What the CLM Flywheel taught me about people leadership

There’s a very specific kind of silence that happens when an idea quietly rearranges something in your brain.

I had that moment while staring at a diagram as Joe, our CEO, walked me through HeyOrca’s community-led marketing flywheel.

“This is the CLM flywheel,” he said.

But to me, all I could think about was "this is the employee journey."

Let me explain.

People start as strangers to your brand, so you focus on getting in front of the right ones through employer branding. 

Then you invite them in – they apply, they bring their talents to your mission, and they probably chose you because your values resonated with them. Once they are on board, you nurture that relationship by understanding their growth goals, helping them build connections to both their work and the people they work with, and creating an environment where they genuinely feel like they belong. 

And if you do all of that well – if you show them the care they deserve – they become advocates for you, your brand, and your workplace, even long after they have moved on to their next opportunity.

That is the community-led marketing flywheel. And it is also just . . . good people leadership.

At its core, community-led marketing is about listening to your community, understanding their needs, and creating experiences where they feel seen, heard, and valued. 

When people feel those things, they engage more, they show up more, and they bring others along with them. 

The same is true for workplace culture – when people feel like they truly belong somewhere, they are more likely to be engaged, bring their best work, and genuinely enjoy being there. 

What is community-led marketing, anyway?

Community-led marketing (CLM) is a marketing strategy that grows your brand by creating spaces where people feel seen, valued, and connected. Instead of pushing content for clicks or conversions, it builds belonging, encourages participation, and turns members into advocates.

The core message of the strategy is simple: invite your audience to voice their needs, interests, and opinions, and earn their attention by creating content and spaces that feel like they were made specifically for them.

When you do that well, something magical happens – your community becomes highly engaged, they feel genuinely valued, and they start telling everyone about you. They stop being just followers and become advocates.

For me, that is true belonging. It is finding a brand, business, or community where you see yourself, where the values match what matters most to you, and where you can genuinely connect with the people around you. 

HeyOrca believes a thriving community is built on three things: 

1. People with a shared identity
2. A space to gather and interact
3. An environment of belonging that keeps them coming back

And that is exactly what people are looking for in a workplace, too. People on average spend 23.7% of their year at work (almost as much as they sleep, which is around 33%), pouring their professional passions into a company and a mission, and I truly believe that happiness fuels success. 

When you find a place where you feel valued, heard, and seen in the people around you, work stops feeling like work. That is belonging, and that is what a great culture is built on.

Before someone can add to your culture, you first need to attract them to it – that’s where the flywheel comes in and how I made the correlation to an employee journey.  

The CLM Flywheel meets the employee journey

The Community-Led Marketing flywheel has three stages: Invite, Participate, and Advocate. 

On the surface, these stages were designed for marketing. But when I saw them laid out, I immediately recognized something familiar. 

These are the same stages a person moves through as an employee.

Invite

In a marketing context, the Invite stage is about attracting the right people to your community; people who genuinely align with what you stand for. 

For people leaders, this is employer branding. You are not just looking for the most talented candidates, you are looking for the ones who will thrive in your culture and bring their own personal spin to it.

At HeyOrca, our OSCAR principles are the very first thing we evaluate for in our hiring process, and we believe in them so much that the culture interview is our first step.

Participate

This is where the magic happens. In the Participate stage, the community member is invited to shape their own experience, and the same should be true for employees. 

This is where all the best parts of the employee journey live: onboarding, learning and development, 1:1 conversations, engagement surveys, committees, and ERGs. It is where you find out what matters most to each person.

In my experience, this stage is most successful (and most delightful) when you give people a genuine voice and ownership over their experience. 

I like to call this "voice and choice." I cannot take credit for the principle, but I have built every program and initiative I lead with it in mind. It means asking my team what matters most to them, what they want to see, and then giving them real choices whenever I can.

One of my favourite examples is how we approach employee recognition at HeyOrca. We collect everyone's favourite stores and preferred appreciation style during onboarding, so that when it is time to celebrate someone, it actually feels personal. 

Amplify

From a marketing lens, the Amplify stage is about business growth – your community loves what you do so much that they tell everyone about it. 

From a people leadership lens, it means something even more personal. It is the stage where all those delightful feelings and memorable moments an employee has collected carry with them long after they have moved on.

My time in hospitality taught me the power of this. A hotel guest leaves empty-handed – their money and time result in nothing tangible. But when they leave feeling deeply valued, they come back. They tell their friends. They become advocates for an experience instead of a thing.

That is exactly what great culture does. The impact of how you made someone feel does not end on their last day. That’s what brings people back to your brand, and that is how the memory and impact of your own culture will then continue past the life span of your employees.

From broadcasting to building

As people leaders, I really encourage you to think about the power behind what community-led marketing is teaching us. 

Whether you have a marketing background or not, empowering the people in your workplace to shape their own experiences has a very positive impact – on them and on your business. Think about how you attract the best people to your organization, how you help them align with your values and add to your culture, and how you can find ways to uncover what means most to them so you can personalize their experience.

Ask yourself: Am I broadcasting to my team, or building with them? Are you giving them a sense of ownership over their work and experience?

If you want to start somewhere, I would really encourage you to discover what means the most to the people in your workplace. 

Set up a 1:1 or get your team together for a "Tell Me" session – which is really just a chat to ask open-ended questions that help you understand what truly motivates each person, so you can bring more personalization to every conversation instead of painting everyone with the same brush. 

Here are a few to get you started:

• Tell me... how you like to be appreciated and recognized for your efforts and impact?
• Tell me... how you want to be remembered in two years?
• Tell me... when was the last time you felt truly seen at work?
• Tell me... what is a recent project you worked on that felt meaningful and why?

Community is not just a marketing strategy. It is how memorable moments are made, impactful cultures are built, and a sense of belonging is uncovered. 

Feeling inspired? Download our free eBook about community-led marketing to learn more.