Reprinted with permission.
Social business is all about democratization—about empowering a workforce of social employees to act as nimble, self-sufficient brand ambassadors in the digital bazaar. But if that’s true, then what role does leadership have in an era where the command-and-control model of business is quickly being supplanted?
As coauthor Mark Burgess (@MNBurgess) and I explain in our book The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, 2013), leadership in any era is about providing a vision of where business is headed and guiding your organization in that general direction. Right now, that direction is social, an organizing structure in which employees are far more likely to buy in to new processes when they have a model to follow—and perhaps learn alongside.
How important is it? We’ll let these numbers from a 2014 BRANDFog study (which surveyed over a thousand U.S.- and U.K.-based employees) do the talking:
- 75 of those surveyed felt that executive social engagement fosters better overall leadership.
- 82 percent agreed that CEO engagement produces industry leadership, and 77 percent agreed that leadership enhances credibility among both internal and external stakeholders.
Social leadership boosts credibility both in your organization and in the public sphere—inevitably leading to higher-quality job applicants. But how do social leaders impact organizational culture? Here’s how Josh Bersin (@Josh_Bersin), in his “Predictions for 2015” report, sees it:
[Social leaders] are responsible for employee engagement, employee development, and developing their own successors. … leaders must be incented to develop and retain their people. Otherwise, the organization as a whole will suffer. (p. 43)
Social leadership is about establishing a level of quality and expectations to which future employees will aspire. It’s about building brand eminence in the present while simultaneously laying a foundation for the future.
But how do you do it?
Put a premium on education and training. Build an organizational culture that doesn’t just learn, but that values learning.
And do it in a way that empowers employees to learn on their own. At IBM, Scott Edwards is a champion of the 70:20:10 learning model, which works something like this: Employee learning is 70 percent self-directed, 20 percent mentoring and coaching and 10 percent formal training. Following this, formal training efforts built around employee empowerment will provide employees with the tools and critical thinking skills necessary for employees to seek answers on their own.
And often, when somebody discovers a bit of valuable knowledge, they’re going to want to share it. These are your leaders in the making, bubbling up to the surface through the process of social learning and eager to spread the word. So whatever platform you provide to help them share just make sure that it’s accessible to others in the organization, who will then be able to address similar needs more efficiently—and through a trusted internal channel.
From there, the knowledge base of your organization can only grow—raising the bar of what your employees can accomplish and establishing your brand eminence within the industry.
Sounds like a win-win to me.