Yesterday, David Christopher hosted another Social Workplace Tweet Chat.
Social Workplace Chat is a weekly event on Twitter where people from all corners of the globe come together to discuss topics around The Social Workplace. This particular chat session is an incredible way to learn more about the “Social Workplace”.
David is an excellent host, and knows, exactly, how to encourage excellent discussions on the topic in question. You can find out more about up-coming #SWCHAT’s, as well as interesting stuff over the most recent one, at http://www.stopthinksocial.com/swchat/.
This week’s chat covered “Social Leadership“. The main feeling about this was:
There is no such thing as “Social Leadership”.
Leader is inherently “social”.
Further to that, David also put forward three other questions:
- Why are companies not adopting a “Social Leadership Infrastructure”?
- What type of people do you see embracing Social Leadership, and what type do you see fearing it?
- Are introverts more comfortable with Social Leadership?
The answers to these were interesting. Based on the fact that the “Social” Leadership didn’t actually exist (see above), the responses to these questions tended to concentrate more on the adoption of social media (i.e. the web 2.0 tools used).
With regards the last question, many references were made to a book titled “The Introvert’s Guide to Success in Business and Leadership”. This seemed to be the basis for this week’s chat. I have bought the book, but have only had a chance to skim through it. David, however, wrote about it on his blog.
I have captured the essence of the chat in Storify. Click here to read it for yourself to read the discussion (note I have removed Retweets, and any “small talk” tweets).
http://storify.com/markjowen/swchat-social-leadership
[Alternatively, you can download a PDF version here.]
Related articles
- A comment by David on “Social Leadership” (markjowen.com)
Nice summary of the event Mark.
The term “Social Leadership” doesn’t really exist in business today but it was clear from the event that leaders need to start understanding and working towards being more social.
The reason reason? Empowerment.
With a social business infrastructure the old hierarchical structures are broken down and decentralised. Employee’s become more empowered and open collaboration becomes the norm.
Leaders therefore need to evolve their leadership styles to accommodate this type of new workplace, a social workplace. Once they embrace this type of leadership then the tacit and explicit knowledge of the employees can be shared openly and becomes an incredible asset. An asset that is often ignored or not realised.
This is the future, the next generation workplace as some call it but many companies are still a long way off achieving this.
The SWChat event last week clearly highlighted this.
Thanks for the summary and for your invaluable contribution every week to SWChat. It’s for people like you why i host these events each week and why they are so enjoyable.
Hi david,
Thanks for expanding on things there. I agree totally with you. The use of social media inside the firewall can contribute enormously to “empowerment” (even if it just being able to “work better” as a result of being able to have access to a large “pool” of knowledge and experience.)
I’m looking forward to future #SWChats!