What is Social Leadership?
Social Leadership is the practice of using digital tools to influence people at work.
Why should you care about influencing people at work? Because if you want to make a big difference in the world (and hopefully some financial profits along the way), you cannot do it alone - you have to bring people with you. In a multi-site hospitality, retail or care organisation (the sectors in which we specialise at Yapster) this typically means leading tens, hundreds or even thousands of distributed frontline colleagues with whom you do not (and cannot!) have much of an in-person relationship.
Many readers will already have way more experience of leadership than I do. Good news for you: that means you’re already way past 50% of the way towards being a ‘Social Leader’. I say this because ‘leading’ effectively in any capacity is hard and if you can do it offline it’s a relatively modest progression to do it online too.
HOWEVER, do not think that just because leading online is only a small leap from leading in-person, it’s not a big deal if you fail to acquire digital leadership skills. In this article I’m going to take on a brief tour through the history of leadership to show you that leaders who’ve failed to adopt new technologies through history have been destroyed by their more adaptive rivals. By the end of this article I hope you will agree with me that transitioning from Old School Leader to Social Leader will soon be a matter of life or death, corporately speaking.
So without further ado, let me transport you to…
THE BIRTH OF SOCIETY
When society started out, the notion of “power” was rooted in the divine or the mythical. Take King Arthur and his famous sword trapped in a stone, or the Divine Right of Kings. Back then, rulers only ruled because they happened to be born into the right family, or because they happened to command the strongest armies.
Unsurprisingly, leaders were often authoritarian, demanding and dominating. They induced fear in their followers by using coercion, and often exhibited brutality in order to control.
And those who did want to be liked were far too disconnected from their audience to know how to go about it!
Back in the day, good leaders were rare. Violent or not, very few were capable of powerfully and effectively leading a team.
...AND THEN THE GREEKS CAME ALONG
The Greeks conceived the notion of public speaking over 2,000 years ago.
Rhetoric was the main component of speech delivery - there were no lawyers back then so people were expected to speak for and defend themselves - and so it became a critical skill for citizens, in both their public and private lives.
Oral communication had a huge impact on the notion of leadership. Now, serious matters could be approached with words. Brain could triumph over brawn, reason over brute emotion.
The leadership landscape was evolving, and so were modes of communication.
Fast forward a few hundred years and we find ourselves in the 1400’s...
THE PRINTED WORD
I’m not sure about you folks but for me, it’s becoming an increasing struggle to relay a story I’ve just heard. That’s why the oral culture started looking for ways of storing what had been said.
Enter “the scribal culture”. Basically this was little men in funny hats writing the same things over and over again. As you can imagine, scribing - like orally relaying - was prone to mistakes. So they had to come up with a new solution. Print.
And printing was quick. Speedy printing meant a rapid propagation of ideas, which resulted in knowledge and cultural movements that were more deeply embedded and much harder to destroy.
What you should be starting to notice now is the correlation between communication and leadership. With each new style of communication, new movements and types of leaders emerge.
TESTING, TESTING, ONE, TWO, THREE
So, 400 years after print came the Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi. He proved the feasibility of radio communication when he sent and received his first radio signal in Italy.
Forty years after that, in 1939, Winston Churchill’s voice was transmitted through the airwaves. In a diary entry written when he was 22, he claimed this...
That "of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king.”
This idea of power being made durable through speech is explored in the 2010 film The King’s Speech.
Spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen it…. The film alludes to the British monarchy’s recognition of the growing influence of radio on public perception, despite their reservations about its impact on their privacy.
I’m sure you’ll all agree that a voice reveals an authenticity of emotion unmatched by the written word. But trust Americans to take this one step further...with the film star president.
AND ACTION!
In 1981, after a 27-year career in acting, Ronald Reagan became the 40th President of the United States. As the first American President to have been an actor, Reagan was one step ahead of the game. He was uniquely comfortable communicating through the medium of TV. His on-screen confidence, coupled with his appealing personality and folksy charm, earned him the title of ‘The Great Communicator’ - which was a key factor in his election victory.
Reagan’s success - like Churchill’s - could be attributed to the fact that he utilised the era’s most popular media platform in order to engage with the widest possible audience. With TV sets more readily available than ever before, Reagan could deliver his message directly…
But having such a widespread reach did come at a cost….
In order to have such a powerful on-screen presence, Reagan was forced to relegate editorial control. News reporters and journalists would re-deliver his messages, sometimes skewing their intended meaning.
Implication being - he wasn’t as in control over his public presence as it might have seemed.
And now, jumping a few decades, we find ourselves here - now.
SOCIAL MEDIA
I think it’s safe to say that social media has revolutionized the way leaders communicate to their audience.
Would a time-travelling Ronald Reagan have been able to beat either Presidents Obama or Trump without Facebook or Twitter campaigning? My strong belief is no, he wouldn’t. Success as a leader comes from the potent combination of leadership talent plus effective use of the communication technology of the day.
And this is where social leadership really comes into play. The most successful leaders are those who embrace their audiences’ preferred ways of communicating, which today is through digital platforms.
Social media has made direct communication more time, cost effective and measurable than ever before.
So, as a social leader, how can you use social media to fulfil your role as an influencer within your business?
First let's consider the various ways there are to communicate across social media:
Broadcasting - this is a great way of getting important information out to the widest possible audience
Reacting & engaging - This links to ways in which people engage and respond to other people’s broadcasts
Direct communication or talking - simply, the way we engage in day to day conversations.
And guess what? Yapster does ALL of that.
We’re enabling our customers to turbo charge their influence and become real social leaders.
They can do this through:
Broadcasting - members of staff can post on the newsfeed to share information directly across the company
Reacting & engaging - employees can comment or react to news feed posts in order to really engage with the people they work with
Direct communication - group yaps and 1-2-1 chats are the perfect way to maintain day to day contact with colleagues and departments
KNOW YOUR REACH
Social influence isn’t always easy to measure. You might think you’re communicating effectively company-wide, but how far are your messages really reaching?
Is it mainly your peers or departments who are reacting and engaging with your posts?
Are your broadcasts effective in reaching their intended audience?
Are most of your group and 1-2-1 chats had with members of your close-knit team?
In short, what’s the true extent of your social influence?
In response to this, we’ve developed a way to measure - through Yapster - how successful leaders are as social influencers.
We’ve created individual influencer profiles so users can now track who they’re most engaging with and how.
