Recently we in MVP India community did a bit of virtual brainstorming to figure out what it takes to become an MVP. We all knew the basics such as Excellence in Technology (his/her specialization area), Participation in Community and Willingness to Give Back. But do we need to have any soft skills as well to be a successful community leader/an MVP/an Influencer?
Absolutely!! Irrespective of whatever the name we call them, we are talking about the few leaders among us with different technical expertise and for sure there are few Soft Skills which made them successful. Let’s see if we can list down a few of them here and figure out how that particular skill help our influencers day in day out:
We just learnt the top Soft Skills which our India MVP community thinks are important. We really value all the time what our MVPs spent in listing down all these points. I do think there are few other skills as well which may be beneficial. Attaching an Excel file which is listing some of them for broader community.
Very nicely written.
Thank you for documenting the complete details step by step.
Let me add 4 additional skills...
1. User Focus: Everything in technology is useless unless it is appropriately utilized. Often we create great technical stuff which is simply not usable ... we think of ourselves and our passion about technology. But the final rendering is not for satisfying our technological urge... We must ensure that someone else benefits from it. We are not the end point. We are middlemen or catalysts between technology and user benefit. All technical folks should understand that our salary / revenue comes from end users finally. So providing tangible benefits to them in the simplest possible way should be our primary aim...
2. Ability to map technical features to business context: Even the most arcane tech feature has a business impact. But it may not be obvious. The skill all technical people should develop is to de-jargonize the technology and apply its technical benefit to a business context. All features start with a use case. But when the feature is deployed, the original use case is never a part of the help or books or e-learning. Therefore, all features which are created to add some value or to solve some problem are underutilized. The only way to solve this problem is to proactively map each feature to all relevant business contexts.
In today's IT world, this seems to be a "no man's land" (no person's land - to be gender neutral)
3. Zoom: Windows + zooms the screen (you can also use Zoom-it - which provides annotation capabilities) Probably you already know this. But do you use it?
As technology evangelists it is our job to promote and demonstrate the value of technology - whether the audience is technical or end user does not matter.
Therefore, most of us cannot just use presentations. We must demonstrate the actual product. That means we need to explain the UI. UI as well as code font is very small. In a large (or even medium sized audience) most people beyond first few rows simply cannot see what you are showing...This defeats the purpose of your demo. Therefore, it is very critical to learn how to use Zoom effectively during live demos / webcasts / e-learning content creation.
3. Humor: I think this is the most important skill. In my career, this has been the single most consistent feedback from attendees and customers. Technology can quickly become boring or drab. Converting it to humorous, witty, sarcastic and tongue in cheek conversation actually increases the impact many-fold...Try it yourself.