 "Riding the wave")
The experience of a corporate trainer based in Delhi nails the problem. About three years ago when he started putting in place social media training sessions for corporates he found these exercises were invariably thronged by junior and mid-level executives. For reasons he couldn't fathom then, the senior leadership at the organisations hosting his sessions never turned up. Then he started tweaking his programme in bits and pieces. From public workshops at hotels he switched to private workshops and one-to-one sessions within corporate premises. More and more senior executives started joining these private workshops and gradually opened up about their concerns related to the right use of social media. That was the first battle he won. Now many of his clients in senior executive positions are working towards setting long- and short-term social media objectives.
The bad news: the numbers are still woefully small. As a leader, you know social media is a great way to connect with employees and other stakeholders, but you're still rather fuzzy on how you're supposed to listen to them or talk to them. Despite the hype and the increasing investments, organisations are still struggling to 'relate social media investments to bottom line benefits. Worse, only 10 per cent of enterprises say they are realising significant improvements to their business as a result of social media investments (source: TCS Global Trend Report).
The good news: We're already seeing it start to happen.
The formula is simple really. Real time information exchange within teams and across the organisation equals nimble decision-making, equals better outcomes. As companies rely more on social collaboration tools, the biggest gainers are going to be the C-suite decision makers - and not just because they can fan, friend or fire subordinates. In a highly competitive and volatile marketplace, decision-makers can use online social platforms to arrive at better decisions and to increase productivity. Internally, this would include understanding and influencing inter-department relationships, improving collaboration among teams, and externally this would mean creating new channels for research and increasing responsiveness to customers.
So what are the social media skills every leader needs to have to be more effective? How indeed do they make him effective in the first place?
To make the connection, consider your social media presence as a tool to advertise your corporate brand. Just like with networking in-person, there are secrets to smart social media networking. Apply these proven principles of in-person networking to social networking and you'll catch the attention of your subordinates and your customers outside.
Now the caveat: this article is not about what one can do across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. There is enough literature available on that. The whole idea here is to open up your mind to the possibilities.
Begin at the beginning
If you really break it down to the basics, what are your main responsibilities as a leader? To listen to your people, to deliver to your customers and to enhance shareholder value. So broadly, you should be a good listener to make good and early decisions, a good communicator to enhance internal collaboration within sales teams and last but not the least, you should be able to show results. Presumably there are teams to work out the nitty-gritty and execute the day-to-day chores.
In all this, the power and speed of the social media is amazing. Used within enterprises, social tools can make conversations among people in different functions (for instance, finance, marketing, customer service) visible and searchable. This lets everyone related to a particular job share valuable information. Trained users of advanced knowledge management processes can then track and tag these interactions to build a company's institutional knowledge and data base.
What's best, new team members can ramp up quickly by having this information readily accessible.
In terms of responsiveness to your outside audience, social platforms can cut down the time it takes for prospective customers to get an answer on prices, after sales and a host of company related issues. Indeed, social platforms can take the place of e-mail, allowing the first qualified person who sees a customer request to start responding. There are several instances where we've seen answer time drop from days to hours. That's huge - it saves both the company and the customer a lot of frustration. The bonus: using social media to communicate with outside customers creates visibility for the entire corporate team, lending it the much vaunted 'human touch'. Think about it: this is far more efficient than entering information into a traditional CRM system.
Remember, as a leader you have to show results. The best way to do this is through tangible examples. Try to quantify the impact of your strategic decisions and show how the outcome of a particular project ties directly back to the actions you helped facilitate. Put it up on your internal social platform. If not your Facebook page will do. This will keep both the internal stakeholders and the outside audience in the loop. This also provides competitors with tangible, contextual representations of your organisation's strengths and successes.
Now look at the contradiction. While every company talks about the significance of an 'open door' policy, organisational hierarchies defeat the whole open-door premise. When The Strategist got in touch with CEOs, CEO coaches and HR heads of various companies to understand what comes in the way of senior leadership getting on to the platform, one thing came across as a big surprise: the fear that social media will make them accessible to both experts and non-experts. Second, senior leadership is not clear on what kind of information should be shared. Even if they solve this problem, the next hurdle is the thin line between personal opinion of the leader and what he shares in his capacity as a company spokesperson. It is chaos when the two are mixed up. Third, there is little clarity on how a company's social media decisions impact its business results. This is also the reason why social media is never a topic of discussion at board meetings.
The other refrain among business leaders is that social media demands undivided attention and that's what most people in the C-suites are unable to provide. This is ironical if one subscribes to the theory that once people reach the C-suite, technical and functional expertise matter less than leadership skills and a grasp of business fundamentals. To cut to the chase, mastery of social media communication should be treated less as a mastery of the technicalities of the various social media platforms but rather as a tool that can enhance your performance as a leader.
So give up control and stress on collaboration.
To become a social media expert, begin by acknowledging someone else-presumably someone younger - might know better. In this scenario, reverse mentoring can make a difference as the parties involved can co-create something of greater value by pooling fresh and seasoned ideas. The young executives occupying smaller cubicles in your office are hooked onto the social media… kind of naturally… which makes them experts in a way. But this will not happen instantly because of the simple reason that the concept of reverse mentoring has not really been practiced on a large scale, at least in India. This is where your HR department should step in to, first, facilitate these conversations and second, to create in-house programmes on social media.
Understand what connects
After studying social media guidelines set by your organisation, decide the topics on which you would like to share your opinions on. Learn from leaders who have been there, done that. Chairman and managing director of Mahindra Group Anand Mahindra is one of the most interesting business leaders to follow on Twitter (with more than a million followers) because he has managed to grasp the complex art of engagement. He clearly knows that broadcasting his opinion on the automobile industry may not be appealing to his current and prospective followers. Going against the grain, he started tweeting on a variety of topics including car launches, current affairs, festivals etc. Interestingly, he has a knack for uploading pics along with gripping captions. This is what he tweeted on December 30 last year: "Switched from my XUV to the e2o. My driver's a little unnerved since the loudest sound in the car is the AC." The tweet was accompanied with a close up pic of Mahindra e20's dashboard. Great way to advertise your brand.
Yashwant Mahadik, senior vice-president, head of HR business transformation, and global head of learning, Philips, is another Twitter junkie who uses the platform to disseminate his views on HR-related issues, technology, and at times just about anything under the sun. One of his recent tweets is on how to "recruit internal talent into key leadership roles instead of just finding external talent".
As of now there is no research to establish the link between the popularity of a leader and its effects on brand engagement levels for a company he represents. Going by the fan following of certain leaders, the day when this will be measured is not far.
Fix an impending crisis
If done correctly, social media has been of great help for companies and their leaders during crises situations. In October last year, social media platform Buffer was hacked. Usually companies break all ties with the external world in such situations. At least that's how RIM reacted when Blackberry services were interrupted for days globally a few years back.
Spearheaded by co-founder CMO Leo Widrich, Buffer communicated with media, customers and their greater social audience instantly. Barely 20 minutes after people started talking about spam tweets and Facebook posts appearing on behalf of some Buffer users, the platform sent its first tweet acknowledging the problem. Andy, a Buffer representative, tweeted in response to each and every mention it received at the peak of the crisis. All the while, the company staff was also communicating across their blog, Twitter, and Facebook to ensure customers knew how things were unfolding away from their eyes. Customers later praised the company for its transparency and timely communication.
So stop perceiving your presence on social media as just a must-do-since-competition-is-also-at-it thing. It is not tactical anymore; social media literacy is increasingly a source of your strategic advantage. Remember, consumers are going to talk about you and your brand whether you are there or not.
With inputs from Om Manchanda, CEO, Dr Lal PathLabs; VK Madhav Mohan, leadership expert and management mentor; Nimesh Shah, co-Founder, Windchimes Communications; Simran Oberoi, senior knowledge consultant, Society for Human Resource Management; and Kapil Ohri, planning director at OgilvyOne among others.
| 5 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR PRESENCE FELT ON THE SOCIAL MEDIA |
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Social media networking isn't a one-time effort, but takes continual nurturing and energy on your part. You should seem keen on helping other people. Talk about your favourite sports team and see your relationships propel forward faster
Social media is not about one-off postings. The book extract we have published on Page 2 this week has some cues on how to keep the conversation going. Make sure your team is updating Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+ accounts regularly
Networking is not about advertising yourself; If you focus on sharing content your subordinates/customers have tweeted or posted, comment on their opinions, and leave insightful thoughts on their blogs, you will go a long way in building a strong relationship
One secret to appearing 'human' is asking for advice. Ask open questions on new products and plans from your company or even things completely unrelated. Online or off, you can't be formal all the time or play boss every time. Such a move might just spark new ideas
