#4 - Skills you need to thrive as a DAO contributor 🚀

Everything you need to win in your decentralized tribe 🏆

Jun 15, 2022

Thanks to blockchain technology, many young people continue to move from centralized to decentralized systems. From top-to-bottom organizations where stakeholders and CEOs have all the control and make all the critical decisions to decentralized systems where each person gets a say in making critical decisions and can actively contribute to an organization's day-to-day operations. But while these decentralized systems have presented us with a sense of freedom, they also demand a certain level of taking ownership and a sense of responsibility. This is especially true in leaderless and community-led entities such as DAOs.

Several things are currently plaguing DAOs but by far the most relevant to this piece is its contributor retention rate. Contributors aren’t participating much in DAOs and governance, and it’s a problem because, without people, DAOs cannot operate.

A myriad of reasons contributes to why. From undefined compensation models, poor communication/culture, clumsy organizational tools such as Discord and Notion, and unawareness, contributors don’t feel empowered or know how to be a contributor.

The problem with not having a boss

In our last piece, we dove deeper into earning in DAOs and how one can get started as a contributor, but we didn’t get to a widely unacknowledged truth: being a contributor takes work, a lot more work than soft and hard skills we’ve optimized for the longest time allowed.

Years of functioning in centralized organizations where decisions are made on consumers' and employees' behalf have left many of us bereft of how to properly function in decentralized systems. We have all this power and freedom, but many still struggle with what to do with it.

We weren’t encouraged to learn how to self-organize, empower one another, and be community-driven. Now we’re faced with hives of self-governing entities where each member's action is crucial to sustaining the entity's growth and survival. And we must all show up and do the work without being told or forced.

There are many ways to become better at coordination in a DAO. A good start is self-introspecting. Questions like “Why do I want to become a contributor? How do I hope to contribute? Do I have the capacity for self-governance in the absence of a boss? If not, how can I learn? How can I be better? What does my DAO need from me?” are what you should try to answer.

Next is learning to master certain soft skills like communication, stewardship, and teamwork.. These skills will help you understand how to function in DAOs, become a valuable contributor, and give you room to thrive.

Fixing the problem: communication, stewardship, and teamwork

Let's take a broader look at each skill, shall we?

Communication

Everyone says they’re good at communication, but relationships around the world beg to differ. Communication begins by sending a message, but it’s only effective if the receiver clearly understands that message and their response proves it. Effective communication is a skill a DAO contributor needs. Normally, it takes two people to effectively communicate, but in DAOs, it’s a lot of people using using apps like Discord where critical information moves a lot faster.

To be great at communicating, you need to actively listen to others, provide regular updates to your peers on tasks you’ve taken, speak with self-confidence, use inclusive language, and more importantly, stay up to date with what’s being said in the Discord channels you’re contributing in.

Stewardship

Vocabulary.com defines stewardship as the management or care of something. At its core, we can deduce that stewardship is sustainable and careful management. Being able to take ownership and having a sense of self-direction is important in cultivating a habit of stewardship. In community-operated and owned structures such as DAOs, every contributor is responsible for how the DAO functions and grows. Taking actions such as helping new contributors with resources on how to get started, leading meetings/updating meeting notes without being asked or told to, suggesting better ways work can get done, amplifying important information, encouraging contributors to participate in governance, and checking in with other contributors are great stewardship activities to get done in the DAO.

Teamwork

Being able to work in large teams is key to surviving in a DAO. Although the average DAO has few core contributors, contributors at the base are usually a lot more. They’re also in different parts of the world operating under different time zones. This is where being great at communication comes in. A positive team spirit ensures you’re not working in a silo and can effectively communicate with other contributors, get them up to speed on where work needs to be done/how to do it, encourage them to help you or others out with tasks, and listen to feedback with an open mind.

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