Is Social Media Your Best Leadership Toolkit?

While I was in Arizona recently, I spent some time with the Arizona State University School of Social Transformation folks brainstorming an online leadership certificate course for women that we intend to launch in the fall of 2010. We plan to use a social media platform to create an ever-growing network of contacts for the women who participate in the course.

I’d love to get your feedback on the idea and how you would use social media as a leadership toolkit to further your work. What are you wanting to know or learn to use? What social media do you think have the greatest promise for organizational or leadership effectiveness?

This video is jam-packed with data about the power of social media. Take a look. Do you agree with it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8[/youtube]

Check out Joan Koerber-Walker’s blogpost “The End of the One-Way Street” where she offers more of her valuable thoughts on social media.

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11 Comments

  1. Joan Koerber-Walker on August 18, 2009 at 7:02 pm

    Gloria, this sounds like a great program. As an ASU alumna, I am thrilled that you have chosen Arizona State University to partner with.

    Now to your question. How does social media fit in my leadership tool kit?

    I love that you start off by recognizing that social media is a tool for leaders and not a strategy. Social Media – interactive websites, blogs, Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, and more are each separate tools that can be used separately and on concert to 1) deliver information and 2) interact with your audience, employees, customers, and community in general. The days of one-way communication are coming to a close. We have entered into a new era of two-way communication that will help our community of women – and especially our leaders develop stronger relationships, enhance communications, share ideas, and collaborate.

    I am just learning to use these new tools to facilitate these interactions. The more I learn, the better leader I can become. That may be an angle to employ in the course.

    In closing this longer than average comment, here is a short story to illustrate what social media can do.

    You and I met at an ASU Women in Philanthropy event in 2002. Since then we exchanged holiday cards, read an occasional newsletter or email and were loosely connected. As we both began to use the newer social media tools, we began to more actively interact, follow each others projects , introduce each other to friends with shared goals, and those conversations can lead to collaborations in the future. It is this experience that I would hope teaching how to use a social media tool kit can bring to the students in the program at ASU.

    Thanks for starting the process – I will be using my social media tool kit to follow your progress.

    All the best,

    Joan Koerber-Walker
    Chairman of CorePurpose, Inc. and the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation.
    ASU MBA, 2000

  2. Gloria Feldt on August 18, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    Joan, wow, I love your clarity about the difference between tools and strategies. You made what I actually said sound lots better than I said it! Thank you.

    That of course is one reason I wanted to ask the question. There is so much I don’t know, but I am sensing that social media is very forgiving of gaps in knowledge and in fact is such a tremendous source of information, knowledge, and even wisdom to refine any crazy idea or wild-eyed thought (and I have been known to have many of those). Thinking/planning can be an iterative process while doing, constantly bringing in the best ideas and resources from colleagues along the way.

    I also love your telling the story of how we met in the pre-Twitter and Facebook days and how these social media have allowed us to enlarge our connections with one another, as well as with others in our respective circles–as in your generous introduction of Amilya Antonetti and me recently. I hope that Amilya will also comment because she rocks.

  3. CV Harquail on August 18, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    Gloria,

    I’m a big believer in the transformational power of better communication, in this case through social media, where effective communicators can have an exponential impact.

    It’s important for leaders to move towards social media and to ramp up their ‘social media literacy’, not only through learning how to use it in a receptive way (e.g., searching, gathering, reading) but also how to use social media in combination with their own insights, values, and agenda. What will really make a difference for leaders will be skipping ahead of current conventions and figuring out better ways to communicate through social media.

    What I see right now online and with intranets is common practice, and best practice. Best practice almost seems to happen by accident, or by instinct.

    For individual leaders, I’d like to see us be more deliberate and focused, honing the messages and the way we communicate them as well as being saavy about which tools we use to communicate with.

    And, as an organizational scholar, I believe that the real impact of social media will be not for leaders, per se, but for organizations & movements. For every benefit that social media offer to leaders, the impact on organizations is exponential. We have some theory about the demands of transparency, authenticity, networks v heirarchy, listening v telling, etc. and are only beginning to see whether these theories are helping us recognize, much less predict, how social media can be used to amp up collective action.

    My secret belief? (well, maybe not so secret) It’s that feminist leaders, leaders who have a different conceptualization of what it means to lead, to follow, to collaborate, to transform, will find ways to put feminist leadership principles directly into practice using social media. Social media do ask us to act differently, and if we use it well we might be able to leap over the ‘best’ of conventional leadership practice right into transformational feminist leadership practice. I say, Viva la Social Revolucion!

    CV Harquail
    AuthenticOrganizations.com

  4. Amilya Antonetti on August 18, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    Gloria,

    Anytime the topics of “Women” or “Leadership” surface you have peaked my interest. The alignment with ASU just adds to the intrigue. I love the idea !

    My belief is that Social media is here to stay 🙂 How women relate and use these tools clearly is different. Just jump on any of the Social media platforms and the differences are clear. Woman need to acknowledge and see social media as a “tool”. The questions then become how to use these tools for different goals and objectives, to enhance our lives.

    Each day I participate in the various different forms of social media I learn something new. I use these tools to further my voice, my businesses and to establish myself further as a leader. Everyone is looking for ways to shorten the learning curve. Now is a great time to develop a strong program tailored for women. You just have to have the right minds behind the project. Your mind will be strong assist.

    Go Gloria Go 🙂 together all things are possible

    Sending smiles~
    Amilya
    http://www.Amilya.com

  5. Gloria Feldt on August 18, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    CV: This paragraph from your comment, needless to say, touches my heart:

    My secret belief? (well, maybe not so secret) It’s that feminist leaders, leaders who have a different conceptualization of what it means to lead, to follow, to collaborate, to transform, will find ways to put feminist leadership principles directly into practice using social media. Social media do ask us to act differently, and if we use it well we might be able to leap over the ‘best’ of conventional leadership practice right into transformational feminist leadership practice. I say, Viva la Social Revolucion!

    Leadership leaps are a concept that I hope we can explore. It’s different from the famous Wayne Gretsky idea of skating to where the hockey puck is going to be. It’s more like deciding proactively where you want the puck to go in the first place and finding just the right moment and skills to get it there. This seems to be the right moment for a feminist leadership leap.

  6. Gloria Feldt on August 18, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    Amilya, when you say you use these tools “to further your voice”, that strikes me as an incredibly important use of social media for women. Voice to me is such a metaphor for women’s place in the world. Voice in the literal sense and voice in the sense of being heard a a presence and taken seriously as a person and a leader. In asynchronous social media, our voices are as “loud” as men’s are. It’s a great leveler.

    Thanks for these insights, and please keep them coming!

  7. MadamaAmbi on August 18, 2009 at 7:06 pm

    Gloria–this is very interesting. Just yesterday I was looking at some schools in the Bay Area because I was searching for how to write to Starhawk, who was one of my teachers in grad school. The cutting-edge progressive schools that I remember from that time have not all survived; in fact, I just discovered that New College of California imploded in February 2008. It’s sad news because it leaves many great teachers and courageous students in the lurch.

    I also visited the site of California Institute for Integral Studies and noticed that they are offering online courses and using the words “transformation” and “leadership.” I believe you can even earn your PhD via an online program!

    My ideas about leadership include self-knowledge. It’s really not enough, these days, to have the courage to step up, take risks, and motivate others. The 21st century is not just about more voices exploding everywhere, more ideas circulating virally, memes, webinars and branding. It’s a little like high-definition TV, imo. Once you get over how cool everything looks, you still need good content.

    The requirements for living in this world have gotten steeper since I was growing up. A college degree is now the equivalent of a high school diploma. Media literacy is the new critical thinking…sometimes. But here’s my point: the new requirement for leadership is not just vision, but it’s also self-knowledge. The self-knowledge has to communicate across media, across messages, across gender, across class, across race and so on.

    Leaders of today have to use media to show what they’re REALLY made of, because we’re living in increasingly transparent houses with 24/7 smartphones that record and broadcast every twitch of our mouths, every blink of our eyes, every telling, unconscious touch to the nose. The more you know who you are and how you came to be that person, the more real you can be. When you have learned to listen to your real self, you can really listen to other people.

    How do we help women discover who they really are when we are living in patriarchal structures that obscure and constrain the authentic powerful woman? We have a lot of uncovering and re-imagining to do.

  8. Gloria Feldt on August 18, 2009 at 7:06 pm

    Madama, you’ve laid out a tall order! One of the biggest challenges of creating the kind of leadership program we intend to have is to determine how much of the time gets spent on the inner work and how much on the skill building part. Getting that balance and synergy right so that each participant can get what she needs will in my mind be key.

    “You still need good content”, as you say, in this very complex world. Thanks for your eloquent words.

  9. MadamaAmbi on August 19, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    Gloria–when I did my masters in feminist psychotherapy, half of the curriculum was psychology, under a chair who was a PhD in clinical psychology and in private practice. The other half of the curriculum was Women’s Studies, chaired by a PhD who was actually anti-psychological and who thought that all of the pathologies we see in the clinic are caused by the power imbalances in patriarchy.

    The final piece of work in that program was to integrate these two schools of thought. I have no memory of if or how I integrated anything back then, although I can tell you that I felt the tension between activism and psychotherapy in a very real way. I would probably have to sit down and write at length in order to see articulate how well I’ve integrated these dual and dueling challenges. But I’ll tell you one thing that has to be in any curriculum dealing with women and leadership, and that’s women’s group. If you’re interested in discussing further, give me a ringy dingy!

  10. Jen Nedeau on August 20, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    I love this video – and yes, I think it’s true. Social Media is collapsing the hierarchy of information and often, social structures. While I do see Social Media mimicking certain offline attitudes – especially along class and racial divides – I think it really is not only a new version of the printing press, but something that is radically changing how humans connect, engage and talk to each other in a very fundamental way.

    Thanks for posting!

  11. Gloria Feldt on August 20, 2009 at 7:08 pm

    Jen, thanks for your insight about social media collapsing the hierarchy of information and other pecking orders.

    One of my favorite books is called “Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be”, in which the author Walter Truett Anderson argues that our technology isn’t something external to ourselves but rather becomes a part of ourselves, an extension of our brains. (Or maybe it was his later book “Evolution Isn’t What It Used to Be”, but you get the idea.)

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