what
projects to undertake, and stimulation to mobilize resources and organize activities.

• Community Participation Promotion aims at ensuring that decisions affecting the community
are taken by all (not only a few) community members (not by an outside agency).

• Community Management takes these two endeavors a logical step further by training
community members and leaders in management techniques needed to ensure the
community takes control of its own development. It also encourages and trains Government
officials and community leaders to abandon the patronizing role of providing facilities and
services. They must facilitate communities to identify resources and undertake actions to
provide and maintain human settlement facilities and services. Management training, as well
as transferring skills to individuals, is used to organize and or re-organize for increased
capacity.
Awareness Raising
and Mobilization:
…promoting community
participation, and
community management
training, involve two
important elements:
1.(a) awareness raising, then
2.(b) mobilization.
 Say, "We make no promises."
• The community members must discover that not only are there some problems faced by the whole
community, but also that the whole community has the potential and (often hidden) resources to
solve each problem.
• Awareness raising includes demonstrating to the community that the solutions to community
problems, to be most effective, must include the involvement of those who were often overlooked
in the past, eg vulnerable persons, including disabled, both men and women, all minorities and
powerless, low income groups, and must be ecologically sound, realistic and practical. In deciding
on what actions (or projects) to undertake, and planning how to do so, the communities must
identify resources, both internal and external. This must be thorough, not superficial, and might
take place over some time.
• Resources include labour (paid, voluntary, communal, etc.), land (space on which to carry out the
activity), transport, tools and other capital, finance, organizing, planning, management and
everything needed to carry out the chosen objectives. Putting them in place at the right time in
the right amount (activating those resources) is the purpose of mobilization.
• Awareness raising and mobilization do not mean making speeches to harangue community members
or to unrealistically raise their expectations. Trainers and facilitators must take care to avoid
raising unrealistic expectations.
Training to Empower
Communities
 Four Essential Planning Questions

1. What do we want?
2. What do we have?
3. How can we use what we have to get what we
want? and
4. What will happen when we get it?
 Four Essential Planning Questions

1. What do we want?
The "What do we want?" question covers the description of the
problem. Its answer is the general goal, then specific objectives,
outputs and other finer definitions of that goal. In community
management training the "What do we want?" question must be
answered by the community as a whole, not just the men, not just
the educated, not just the civil servants, not just the cronies and
friends of the agency, but by all of the community, by consensus.
 Four Essential Planning Questions
What do we have?

The "What do we have?" question is the identification of resources or potential

inputs that can be used to reach the chosen goal. In community management
training, this identification is best done in meetings where the quiet people are
encouraged to participate, because there are many resources in every
community, including the poorest, that are hidden or perhaps not so obvious. A
skilled mobilizer can draw out of a community meeting, by participatory
facilitation, the identification of many otherwise hidden or disguised resources.
 Four Essential Planning Questions

How can we use what we have to get what we

want? 
The "How do we get what we want with what we have?" question is
the strategy part of the craft of management. There are always
several different ways to combine the available resources, and the
collective mental resources of the community (as mentioned above)
should be used to identify several strategies, and select the most
appropriate one.
 Four Essential Planning Questions

What will happen when we get it?

The "What will happen when we get it?" question covers the
prediction of the impact of the activity. It can be expanded to ask
how the activity is expected to affect the community and its (social
and physical) environs, and should lead to plans for community
monitoring and evaluation.
….they constitute the
essential or core
decisions in
management.
  Principles in Management Training
We (the community group) need vision. The community must decide, as a whole, what it
wants to do. There are many possible goals, but the community must be unified and choose
what it wants to do. Trainers can use a quotation from Alice in Wonderland to illustrate
this. "If we do not know where we are going, then any road will do." (Lewis Caroll). Without
a vision for where the community wants to go, it might as well stay where it is or how it is
(with its apathy, poverty, disease and discomfort) at present.

Once a goal and a direction are chosen, it is necessary to make some planning decisions as
to how to reach or get closer to that end. This can be illustrated during training by a
catchy phrase: "If we fail to plan, then we plan to fail." (Also see "Slogans"). If success or
winning can be defined as reaching the goal, then it is necessary to plan in order to reach
that goal. (Of course the goal, or how it is interpreted, may change during the process of
reaching it, and certainly after it is reached).
  Principles in Management Training
The trainer can remind the group that planning means the series of thought processes that will lead
the group for where (or in what condition) it is now, to where (or in what condition) is envisaged when
the goal is reached. those though process must be logical and consistent, and lead from the present
actuality to the future desired result. The trainer can point out that: "We plan backwards in time
(Start with the end and end with the start)." Start planning by identifying where we want to go, then
ask what steps are needed in order to get there. Every step from the current situation must
logically link with the next until the desired end is reached.

During the process of identifying and selecting strategies, the group is encouraged to make the best
or most efficient and effective use of what they have to get what they want. Efficiency must not be
rejected, although it can be interpreted in many ways. Efficiency can be defined as being able to
"Get more output for less input (maximize our efficiency)" One catchy phrase that may illustrate
this is, "Do not work hard; get results." Here the admired value of "hard work" (the means or the
input) is shown to be less important than the result of that work (the end or output). It is not
intended as an encouragement to be lazy, but as an encouragement to use resources (including one's
own labor) wisely, and therefore (in this context) efficiently.
  Principles in Management Training
A participatory and inclusive decision making process can tap hidden resources that would otherwise
be lost by a dictatorial decision making style. The trainer teaches to, "Involve everybody in
decisions." One (imperfect) human, even if boss or chief, has less information, experience, wisdom,
than the whole concerned group, including the quiet or humble ones. In terms of democratization, it
is the right of every community member to participate; in terms of maximizing the strength of a
community, identifying the most of its resources, and finding creative and previously overlooked
strategies, involving all makes good management sense.

The trainer must remind the community that it must aim to "stand on its own feet." Dependency, and
reliance on outsiders' help, resources, and even direction, is simply not sustainable (the outsiders
leave after some time), as well as a weakness and vulnerability. Encourage self reliance; it is an
obligation or duty as well as a right. Another catchy phrase can be used here: "If you blame others,
you give up your power to change," (Ray Anthony). The trainer must never be duped by the dependent
plea, "We are too poor and we need outside help." Every (every) group or community, no matter how
poor, if it is composed of live humans, has resources it can tap, most of which are hidden. The real
poverty is in the lack of knowing what they are, not in their absence.
  Principles in Management Training
There is no free lunch (nothing is for nothing). Volunteer labour and public donations must be paid
for, even if not in purely monetary currency. That payment may be public recognition,
encouragement, praise and acknowledgement. Management trainers in corporations have pointed out
that even paid labour does not participate fully or produce the most just on the basis of salaries or
wages; recognition, praise and encouragement go a long way to get the best output from both
volunteers and paid labour. Recognize contributions, praise honestly, emphasize the positive, ignore
the negative, do not criticize.

We cannot stand still. If we are not going forward, then we will slip backward. Human society is
dynamic, it is always changing. It is impossible to solve any problem, "once and for all," (that is a
fallacy). What may be today a solution to a problem, if it is continued to be used, may tomorrow be
the problem.
“[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into
reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This
individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world
unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into
a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or
herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the
oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within
history, to fight at their side.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

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