20 Social Roles Overview and Background

In 2011 I publicly shared the 20 Social Roles in a presentation to the Enterprise 2.0 conference. The audience in the talk that Gordon Ross and I gave was lost behind phones and cameras taking pictures of the slide with all 20 of the roles as I walked through each of them quickly. The 20 Social Roles has been a regular part of talks and workshops related to complexity and social environments, and systems since then, but I haven’t written them up nor shared them outside of the slide listing them (I have breakdowns of them for private workshops that I have used).

I am writing this introduction to the lenses as it has been asked for quite a bit. I started presenting the 20 Social Roles as vendors didn’t have support for them (many vendors honestly said they barely support admins and general users well – this really hasn’t changed). The core reason for sharing these 20 Social Roles is to make what is incredibly common but unseen, seen.

One core tenet of the 20 Social Roles is they are usually not learned, but come from people performing the roles as it is part of their personality and they see a need and fill that need. Quite often when working with organizations they want to train people to fill these roles (this often doesn’t work well at all) rather than find people who exhibit the traits of these social roles.

There are two main sections beyond the background and overview: 1) The 20 Social Roles; 2) The element types listed that give depth of understanding to the roles (these are just listed and not applied to the social roles in this write-up).

How to Use the 20 Social Roles

Keep in mind all information and knowledge work is social in one way or another, so these can be applied to teams, organizational social interaction models, and a lot more in digital and non-digital environments. It is important to realize people may perform more than one social role in the same organization and situational context, but also different roles in different contexts. There are three high level uses for the 20 Social Roles:

• Identify people performing the roles in various social settings
• Identify roles that are in use or could be used to solve problems or resolve the root causes behind the symptoms of the lack of the role being performed, or not performed well
• Identify roles that need formal support (they all do, where needed) and provide that with systems or platforms, workflows, time made available, and credit given to the value people in these roles provide

Where Did Social Roles Come From

The 20 Social Roles came from more than 15 years working on social platforms for mid-sized and the largest organizations and businesses and how people use, organize, and manage within and around these digital social environments. This work was on behalf of the organizations, as well as often on the interest of vendors creating the platforms and trying to improve their customer success. In researching how organizations used and interacted with various platforms for information and knowledge sharing at various tiers or strata of an organization there were many unofficial roles found that were highly relevant and repeated. The patterns of use and workflows people performed relatively consistently when they appeared. The services and platforms they were using didn’t support the roles nor workflows, and people who performed these roles worked around the lack of support in a myriad of different ways. Today, services and platforms still don’t support these services well, but capabilities have expanded a little

These roles are quite common, but rarely do they all appear in one environment. Some appear at different scales, different social interaction models, and types of Community Platform that are drawn out of different roles from people, different organization types, and workflow models also can bring out people performing various roles.

The first steps is understanding that the roles exist, learning to see them, and recognize the people performing them. Then working to support those roles and the people performing them. Organizations and people in formal community roles quite often take steps that unintentionally hinder people in these roles, but see the symptom of problems from lack of support or friction in people performing these roles.

The initial public sharing of these 20 Social Roles was to: 1) Make the roles visible to customers in enterprise and mid-sized organizations with community, collaboration, social knowledge management, etc. tools and platforms; 2) Publicly calling out the roles and names for them so vendors and customers can work to start supporting some of these roles, so to improve the platforms and the work the people whom are performing in these roles.

Social Roles Aren’t Formal Roles

One of the important things to understand is the 20 Social Roles are not formal roles. These social roles are exhibited by people performing the formal roles, most often as an extension of who they are as a person and their personality make-up.

These are roles that people in formal roles often perform. The 20 Social Roles often do not align to organizations formal roles as they often aren’t considered. Formal roles quite often have attributes, experience, expertise, and other qualifications that are essential to that formal role. The social roles may or (quite often) don’t align to formal roles, which is why it is important to understand them so to support them. People often perform more than one social role, but the combinations aren’t universal, so it is really good to understand the roles as distinct and treat them that way, but also see multiple social roles performed by individuals. The combinations of roles will most often be different with individuals, so try to avoid combining them but learn to see them distinctly by individuals.

The 20 Social Roles

These are the 20 Social Roles and the high level descriptive elements for each one as they are performed. Seeing them and supporting them will greatly help people in these roles do their best and support the group, community, organizations, and beyond through the assistance they naturally provide.

Sharer

When a person thinks of the social web or someone doing “social things” in the enterprise, it is often the Sharer that is thought of. The defining activity of a Sharer is they share things with others. They share content, long and short, and point to other’s content and resources. This content may be their own, but just as valuable to the role and service it may be content from others that is shared. Knowing the source and pointing to it is important to the 20 Social Roles. Not everybody is comfortable sharing what they create, so it is distinct from the Creator role.

Lurker

The Lurker is someone who is in a group, but doesn’t seem to actively participate. Their participation is just passive. The may or may not go to all gatherings / meetings and may or may not read / watch everything. The Lurker’s actions may not be seen in the group or the platform, but their action just may be out of sight. But, it is important to understand passive participation is still participation.

Creator – Writer

The Creator – Writer is the foundation for social platforms. It is their work that gets shared by the Sharer – 20 Social Roles (which may or may not be themselves) , and the foundation that others use to share things out and pass them around, as well as fodder for conversation and interaction by others.

Editor

The Editor is a role that supports and hones the work of the Creator – Writer, as well as more informal content that is created around the site / service.

Curator

The Curator role is one that brings relevant content and resources closer together, but also cleans things up to bring structure and ease of finding to areas where there is an abundance, or a perceived over abundance of content and resources.

In a wiki the curator commonly also known as a gardener, who grooms the content and links, but also pulls weeds or replants content and resources as well as links to content.

Connector

The Connector is a networking role where the person connects / introduces people. They bring together people and ideas who could or should know each other and collaborate together. This connector role is one that people often perform for themselves, but also enable network building for others through introductions.

Synthesizer

The Synthesizer role is a person who is bringing different or adjacent possible ideas together in a new concept created from synthesis of understanding two idea (or more) and joining them to create something new.

Theorizer

The Theorizer is one to explains the new ideas and builds the underlying frameworks and understandings for them for use. They help explain the new and conceptual. In some ways they are building the proofs for others to understand so to make use of what is new or different.

Mitigator

The Mitigator social role is one where a leader assesses the situation, options (with research), and sets the informed path for a project, product, “getting better”, interaction models with other groups, etc.

This role is in short a “decider” where the leader takes in the information and makes the assessment and decides the path for action or response.

Negotiator

The Negotiator works within a group or across groups to gather understanding and then work to get consensus on the path forward in a structured decision making process. Negotiation to get a coordinated or consensus understanding of a path forward often helps with buy-in from the participants.

The Negotiator is a Social Role that doesn’t scale well, unless there are representatives for a small number of groups with other representatives acting as Negotiator as well.

Contextualizer

The Contextualizer is the role that takes understandings from one domain and brings them into context for understanding in another domain. They tie the concepts and terminology from one subject area to another for easier understanding.

Interloper

The Interloper is someone who is in more than one group and may share information from one group to another. The groups they belong to may be (and often are) in groups in other networks. The Interloper may appear to be a Lurker in one group, but is a Sharer in another group or network, or a more active participant in some manner.

Infovore

The Infovore is someone who collects information and knowledge, which can be on a specific interest or domain, or out to things of potential interest. Quite often they have a system for recall or retrieval of this information / knowledge. The Infovore is often curious with broad and deep interests that wants to hold on to things they run across and have them within easy reach.

The Infovore is the person who people turn to and ask the question, starting with, “have you seen anything on…”.

Learner

The Learner is someone who has an active or passive interest in learning something from what is being shared, discussed, and made available for use and interaction around.

A passive learner may also be someone who is considered to be a Lurker.

Monitor

The monitor is paying attention to the state of the group or social environment through qualitative and/or quantitative analysis. They pay attention to how well things are going, what is working well, where attention may be needed, and/or other roles can step in to help.

Counselor

The Counselor is one who steps in to provide guidance to someone who is struggling with something in the network or group to help ease their understanding or difficulties. The Counselor also works between people who are struggling to interact amicably or productively. The Counselor may or may not be the person who senses the difficulties, but they are the one who comes into help and resolve difficulties people may be having.

Gossip

The Gossip is one who shares information (factual or not) that gets others interacting. The Gossip doesn’t function in an official capacity, but tend to share information that is draws attention and interaction around it.

Critic

The Critic is one who provides feedback on things shared and discussed in the network or group. The Critic doesn’t have a problem speaking up and hopefully is providing constructive insights and guidance.

Expert

The Expert is the subject matter expert on one or more subjects and may have strength and depth of understanding across a domain or multiple domains. The missed piece with Experts is they often have a formal role that is more than just their expertise, so they aren’t available to interact with others, nor create as much as others would like.

Often an Expert will partner with a Creator and/or a Broadcaster or Rebroadcaster to get their information and knowledge out. The Expert role is also one that is often very misunderstood.

Broadcaster – Rebroadcaster

The Broadcaster / Rebroadcaster is someone who may share in an official capacity or quasi-official capacity and often does so in a manner that gets attention for all that need to see and/or hear it. The Broadcaster / Rebroadcaster is mindful of attention and focus, so that things they convey are paid attention to. This person also ensure what they are broadcasting is well crafted and clear to understand.

Quite often the Broadcaster / Rebroadcaster teams with one or more Experts to ease the burden off of them.

Social Roles have Elements to Them

Each of these 20 Social Roles have elements that apply to them that help see them more easily by the outcome of the role being performed, but not seeing the role in action. The elements help break down what is needed to support the roles and how the roles often interact with information / knowledge and other people.

• Benefit
  • What benefit does this role bring
• Understanding
  • This is the deeper understanding of what the role does and the role’s relevance
• Activities
  • These are the activities that the role performs
• Social Cues
  • What social cues are relevant to see role’s inputs and and outputs for others
  • These are often quiet and not clear, but patterns to be watched
• Interaction Needs
  • What interactive components are needed in the screens to support this role
• Social Interaction
  • What social interaction types / patterns does the role use
    • Is the role active, passive, quiet, expressive, etc.
• Social Perspective Fit – Types of Social Platform
  • What is the role’s common fit and use for different [[Depth of Perception]] with social maturity and Social Platform Type
    • What level is the role in a maturity perspective
    • What levels does the role help
    • What platform type
• Scale
  • What scale(s) does the role work within
• Facets
  • What facets are relevant related to (but not exclusive to):
    • Personality traits
    • Motivations
    • Cultural relevance
• Relates to
  • What other roles does the role relate to
  • What other social lenses apply to this role