Social Artistry – The Lauren Klein

Change Management, a required work stream in Social Business

Break through results can only be realized in Communities if your social business strategy approach includes this work stream. Often the time and resources needed to do this right are overlooked or perhaps simply nebulous because we have to deliver on today’s results. It is so hard to insert the argument if your company views the effort as another tool rollout. So, just a few thoughts this morning around key activities in the change management work stream:

1. Do engage with HR to create the conditions or the environment for your program or organization to achieve results. Call it culture change or innovation – but do engage with HR.

2. Share key industry research, white papers or blogs with leadership over time so that they can learn from their peers outside of your organization.

3. Do what your mother told you when you were young – LEAD BY EXAMPLE. Requires a lot of effort, but do work across the organization and departments to encourage cross pollination.

4. Document, post, comment and work out loud in an open forum so that anyone in the organization can find your work at their moment of need. Yes, work out loud.

5. Invite, extend, flex and don’t let the trolls get you down.

As leaders of change programs, we must be continuous learners ourselves. What this means is that we should always ask for feedback, modify, pivot and adjust and adapt along the way. We extend invitations for new conversations and possibilities along the way, while making sure we don’t let any turkeys get us down. Most importantly, work across the organization with your approach so that this new social business program encompasses people, process and technology. If you hire vendors, encourage them to partner alongside the strategy, design, build and engagement work stream so that you can create the conditions that will allow you to realize the business objectives outlined as a part of your effort. And yes do consider thinking about Digital Disruption and Leapfrogging as concepts in your approaches.

Courageous European Community Director

Randi Hognestad directs community and network events in Europe. Based in Norway, this tireless community weaver has deep connections throughout Europe. She has cultural sensitivity and style. She is quick to engender trust, yet is fierce is pursuing business goals. It isn’t every day that you see a community manager resume with her background. She has a law degree and has worked as a journalist with Norway’s leading financial newspaper and with communication in private equity.
Today in celebration of learning on Community Manager Day, I decided to ask her about ‘weaving techniques’ we community managers should consider when developing cultivation and engagement plans.

1.) Demonstrate generosity
2.) Be authentic all the time
3.) Be respectful of the other community members time and efforts
4.) Be mindful that ‘language is powerful’
5.) You get credit for speaking other languages even if not ‘perfect’
6.) Embody cultural diversity
7.) Don’t be turned off if someone comes across not as polite
8.) Remember that not all executives are natural networkers, and may need some TLC to become engaged
9.) Mind the details in all that you do
10.) Be thankful

What I find the most fascinating about her educational background is how her competencies in communication and diplomacy align with those of high powered executives who quickly scale the levels in conversation. She is courageous, has a strong personality, quick wit, emotional intelligence which has faciliated her ability tend her networks. I hope you have the opportunity to meet her in person, because you will feel this great strength in her intense, yet tender presence.

The flight and importance of communication skills

As a coach and community leader, I set a myriad of ideas and goals for for flight every day. I look at the end of the year as a time for introspection, gratitude and renewal. What I enjoy most about this new calendar year is the opportunity it brings reconnect with my most meaningful and profound work as I peer out on the calendar year in front of me. I carve out time to think deeply about the impact I can have on my networks and in my case that is social leadership, communication and diplomacy. Cornerstones in my change management and coaching practice. Which is why today when I was drinking my morning coffee and reviewing the opinion from Father Jenkins, President of the University of Notre Dame in the Wall Street Journal I was delighted to learn about his new book, “Conviction: The Power of Peril of Our Passionate Beliefs” that Random House will publish later, it reinvigorated my senses.

Why? Because so many of my clients and their communities have great ‘conviction’, yet often times they are lacking the talent and tools to harness the power of conviction. It reminded me of the importance to advocate for persuasion as a key behavior we seek in our talent acquisition programs, in our core competencies and performance management programs and our workforce education and performance support offerings. I’ve found that debate and communication courses are critical skills we need to turbo charge our society, yet without these foundational programs, how can prepare labor for the workplace? As organizations, how can we pivot our strategies without it? It is the lifeblood that runs throughout our societies. I will continue my work and hope that together with many of my esteemed colleagues we can impact and drive societal change.

Teens rivaling, but in a healthy way for their communities

This time of year people can get lost with wrapping gifts, buying new outfits or planning events.

I agree for many people, this time brings excitement and joy, but for others in need or without a voice, it can be a difficult, scary and lonely. Which is why I thought I’d share the story of teenagers in Reno, Nevada, rivaling, but in the good way.

Cyrus Moassessiand Kienan have been holding their annual food drive fundraiser for several years in Reno. They donate 100% of their proceeds to the Northern Nevada Food Bank. In fact, their mother, the grateful foodie told me she will go through twenty pounds of flour this year with all her baking.

Isabela and her sister Maya have been fostering kittens with Nevada Humane Society for a few years. They have seen how these little kittens through love and socialization get nursed back to health and placed quickly into loving homes. Yet the foster kitten program isn’t without its expenses, which is why Isabela wanted to give back. In fact, she created a slide show video on her blog to help document her experience and market the event.

Cyrus and Isabela both student leaders and supporters of the American Lung Association have been friends for years. They have grown up with both allergies and asthma, so they have witnessed how important nonprofits can be to families through their own struggles and advocacy. Perhaps this is why Isabela decided this year to hold her fundraiser at the same time as Cyrus and Kienan. Simply put, nothing like good ole rivalry like boys against the girls to raise the stakes, drive more passion and hopefully donations.

As a parent, there is nothing more satisfying than watching your children blessed with life give back to others while having fun. I thought it was noteworthy to call out these community heroes in order to highlight that rivalry can be fun, if put to good use.

I hope you join me and Caroline by supporting both these fundraisers. Better yet setup your own stand for another noble cause during this season of giving.

Born Leadership Legacy

Nothing more fulfilling than reading about how universities, organizations and community leaders are seeking out key qualities that resonate with those of us who learned as toddlers, that we MUST share. It’s no longer just about the test scores, but rather a candidate or talent’s ability to demonstrate:

Passion Creativity Accountability Flexibility Focus Resilience Gratitude

In fact, as the first born of two university professors, these were mandatory skills that I had to demonstrate consistently throughout my youth. Our family structure valued rigor in an approach to education, peppered with the freedom to fail. All the while, emphasis on re-invention and repetition.

Now several decades later, I’ve found that this foundation was the basis for my career success in that I learned to value active listening, collaborating, risk taking, and persistence. In fact, I’ve found that through sharing, I personally have more to gain than loose. Which is what brings me to the following question? Why are we still talking about embracing business models which encourage enterprise mentoring, collaboration and connections to talent and learning development programs?

Leadership, it boils down to this simple word. Whether you talk about leadership on the scale of a billion dollar company, or via deep and lasting impacts a home maker / leader has on their brood or a tribal leader. We in leadership every single day are putting into motion these ‘systems’ through our actions and words. Which is why we often see much ado about: Amazon, Zappos, Mary McNevin healthcare as the industry sweethearts who are daring to lead, making laudable investments in people, or is charging forward with drastic strategy pivots?

At a cursory level, you can read about handfuls of leaders who have a burning imperative for being performance enablers. These individuals have clarity of vision and ensure their teams collaborate and have what they need to deliver results.

So don’t be the ‘tractor in the swamp’. Be bold and take on the wide-ranging malaise surrounding organizational design structures and performance management systems through your born leadership legacy.

Social Leadership Core Competency – Diplomacy

Social Leadership is not a new term, rather something we have been doing for years in diplomacy. We look for ways to create a connection, find a common ground, or thread. Our desire for social connectivity has been constant over the years, yet now we have a myriad of channels we can harness to amplify, highlight or extend engagement through a core social leadership competency, diplomacy.

How do our educational programs resemble these new trends? Just wondering out loud how we are increasing the investment in our diplomacy, negotiation, and conflict management?

Basic skills we think when we think about entrepreneurs, leaders and diplomats. This noble notion of finding common ground is something that we can do as community managers, social artists and marketers. I don’t mean finding a way to sell or push more rhetoric, rather find a discussion that allows you as an individual to drop into the conversation and connect. It’s just that simple. Seek relatedness around a passion whether playing tennis, saving sea turtles, or a joint love for fish tacos.

It really does matter in conversations if we can discuss something of interest to both parties in an authentic manner. We need to use our active listening, recollection and connectedness skills which cultivate social relationships based on trust, equality and reciprocity.

Nothing like a fiery green salsa as the metaphor for social acumen education programs.

Placing VALUE in personal networks

The Social Bloom — Time of the Social Bloom

As a social weaver, I think often about my networks. I do invest 10% of my time daily into reading, sharing and reaching out via the post office, phone, email, Word Press, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest and other networks to cultivate and nurture them. Certainly this has become a bit more challenging over the years with the complexity of tools, interfaces and compatibility that makes it more challenging. So what I try to do is the following:

1.) Create a system and back it up for you to capture all your key and/or tier one connections in your network.

2.) Flex your documentation muscles as details matter. Take time to document key information around your networks preferred interaction styles, preferences and likes so that you can remember names of family members, businesses, awards, alma mater, etc.

3.) Be authentic. Take the time to send hand written thank you notes, send flowers, books and/or hand deliver a meal. All of the personal time investment is going away with the speed the internet has given us, so now is the time to re-invest this savings into things that really matter.

4.) Give a Hoot. Personally I’ve found that by allowing the twitter application to connect with LI, FB and vice versa, my social networks get these updates and can customize their personal view as needed. I currently use Hootsuite to aggregate my twitter streams as it has an easy to use platform and a community based approach to support.

5.) Invest in your purpose per network. Take the time invest in yourself, your brand or simply hire a social media advisor to partner on your purpose and plan.

Someone recently asked me about the ‘size of my current network’? I wasn’t sure how to answer this question at first since it really depends, right? Immediately, I then started to analyze how social has changed the dialogue, the language and currency we use.

This notion of a social net worth is an akin to a financial portfolio.

In the future, perhaps we will be asked when applying for either a loan, credit card or job what the range of a ‘social value’ score that not only help them determine risk, but perhaps what someone views as a social investment. Truly fascinating how these social analytics are becoming game changers. As with anything, the public verus private ‘number’ will be something people yearn to acquire.

People, Pull and the Possibilities

With all the new tools that foster serendipity and real time feedback, do we really need HR?

It will be curious to see how HR organizations use their charter to further contour and shape cultures by partnering with functions within organizations.

I recently shared how I believe that if we in the field of “People” don’t invest more in acceleration versus deceleration in the field of HR, we will work ourselves right out of a job.

The purpose of organizations in some cultures is to connect them to their societies and physical communities. This is more true today than ever with the powerful social networking tools sprouting up all over the HRIS ecosystem. Which is why I am advocating HR becoming an accelerator and do hope that they will become an enabler versus something that is slow, behemoth and/or an engine that protects and creates more silos.

The danger is certainly real to use these tools to create more silos and inadvertantly focus less on people.

Recently I saw a demo of an HR vendor who told me they have ‘communities’ and when I asked several foundational questions about what the charter, purpose and cultivation plans? The sales representative responded with a retort that took me back to the ole’ client/server days where the value was in the ‘push’ information.

Which is why I believethe time is now to think about the People, the PULL and Possibilities. With the new social tools, we have an opportunity to harness the power of real time peer feedback and accountability all the while fostering candor, transparency and honesty. If we empower people to be courageous, provide the with processes and tools along with a culture that embraces asking tough questions of one another and management, imagine where could we be?

Lastly, as someone who thinks about social learning and culture, I believe we have a a huge charter ahead of us, with much work to do especially with the advent of texting and such with our youth. We must not take our foot off the importance of in person communications that are foundational to healthy feedback, debate and sharing.

The time is now. So let us POUNCE together!

Social Leadership Retreat

I’m looking forward to the facilitating an exclusive Social Leadership Retreat. We will be meeting at a private villa nestled in the Sierra Madre Mountains in the Baja peninsula in Mexico. It is located 80 minutes north of Cabo San Lucas on the Pacific Ocean where the ocean views are spectacular, vegetation supreme and proximate to the sublime culture and art that Todos Santos has to offer, where we will discuss and harness our passion in social artistry and leadership for this two day workshop.

We will share next practices in community moderation and social artistry. This private villa will serve as our retreat for this focused group of professionals to discuss in great depth both professional and personal challenges and opportunities in our fields.

Saturday, 28 July 2012

8:00 Beach walk and yoga stretches on private Pacific Ocean beach

9:00 Mexican coffee will awaken our senses as we our facilitator leads us through a discovery of what is working and making a difference in our industry, what are opportunities and what we can shed

11:00 Key behaviors in social leadership

12:30 Lunch

14:00 Peer coaching on roof top terrace

15:00 Break- Margaritas, chips and salsa

16:00 Activating diversity and mobile in healthcare communities

17:00 Adjourn drive back to Todos Santos

Sunday 29 July 2012

8:00 Beach walk and yoga stretches on private Pacific Ocean beach

9:00 Role of a community convener, weaver and social artist

10:00 Recap Day 1

10:15 Artist’s Perspective: Keys to unlock social artistry, creation and human connection

11:30 Social artist competencies

12:30 Lunch

14:00 Peer coaching on roof top terrace

15:30 Break- Baja Wine Sampling and literature reading

16:00 Reflections

17:00 Adjourn drive back to Todos Santos

We will be using hash tag #SocialLeadership

Active Listening, a Core Competency for Social Business Leaders, featuring: Nick Howe

If you haven’t followed Nick Howe on Twitter, it’s time. He is a social business champion and hero who just happens to be a genius. This superhero by day has a key role at Hitachi Data Systems , Vice President of the HDS Academy, yet by night is probably the most humble, coolest, geekiest and happiest guy you will ever meet. He embodies networked learning in every sense of the word. He engages his industry through storytelling, like at Jive World. He is foremost a business leader who challenges himself to think about the disruptive nature of social business through active listening. LISTENING you say? How many times has a senior leader in one of your organizations taken the time to really listen and not ‘pander’ to you? Recall and value your thoughts and ideas, synthesize quickly and give proper attribution? Well, I certainly hope the answer is yes, but if you are like many people, those rare and inspirational leaders are unusual, which is why it’s noteworthy to celebrate when we find the attenuate. In fact, his personal philosophy is simple: “make learning a priority, trust that people will step up to a challenge and acknowledge weakness as an opportunity to learn, versus a threat.”

As a business leader he is constantly validating or examining what he believes his and his organizations’ roles are to achieve company goals as a continuous process. Not just a board room exercise once a year. Yeah, that’s right – the infinite Loop. Just like great leaders before him have, he is in constant examination of himself and his impact on the organization, his colleagues and his customers.

MerciChocolate — Merci, for chocolate, active listening and leadership

What I found the most profound in interviewing him for this blog post was his deep personal commitment to being a collaborative leader, who builds alignment, invites people into possibilities and empowers them. He engages in detailed community conversations with great detail and critical attention to drive business results, yet humble in his overall approach and demeanor that is exceptional. To use my food metaphors, like a scarce chocolate with intense and subtle characteristics, rich in flavor and depth. This type of leadership is commendable, addictive and perhaps will become a contagion that spreads the learning fever. Active listening and reflection are paramount for social business leadership; in fact I would argue these should be key core competencies for leadership.

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