But what about leadership? Is social media having an impact at the top of the organization chart, outside of the Chief Marketing officer? And how important is it, really, to have senior leaders in organizations participating in social media? After all, a recent study of Fortune 500 CEOs revealed that a full 70% of the CEOs have absolutely zero presence on social media. So while social media may be changing the game in organizations around the marketing function, is it possible that it will have no impact on the people who are actually in charge?
The short answer is, no. A recent survey on social
leadership identifies important ways in which the expectations of how
organizational leaders are involved in social media are going through some
important changes. The survey is based on work Maddie Grant and I did related
to our book Humanize: How People-Centric
Organizations Succeed in a Social World. In late 2012, we conducted a
survey of more than 500 professionals on the topic of social leadership. The
respondents believed very strongly in the value of social media and voiced a
clear connection between organizational success and the involvement of leaders
in the company’s social media efforts.
But there was significant concern that leaders were not as
involved as they should be in social media. While 64% of the respondents
reported that their leaders were involved in social media, there were still 44%
that were concerned that the involvement wasn’t enough. Even when you separate
out the individuals who said their leaders were involved, there were still 29%
that were concerned about the level of involvement.
So does that mean our leaders need to tweet more often? Not
necessarily. In the survey, we provided a list of twelve leadership traits,
asking people to pick out their top four. Included among the traits was
“participates in social media in his/her own voice,” which was included by only
21% of the lists, ranking it tenth among the twelve traits.
It seems that actual social media activity is not nearly as
important as embracing the underlying philosophy of social media. Four of the
top five traits identified (all of which were identified by more than 50% of
respondents) reflected some of the underlying principles that have driven
social media’s success:
· Embraces change
· Transparent, shares information freely
· Values experimentation and even failure
· Open to diverse perspectives.
All of these traits ranked above more traditional leadership
qualities, like “holds people accountable,” brilliant strategist,” or
“leverages best practices.”
Social media is a disruptive force, and it’s not going away.
And the conversation is quickly shifting from how we will be doing our
marketing campaigns differently to how we will be running our organizations
differently. Our employees are expecting more transparency, more change, more
experimentation, and more clarity. Whether or not leaders tweet and post on
Facebook is ultimately not the issue. What will matter more over the long term
is our leaders’ involvement and understanding of the deeper changes that are
happening to our organizational cultures and processes.
Jamie Notter has been speaking and consulting on issues of leadership, conflict, and diversity for twenty years. He started his career in the international conflict resolution field. He spent six years designing and delivering training programs in areas of ethnic conflict. He then moved into working with organizations, initially as a diversity trainer and consultant, and later running his own management consulting practice. His master’s degree is in conflict resolution from George Mason University, and he holds a Certificate in Organization Development from Georgetown, where he serves as adjunct faculty. http://jamienotter.com/
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