Leadership Overview
Creating Bandwidth
Leading a GEG takes time and commitment and we are endlessly impressed with the effort educators put in to growing their community through Google Groups and beyond. We have also noticed that vibrant communities have often developed distributed leadership structures where a team contributes towards keeping the GEG engaging and inspiring.
Therefore, we are providing the following for GEGs that need to develop a more distributed leadership structure.
GEG Leadership Structure
GEG Mentor
Mentors are current GEG leaders who specialize in specific areas of the GEG Program and lead and support GEG leaders regionally. Mentors offer support and coordination, a single point of contact, and coaching.
As a mentor, you may have regional meetings with Google, be able to support new and existing GEGs in your regions (APAC, EMEA, LATAM, NA) with event support, and receive an exclusive GEG Mentor Badge!
GEG Mentors must be nominated by 2 current GEG Leaders in your region & your Regional Google Rep will review applications on a rolling basis / reach out accordingly.
GEG Leader
GEG Leaders are responsible for managing and leading their community including moderating the Google Groups community, running events and generally supporting and inspiring the membership. GEG leaders record events and meetups in the Edu Activity App.
Co-leadership has helped a number of thriving GEG communities keep a regular and high standard of online and offline activity.
GEG Leaders must be nominated by another GEG Leader, and that can be done below.
GEG Captains
GEG Captains are new roles to support GEG leaders to maintain a thriving community or help build one up. They are chosen by the GEG leader to take on key roles within the GEG community that provide support and leadership capacity to the GEG leader.
GEG leaders can choose four GEG Captains. You do not need Google approval to select your Captains!
Empower Captain
Responsible for developing distributed leadership across the GEG leveraging the wider membership.
Share Captain
Responsible for keeping the community engaged with relevant content.
Inclusivity Captain
Responsible for supporting all leaders, captains and members to create an inclusive community.
Inspire Captain
Responsible for organising events for the GEG members
Learn Captain
Responsible for providing professional development for members on the effective use of technology in education.
GEG Captains are not required to report via the Edu Activity App. It is still the responsibility of the GEG leader to report events and meet-ups.
Passing the leadership to other co-leaders
Hey, it happens. Life changes and you might have to move away from your GEG. If you don't have an obvious successor, personally identify and contact a few people who you think could take on the role. If they decline, or you can't think of anyone, you can do a general shoutout. You can email the entire list, put a post on your GEG Google Groups Community , tweet about it (maybe someone new wants to come in and do it), and generally ask around. Another good way is to hold a final event, get people excited, and then say "But we need your help to continue..."
If you HAVE a willing successor: Make sure to give them access to all GEG Pages/websites/mailing lists/groups/Meetup page/domain, etc. or any other entity that they'll need to administer. Use this form to nominate your successor so that all the contact info can be changed and to indicate you are nominating someone as your successor. To become a leader they will need to fill out the GEG Leader Application form and agree to the Terms and Conditions to get access to the Leader Portal.
If you DON'T have a successor after a reasonable search: See if you can find someone within the group to maintain ownership of the digital properties until someone else expresses interest in running the group. Or, stay around in a greatly reduced capacity to maintain the digital properties until someone expresses interest in taking over. Either way, contact your regional Google contact about the situation. The GEG will be de-activated until a new leader steps up.
