In my book Paradigm Flip, I explain that “Leadership has never been easy, but the technology available today can help.” Simply put, digital social media is the single greatest tool available to leaders, for maximizing influence.
Twenty-five years ago, if someone offered you a tool to effectively reach thousands of people, instantly, with text, audio and video, where recipients could provide you instant feedback, you’d be amazed. Yet this tool is available to you, for free, today. Common to most leaders are 4 timeless challenges that social media helps solve:
1. Trust
Leaders today face an inherited tax of lacking trust. In an online leadership Q&A session, several thought leaders identified trust as a challenge for leaders. Leaders must prove their trustworthiness.
How Social Media Supports Trust
The leader with integrity speaks a commitment and follows through. Any debates over commitment may be cleared up immediately, directly with stakeholders. Leaders can immediately explain their actions and receive feedback from the community. If the leader does not have sound reasoning for divergence from a plan, they have an integrity problem – not a communication problem.
2. Accountability
Effective leaders must also drive accountability throughout the organization. Prior to digital social media, it was easy for team leads to say one thing and do another. Promises could be lost in translation. There was plenty of opportunity to manipulate or reverse commitments.
How Social Media Supports Accountability
Now, the digitally printed word follows seconds behind the spoken. Furthermore, collaboration tools, with embedded social media capabilities, enable contributors to connect, share, commit and execute quicker than ever before.
3. Prioritization
Most leaders do not lack for ideas. Instead, the problem most leaders face is prioritizing which opportunity to commit limited resources to, first. Unfortunately, the squeaky wheel often gets the oil.
How Social Media Supports Prioritization
In public platforms, like Twitter and LinkedIn, leaders clearly see the top priority of constituents. Whether it’s ratings, +1s or likes on a complaint, demand for action is more easily quantified than ever before.
4. Alignment
Often, in a meeting, a leader receives nodding heads of agreement. Then, post-meeting discussion may divert, with comments like, “they didn’t really mean that…” or “that’s just the issue of the week…”. As a result, alignment can be quickly lost.
How Social Media Supports Alignment
Leave the meeting and send a post about how excited you are, to start. Then, the next day, do the same. Consistently provide updates over social channels and your community will quickly understand this is not just the issue of the week and you did really mean what you said.
Social media offers leaders the opportunity to join the communities of their stakeholders, share more easily, more frequently and receive more direct feedback than ever before. It baffles me that more people don’t recognize this incredible power and potential social media holds for leadership influence. If you want to serve your stakeholders to the best of your ability, open up your social media toolbox and start building solutions to these common leadership challenges.
Are there other leadership challenges that social media can help solve? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
About 4 or 5 years ago, I wrote an article for a site and discussed the idea that it seems like everyone and their dogs are becoming social media experts. Over the years I have read books about Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, Social Media, and Search Engine Optimization; and to be frank, most of them are not that good, especially for the most important demographic of this knowledge – leaders and business owners trying to grasp this new digital landscape. I was afraid that the right book was not going to come along.
One of my current clients is woman who has had an important career as an executive of a large, metropolitan hospital. She has been, and is, by anyone’s standards, a leader.
