+ @SheilaM and @ChrissyL as they are the managers of Lithium's moderation team, they may have some great insight to add!
To anyone here managing moderation teams, I'd love to see your feedback too!
As I worked alongside Sheila and managed moderators in my previous role, here's my advice:
Create Moderator Guidelines
It is very important to set clear guidelines for moderators. Guidelines should contain processes for handling every major and most minor scenarios, as well as best practices you want them to follow. Training to these guidelines should help with most pitfalls.
Our best practices and recommended processes can be found in a default Moderator Guidelines template we have (while it needs to be updated, it's still VERY relevant): https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Launching-your-site/Launch-Moderation-Guidelines-template/ta-p/6812
Set expectations on how to best communicate and set a positive atmosphere
A great moderator is impartial and moderates to the User Guidelines set in your community. The User Guidelines can help govern the tone you want to set for users and moderators help enforce this in their communications.
Ideally, this is in the Moderator Guidelines. We have four absolute requirements for moderation in that linked document towards the end, which I highly recommend teaching them.
As the manager, check in regularly and give feedback to the moderators
Review what they are doing now vs. your previous senior moderators. Incorporate that into regular feedback to them on how to improve in their roles.
All of this really ties into the guidelines, but they are important to maintaining consistency. It will take time, but with that clear direction and feedback from you, they will improve!
Also, we have training videos for Moderators in Lithium Campus, so I recommend reaching out to education@lithium.com to request that for your moderation team.
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