Lauren Bateman (speaker) advises that to create a positive community you must model positivity yourself. Drawing on her experience as a guitar teacher and mentor, she says leaders should be supportive and uplifting so community members follow those cues; negative behavior by leaders invites negativity, while positivity helps deter intolerant behaviour.
If you want to have a positive community, you have to be positive yourself. I know. I have students all the time. Like, you're just like a bundle of energy. I don't try to throw out negative energy too much, especially with my clients and my students. They're not here to hear me bitch and moan about the problems that are happening in my life. They're here to learn guitar. And my goal as a teacher and as a mentor is to help them excel at their goals, in their dreams, and when they're having bad days, it's my job to motivate them, uplift them. So I think it's super important when you have a community and you want it to be a positive space, that you have to be the trend. In that space, people are going to follow the leader. If the leader is acting like a jerk, the people within that community are going to act like a jerk. But if the people in the community see that you're being positive, supportive, motivating, that's what they're going to be. And anyone who's not that, they're not going to tolerate it.
