Social Media is Changing Leadership [DATA]

The survey questions gathered data on their perspectives about social media implementation in organizations, particularly related to leadership and how leaders are leveraging social media for organizational results. The results of the survey, completed mostly by individuals who work in organizations that are actively using social tools, provide some interesting insights about the deep ways in which social media has become a disruptive force in our organizations.

Here's some of what the research revealed:

• 84% agree that leadership involvement in social media gives their company a competitive edge.
• 84% agree that communicating core values via social media is integral to leadership (46% strongly agree).
• Only 4% agreed that a leader’s social media involvement should be limited to crisis situations.
• And 44% are concerned about the lack of involvement by their leaders in social media.

However, the research revealed some interesting nuances in terms of what "involvement" actually means when we're talking about the leadership (eg the C-suite).

Even in companies where the leadership was involved in social media, 29% were concerned it wasn’t enough.

The trick, of course, is in understanding a more nuanced definition of “involved.” When respondents elaborated on their answers about leader involvement in social media, they got into some of the grey areas:

• Actually the answer is "kinda." One of our leaders is involved but is quite busy so he can't be as involved as I'd like.  The other is absent.
• 2 out of 8 are involved in FB.  1 out of eight on Twitter, etc.
• Accounts and some activity on twitter, facebook, linkedin
• But not significantly, and not in a coordinated fashion.
• He creates blog entries and some tweets, but it's very spotty and not a continuous policy.

Involvement can mean participation on social media sites, but even participation may vary among leaders both in terms of quality and quantity. So checking the box of “involved” doesn’t necessarily alleviate all concerns. And social media participation in and of itself may not be the most important factor for involvement. 

Why? Because we asked respondents to rate their top four out of twelve leadership traits, and it just so happened that six were traditional command-and-control traits ( providing clear direction, brilliant strategist, leverages best practices, charismatic, holds people accountable, and commands loyalty from employees), whereas the other six were "Humanize" traits -  embraces change, values experimentation and failure, open to diverse perspectives, transparent and shares information freely, comfortable with conflict and participates in social media in his/her own voice.

"Participates on social media in his/her own voice?"  that was the third-lowest on the list.  But four out of the top five were Humanize traits. And arguably, the top choice, "provides clear direction", is both a Humanize trait and a command and control trait depending on whether you emphasize "clear" or "direction".

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