Professional communities are organizations or groups that offer a lot of useful information for people united by a common profession (for example, if this is entrepreneurship). Some popular options include various business organizations, LLCs, etc.
If you do not take advantage of what professional communities can offer in terms of mentoring (namely, advice, networking and support), then you are missing a unique opportunity to increase your professionalism. What else can professional communities offer? We will discuss in more detail.
The benefits of the professional community
Although it’s not possible to join and participate in every accessible community, choosing one or two of them can have a positive impact on your business. The activities of the professional community is a very multifaceted and interesting process.
Entrepreneurship can be difficult and monotonous, as well as a thankless task, especially at the initial stage. Late nights and weekends at the office are commonplace for this job. Participation in the professional community where live events are held can bring you a lot of benefits and fun, making your monotonous everyday life easier.
Tips of First Importance
You must leave your office from time to time and be distracted from your business. If you do not do this, then you will face professional burnout. A professional community will help you connect with like-minded entrepreneurs who have the same interests. This can be the beginning of friendships for life, and will help you create a solid network of people whom you can turn to in difficult and unpleasant times. Professional communities of Russia are represented in the form of trade unions, mutual assistance organizations, commonwealths, etc. Examples of such organizations are:
- Audit and Accounting Oversight Board in Public Companies (PCAOB);
- Association of European Businesses in the Russian Federation (AEB);
- Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIFR);
- Self-regulatory organization of auditors "Russian Union of Auditors" (Association) (SRO SAR);
- St. Petersburg International Business Association in the Northwest (SPIBA);
- Audit Council under the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation
People like to do business with a company that has a familiar face. The professional community helps you become recognizable and gain a reputation. Both nationally and locally. For example, Worldskills Russia Agency for the Development of Professional Communities and Workers can help you with this.
Many professionals claim that business owners and entrepreneurs are often in their own little bubble, and the presence of professionals in other industries can have a positive impact on your growth and development. When you are close to entrepreneurs involved in other areas of the business, this opens up new ideas and perspectives for you. Professional associations are ubiquitous throughout the world.
Aggregation
Aggregation provides professionals with an environment for the exchange of knowledge in such areas as corporate work, perception of problems, methods of solving problems, professional values, legal aspects, professional behavior and so on.
Aggregation refers to specialized working groups whose members have higher education and are more identified by their educational status than by their special professional skills.
They are much more effective than coaches and business trainers. Professional communities are often a breeding ground for genuine mentoring that does not require you to pay $ 997 per month to a self-proclaimed guru. Many professional communities will provide you with access to several people with whom you can discuss your biggest fears and problems. These relationships begin because the participants sincerely want to see each other successful, and they can make a big contribution to overall development.
Strength is in the team
Professional communities also provide you with access to the entire group of people who potentially need a product or service that you offer. They can also familiarize you with their services or share the necessary contacts. A large number of potential customers, sales and income is often the advantage of active participation in the community.
Katherine Jacobs, COO of McQuarrie LLP, provides tips on the professional community. She advises not to be annoying and not to be annoying. Nobody wants to communicate with an obsessive person. If you are valuable to other participants, you will automatically be interested in who and what can offer you and your business.
Ireland example
Irish business experts are responsible for creating a vibrant technology community in Dublin. They made many interesting communities and created many places for useful communication between experts and professionals - even in local bars. As a result, it’s pretty easy to run into a colleague at a pub party, because there’s a much more laid-back atmosphere than at a regular working event. The social mission of the professional community is to improve the quality of cooperation and communication between employees.
The success of the Dublin technical community boils down to the fact that everyone and everything - companies, employees, residential buildings - are in the same area, which makes even a trip to the grocery store a networking opportunity. Although this feature is not available in many places, the key is to make things accessible to most potential participants.
There is no need to take a taxi or sit at work for days to communicate with colleagues, according to Jannet O'Reilly.
According to Irish businesswoman Jannet O'Reilly, one thing that community leaders (including Russian) often forget to do when trying to create an interested community is to set an example for others. If you are trying to create a technical community, whether it is a community of employees or customers, she says, you need to live and breathe technology and everything that stands behind them. Your dedication and experience will inspire others to speak out and participate in a common cause, which is important for all kinds of professional communities.
Dublin is a place where, thanks to its unique culture, a vibrant technological society has been created. Some experts think that the main difference between Ireland and other countries is that people sincerely welcome people with open arms in terms of business and relationships. There exists a more laid-back approach to business than in Russia, which leads to the fact that business relations become a real friendship, which goes into the unprofessional sphere. The goals of the professional community may vary, although by and large they come down to several things:
- Protection of the interests of specialists.
- Establishment of communication between them.
- Promoting the dissemination of professional knowledge and skills.
Kinds
Professional communities play a big role in Russia and around the world. How many varieties are there today? Three main types of professional communities can be distinguished:
- communication communities;
- unions;
- self-regulatory organizations.
Difficulty creating
It is clear that creating the first professional community from scratch is hard work, but if you find the right place, set an example, think about a cultural fit, come up with impressive events and don’t complicate things too much, you will certainly succeed.
Training
The Professional Learning Community (PLC) is a method that facilitates co-education of colleagues in a specific work environment or field. It is often used in schools as a way to organize teachers into working groups for practical vocational training.
CCPs have many variations. In the definition of Shirley M. Hord of 1997, this means “extending classroom practice to the community; involvement of school staff to improve the curriculum and learning objectives for students; or the simultaneous involvement of students, teachers and administrators in the learning process. ” Chord noted that the benefits of a professional learning community for teachers and students include a reduction in teacher isolation, mutual exchange of information, and the formation of closer ties within a common team. In general, their role is similar to the role played by the societies discussed above. Student trade unions can also be attributed to them.
Current data
In 2004, DuFour stated that the start and maintenance of the curriculum requires that school staff focus on learning, not teaching, work together on learning-related issues and take responsibility for the results, which helps to continually improve the quality of education. In 2005, the Ontario Department of Education defined the CSP as “a shared vision for school management to which everyone can contribute, and in which staff are encouraged to take collective action to continually improve their students’ performance. ” If we distract from the pedagogical context and return to the topic that was raised in the article earlier, an example of such an approach is LLC First Professional Community, based in St. Petersburg.
This concept is deep and requires careful and ongoing attention to learning through reflective performance and problem solving. Transforming the culture of schools and systems in which educators and young people work is the main goal of such communities. This is not a simple innovation, but rather a fundamentally new culture of management and teaching, which is gradually being introduced throughout the world.
Historical context
Around the same time that the term was introduced, a group of researchers in the field of education became interested in a similar idea of the professional community in schools. Based on the data that was collected in the study for the Center for Organization and Restructuring of Schools, Sharon Cruz, Karen Sisor Louis and Anthony Bryk developed a three-component structure to describe the critical elements and supporting conditions that are necessary for the implementation of effective and rational school management and overall development professional culture. Cruze and colleagues found that in schools with a strong professional community, teachers work more efficiently and put more effort into creating and maintaining student learning opportunities. They also suggested that social and human resources are more important than the structural conditions for community development.
Issue
Teachers and other educators can feel like pawns in a larger game of chess, where school and district leaders make decisions that create problems for educators trying to do their job. Issues that can interfere with the development of the curriculum include subject areas, because some subjects tend to take precedence over others. The physical location of the school may be another obstacle.
Benefits, causes and uses
Learning is the process by which experience causes constant changes in knowledge or behavior. This is a characteristic of constancy, which raises the bar for all professional training, because education as a constant change is a complex and peculiar process. Katz and Deck urge vocational training developers to avoid the “activity trap”, suggesting that participation in a protocol or process guarantees real learning.
Because of these difficulties, many teachers create a teacher training center. Teachers find groups through Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks that allow them to interact with teachers from all over the country to share ideas. These groups can be useful for those who already have an ICC at their current school, and those who do not.
Creating a shared vision involves exchanging different ideas and compromises so that all participants are satisfied with the direction the organization is moving. Conflicting goals can be a source of positive development: "Descending mandates and ascending energies need each other."
Through this commitment and the creation of a shared vision, the team can get the opportunity to work together and achieve goals. As teachers' abilities increase, and they have a sense of their own professional growth, they may find that they are able to achieve goals that they could not achieve on their own.
Benefits and value
The professional community is always good. In the educational environment, the CCP can include people from different levels of the organization who work together and constantly work together to improve its performance. Peter Senge believes that it is not enough to train just one person for the benefit of the organization. The basic principle of CCP is that people learn together more if the conditions are right. Teachers can promote the idea of team learning for students in their classes, but teachers cannot practice team learning in their professional lives. The curriculum is designed to help teachers practice the instruction in the team that they preach.
Senge suggests that when teams learn together, it brings useful results to the organization. Some school improvement evaluators even argue that quality collaboration has become no less than imperative. Clubs of professional communities are trying to fight this, improving the quality of the activities of these organizations. These clubs include the following organizations:
- professional club of accountants;
- professional club of lawyers;
- community of marketers;
- community of risk managers;
- security community of leasing companies;
- HR community.
