Leadership Guidelines
Community leaders are a significant part of our community. In stepping into a leadership role with 7 Cups, you have agreed that you align with our values and wish to uphold our mission. You have the ability to inform and influence our community members. So, it is important to lead by example and be a role model to inspire others to aspire to be someone like you to extend support to others.
Including the General, Forum, Listener & Member Chatroom Guidelines, and rules and policies currently in place, as a community leader, one has to be committed to these reminders and rules to perform their leadership duties and responsibilities effectively to help us foster and protect our community, its projects/programs, and all the users.
We trust you to be responsible and maintain confidentiality.
As a community leader, you may be provided with confidential information to perform your work on a team or a project. Use this knowledge for its intended purpose only. In other words, please do not abuse your privileges.
Refrain from engaging in triangulation
This is a very common mistake people make without even realizing it's happening. Triangulation manifests itself in our community as one person who will not communicate directly with another person, and instead use a third person to relay communication to the second, thus forming a triangle. Triangulation is damaging because it interferes with healthy conflict resolution and lends itself to rumor spreading by taking a private situation between two users and exposing it to more people. Read more about this and take the Triangulation Pledge.
Community leaders must maintain strong boundaries
Being a role model, and a trustworthy and reliable leader, users may become dependent on you. To nurture healthy relationships with the community, it's imperative that you set boundaries for yourself and respect those of others.
Community leaders accept feedback gracefully.
Getting feedback can be hard to hear, especially if it's more constructive criticism than praise. Leaders should be able to accept feedback gracefully if given constructively. We all are human and all have things to work on and grow.
Please honor and follow our social media policies
No off-site contact with community members. 7 Cups is a safe environment for you to build and create connections. We love that you are building supportive relationships with each other and enjoy connecting! In order to preserve this safe space, we ask you not to solicit off-site contact. Also bear in mind, once you take interactions off 7 Cups, we are unable to assist you in the event something happens outside of our site.
Reporting is our responsibility.
You are the eyes of our community. We have several ways to report incidents that cover all areas of the site, and we rely on you to direct users to those channels. We also rely on you to use them as well. As the slogan goes: if you see something, say something.
To protect our community and its ongoing progress, we ask that if you would like to pursue leadership with us that you do not affiliate yourself in leadership positions with non-crisis sites similar to 7 Cups.
We respect your right to use whatever sites you'd like. However, since we launched, we have discovered that some of our leaders have also been working with non-crisis sites that are similar to 7 Cups. We are all for competition, but we want the intention behind it to be solving broader emotional health challenges. We don't want the competition to be a negative interaction between companies. To protect our community and its ongoing progress, we ask that if you would like to pursue leadership with us that you do not affiliate yourself in leadership positions with non-crisis sites similar to 7 Cups.
💡 (When I say similar sites, I am referring to any site that offers the same services as us. This would not include therapists, AA, NAMI, and assistance programs that share our broad goal to provide support in the healthcare industry but are not set up to operate as we do. They all offer different components that work in tandem with us.)
Specific Guidelines in Specific Domains
Forum Leadership Guidelines
Dashboard Guidelines
1. Please use only 1 dashboard. The dashboard should be maintained by the Community Mentor Leader and/or Support Team Leader and should include information on all areas of the sub-community.
2. All dashboards must be shared with the Community Management team (@Heather225, @ASilentObserver, and Subcom Admin) and SC Ambassadors (in the future when available)
3. Please keep your dashboards organized and user-friendly (please avoid using neon and information overload on the same sheet)
4. Please do not share access to the dashboard with nonteam members (exceptions to this rule are ambassadors and admins)
5. Click here to learn how to share dashboards with team members!
"Policy: The only way to ensure that no contact information is exchanged on our leadership dashboards is to make all dashboards publicly accessible to all leaders. In doing this, no contact information will be exchanged."
6. All documents, forms, and sheets used must be linked to the dashboard. The only exception is the Feedback form.
7. Please do not use the dashboard to chat with the team. The "Chat" function must be disabled. All leaders are welcome to use their team's forum space to have discussions with the team in the Subcommunities Center.
8. Here's an example dashboard created and shared by a former community leader. This is only a template, leaders are not required to modify their dashboards to reflect the template.
Appropriate communication methods between volunteer teams
- Community Management Team members must have access to your dashboards in case we need to review information on the team or step in to help if a leader becomes inactive.
- Please do not hop on google hangout calls to discuss matters. If you’d like to hop on a call with another leader, you'll need special approval from a member of the Community Management Team.
- No contact information. To ensure the safety of all teen users, we need to be very careful in how to manage our dashboards, ensuring that no contact information between teens & adults is exchanged. This includes exchanging 7 Cups email IDs (ex. laura7cups@gmail.com). The only way to ensure that no contact information is exchanged on our leadership dashboards is to make all dashboards publicly accessible to all leaders. In doing this, no contact information will be exchanged.
Forum Teams - Guidelines
Professionalism:
a. Please be kind and respectful towards one another.
b. Remain professional and maintain cordial working relationships with team members in public spaces such as forums and chatrooms.
c. In Private Messages, please be polite and engage in healthy discussions with team members and leaders. If something sounds upsetting, please use constructive ways to deliver feedback or you may request time and space to reflect on the situation and chat later.
Teamwork and communication
a. View a sub-community as a large jigsaw puzzle. Each piece needs to be connected to have a complete puzzle. To attain growth, success, and quality support as a team, it's essential for everyone to come together to schedule and organize activities in the sub-community. Lack of support or cooperation from any one or more people will result in a downfall.
b. Be accountable for your roles and projects. Ambassadors and mentor leaders are volunteers dedicating their time to all of you to deliver volunteer support in meaningful ways.
c. If a conflict arises, please use problem-solving skills and direct communication with the person involved to resolve misunderstandings and issues. Emphasizing the problem is similar to sitting in a rocking chair, it will give us something to do but will lead us to nowhere. Sharing the information with persons D, E, F and G escalates the problem. In other words, triangulation is harmful and has no place in our community.
d. Be courteous and respond promptly to leaders and team members who reach out in Private Messages.
Boundaries
a. Practice self-care as often as you can. It's important.
b. Respect every team member and roles they are a part of.
c. Please allow the Community Mentor Leaders (if present) to take the lead on implementing changes or creating goals for a team. In the absence of a mentor leader, I can offer support.
💡 We trust that many of you have been following guidelines and we appreciate the support and sincerity shown by you. Moving forward, if anyone involved in a subcommunity team role fails to uphold the values and guidelines outlined in this post, they will receive a reminder in Private Messages with a request to rectify their behavior or actions. If the actions repeat, the Subcommunity team member will be placed on break until a sincere commitment to following guidelines becomes evident. Please remember: Your leadership skills and conduct as a leader are not limited to sub-communities only. Professionalism and boundaries must be maintained sitewide.
Alerts/ Notifications Guidelines
General Alerting Info / Etiquette
If you're unsure if you should post an alert or not, ask a Community Manager. Whenever possible, tailor your alerts to the specific people you are alerting for. If you remove an alert, please let a Community Manager or the Ambassador involved (if you can determine) know. If you see a typo, feel free to edit! Spelling mistakes happen. When selecting multiple badges or roles, the alert system includes everyone with any of the badges or roles you list. Therefore, only one alert is necessary.
When to not post an alert
A very specific help-wanted ask (ex. help for something in your SC ). Specific help wanted posts should go in the help wanted subcommunity. A specific thread with a general question, general information about the SC topic, or icebreaker.
Types of Alerts
Discussion Alerts
- Set Priority to Red
- Member support session alerts should only be made on the member side
- Listener support sessions alert on the listener side only
- Select Adult or Teen
- Alerts are to be made no longer than 15 minutes before the discussion and set to expire no longer than 15 minutes after the discussion begins.
Meeting Alerts
- Set Priority to Yellow
- Put up no longer than one week before your meeting and set the alert to expire at the end of the scheduled meeting time.
- Create an RSVP thread- Include date, time, and agenda- Utilize the Badge, Leader, and Role filters to target your specific meeting group.
Example:
- Title: Adult Trauma Team Meeting!
- User type: Listener, Member
- Age Group: Adult
- Click here to RSVP (link to RSVP post in SC Leader Bubble)
- Leader in Community: Trauma Support
Example:
- Title: Adult Group Mod Meeting!
- Usertype: Listener
- Age Group: Adult
- Click here to RSVP (link to RSVP post in Group Mod Zone)
- Has any of these Badges: Group Mod
- Community Leader Role: Chatroom Moderator, Support Session Leader, Support Team Leader/Teen Star
Event Alerts
- Promote a special GLOBAL event (ex. Valentine’s day special event) - meaning something everyone is welcome to celebrate. Not a subcommunity-specific event.- Set Priority to Yellow- Submit alert 1 day prior or day of / And expires after 1-2 days (And make sure to take down if the event is no longer happening)
- Monthly Event Thread- Set Priority to Yellow- Will be made and alerted by Fluffy- Add your SC-specific events to the thread for the month
- Major Subcommunity Events- Set Priority to Blue- 2 days before the event, 1 week if also calling for help planning- One alert per community per month
Icebreaker Alert
- Set Priority to Blue
- 1 daily per user type and per age group (one for listener and one for member OR one for adult members, one for teen members, one for teen listeners, one for adult listeners)
- These are made by Community Management Staff unless otherwise specified
Site Change Alerts
- Set Priority to Yellow or Red
- 2 days to 1 week
- These are made by the Community Management Staff unless otherwise specified
Track Specific Changes
- Set Priority to Yellow
- 2 days to 1 week
- These are made by the Community Management Staff or Ambassadors for your specific tracks
- Major changes to specific tracks (ex: When the Chatroom track changed to Community-Centered Moderation)
Subcommunity Information Alerts
- If there is a guideline change within the SC- Set Priority to Yellow
- For planning any upcoming changes within the SC such as leadership, forum restructuring, etc.- Set Priority to Yellow
- Forum Discussions or special group support discussions- Set Priority to Blue
- When possible, use the filters to select only SC team leaders or if your SC has a relevant badge attached (ex: The People of Color SC can alert all users with the People of Color Guide badge)
Project Alerts
Specific category project alerts to drive engagement.
Global project Alerts to drive project engagement-
- Set Priority to Yellow
-
Example:
- Title: Quality Coaching Requests- Allotted one per month (2 days max)- User type: Listener
- Title: Become a Verified Listener- Allotted one per month (2 days max)- User type: listener- Does not have any of these badges: Verified Listener
- Title: Interns Honors project- Allotted one per month (2 days max)- To highlight completed honors projects- These are set by Hope unless otherwise specified
Surveys
- Set Priority to Yellow-
- Set to the specific population you are targeting.
- Alert for a maximum of one week.
💡 Toggles {▶️} are expandable and contain more details on the respective guidelines!
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