The Age of Socially Engaged Leadership -- Breakout Session at Talent …

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Nayomi

Good afternoon.

I am Nayomi Alexander and this is my colleague Daniel Sanders.

We hope you have had a really great day. Daniel and I are really pleased that you have joined us to explore the The Age of the Socially Engaged Leader.

There will be time for Q&A at the end or even over a drink at the after party.

In this session we are going to highlight the characteristics of the socially engaged leader, the benefits of being a ‘social company’ and provide concrete examples of executives who are modelling social behaviour. We’ll close with practical ideas as to how you can drive change and educate executives in your organisation

A number of the business benefits we share today, centre on people capability so who better than yourselves as People professionals to help drive the case for change in your organisations.
Whether you’re a small or large business there is content here today of relevance for you.

Daniel
Thanks Nayomi. Hi everyone.

Daniel

You plan a special anniversary dinner at the latest restaurant run by a celebrity chef. You almost have to re-mortgage the house, but you know it will be worth it. But when you get there it all goes wrong…there is a booking mix up, your meal is under-cooked and they ask you to leave for the next sitting straight after you have eaten your dessert.

Twenty years ago, you only had the ability to complain to the manager…..and to vent to your friends and relatives to make you feel a little better.

Fast forward to 2015 – social media and review sites like Urban Spoon have changed the business landscape forever.
Now, as an angry customer, with a few well-placed reviews or tweets, you have the power to create a wave of distrust.
Many restaurants and hotels have adapted and can respond to your review. They understand that silence strengthens the hands of their critics. Their brand is out there, being discussed. They need to engage.
There is no more brushing bad news under the carpet, transparency is the new currency.

In larger organizations like the ones represented in this room, designated experts build and implement communications strategies to preserve their brands. And of course, every employee of the company should be encouraged to act as brand ambassador. Every employee, even the top execs, even the Chef himself, because their voice will resonate differently. Because they have something unique to bring to the conversation.

Daniel

Today CEOs are being ranked like restaurants.

Indeed, we live in the age of the celebrity CEO, where many CEOs are integral or even synomous with the company brand.

They are part of the online conversation. Whether they desire it or not, they are being discussed. They need to participate, engage, respond. While they cannot control the conversation, they can certainly influence it. They need to « be social » because they have the power to enhance their reputations and the reputation of their companies.

 Why is this important? What are the benefits of being a ‘Social Leader’ or leading a ‘Social Organisation’?

Nayomi

Last year, Weber Shandwick research showed that 4 in every 5 employees would prefer to work for a Socially active CEO.

The trust invoked through transparency is powerful.

So there is a clear benefit for both attraction and engagement. In terms of attraction, what does your company’s social footprint look like today to prospective talent? Is your CEO socially active? Do they have a LinkedIn profile? Do they understand the link they have to talent attraction?

 The benefits of social engagement are great but is your CEO prepared to be a part of the conversation?

Daniel

Your CEO doesn’t have to be Richard Branson. Branson is of course, the best example for a leader on social media. Branson is more than a CEO. He’s a brand by himself. He’s a star.

But your CEO doesn’t have to be a star to be social. Social “lite” might just be enough…

Daniel

Raise your hand if you have heard of James Gorman?

James P Gorman is the head of global financial powerhouse Morgan Stanley, leading 55,000 employees in 1,200 offices across the globe.

What will be interesting to many in this crowd is that James is homegrown, hailing from Melbourne.

James followed a fairly ‘blue-blooded’ careers trajectory where he stepped from Law into Management Consulting and then into Finance, picking up a Columbia MBA along the way.

Sitting in his mahogany lined office, all of this paints a fairly conservative image of a man who has largely flown below the radar of the public’s imagination.

Thus it surprised some people when James signed up to become a LinkedIn Influencer in 2014. In one swoop James had become a ‘social CEO’.

Nayomi

James maintains a strong LinkedIn profile as you can see.

His Influencer posts stand out prominently on his profile, just below his profile photo.

Each post is pushed out through the Pulse network where they will be surfaced to new readers by the Pulse recommendation engine.

As members discover James through his content, they can elect to Follow him without the need to become a 1st-degree connection. James currently has 90,000 Followers and is adding about 1,500 per week.

Nayomi

Morgan Stanley’s comms team do a great job of maximising the exposure of their leader.

They promote his posts via ‘Company Updates’ to their 338,000 LinkedIn Company Followers.

…and they actively harvest more Followers for James through advertising.

James Gorman models the behaviour of a social CEO by actively using LinkedIn.

James’ long-form posts on LinkedIn provide a window into his inner thinking. They humanize him, make him more ‘accessible’.

Daniel

James Gorman is definitely ‘Social Lite’, having only written a handful of long-form posts. However, the ‘network effect’ has projected James’ voice far and wide.

James began this journey 12 months ago with 500 personal connections. That was the extent of his LinkedIn world.
Now James has 90k Followers. Suddenly the numbers he is interacting with personally, directly has grown 180x.
Now where this starts to get interesting is that James’ 90k Followers in turn have 45m 1st-degree connections. So, if just 1% like, share or comment on his post, it will be pushed out to up to a further 450,000 people.

When his Comms team promote his posts to the Company’s 342k Followers, the same process applies….
Those Company Followers in turn have 160m connections….just 1% engagement could push the message out to a further 1.6m people.

There are further audiences reached when some of Morgan Stanley’s 55k employees promote the post to their own networks.
Finally, one of the really interesting things about posting valuable content online, is that it starts to take on a life of it’s own….people connect to the posts from other social channels and blogs….and this has certainly happened with James’ posts.

With relatively little effort, James has built his personal brand with a huge audience. This is the Network Effect.

Of course Morgan Stanley is a large company, but the network effect works for smaller companies and individuals as well.

 Ultimately James is building ‘relationships’ with customers, staff, and candidates at massive scale. Let’s take a look at the dynamics at play here….

Daniel

Ultimately we do business with people and businesses we “know, like, and trust”

Know – Awareness is the cornerstone of marketing and advertising. Last night I purchased travel insurance online. I ran a Google search and selected the 3 brands that I had heard of to run quotes through. In other words, basic awareness caused me to select these brands and ultimately increased my propensity to spend money. This also works on a personal level. If you meet two people who you like equally, then start to see person A more than person B, you will start to like person A more. Even if you don’t have an especially positive interaction with person A, so long as it’s not negative, you will like that person more. LinkedIn helps you stay present with a very broad audience. In marketing we talk about the ‘Rule of 7’: it takes seeing someone or something about 7 times before it really makes an impact. So it takes time, but after about 7 impressions you will start to see results.

Like – The more you know about someone or a business, the more that you notice that you have in common, the more you will like them. People will like you if you are known, provide value and a sense of community. Seth Godin talks about people’s need to belong to communities of interest in his book ‘Tribes’. “A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader and connected to an idea.”

Trust –We know lots of people on Facebook where we talk about personal stuff. You know them. You like most of them. But do you trust them? Are they good at what they do? Stay in front of people you want to reach in a helpful and interesting way while positioning yourself as a knowledgeable expert. Through being authentic and consistent, brands can develop trust. Trust substantially increases the likelihood of someone buying from your brand.

 Let’s now explore some of the ways that leaders can become more socially engaged.

Nayomi

We recommend four ways in which Executives can be more socially engaged – and you don’t need to be an Influencer to do these.

Let’s go through these
Nayo - Set Up Profile – do they have 1 connection or 500?
Nayo - Post Content – Whilst quick shares of key company news is a great way for leaders to remain front of mind, long-form content gives us insights to the person behind the title.
Daniel - Amplify content through your company page – As we showed earlier with the Morgan Stanley example, it is beneficial to promote your leaders and thought leaders to your Company Followers.
Daniel - Cross promote via other channels – Re-purpose content and ‘be everywhere’. When your leader rights a blog, why not push that out through Twitter, promote on your Corporate blog or create a short Youtube video message or Slideshare.

Nayo - It may seem daunting for executives and they may not know where to start or what to say. Being effective on social media means being authentic. From our experience, their unique perspective on the world is precisely what their networks want to hear about.

 So let’s take a look at some examples of how leaders are engaging through LinkedIn.

Nayomi

Here are some examples of how different leaders have successfully utilised their personal brand on LinkedIn for business benefits
Our very own CEO Jeff Weiner recently utilised a status update for voice of customer interaction
David Thodey, CEO of Telstra, has published a number of long form posts – each further attracting member awareness and engagement with his personal brand and that of Telstra. Customer focus
Sandy Carter, a senior Executive at IBM – looking to attract females in IT – do you have positive role models in these teams who can be identified by prospective talent to add credibility to the policies and content on a website?
Anna Lee – CFO, The Iconic. SMB clients can put a strong foot forward also.

Arguably these are very time poor executives but if they can find the time to contribute, there really is every opportunity for your organisation as well.

 We see this as an opportunity for you here in the audience to uplevel the social capability of your organisation and influence cultural change.

Daniel

In order to convince your CEO and the leadership team in your organisation, you need to base your recommendation on the business objectives. Understand what keeps your leaders up at night and show them how going social can help them rest easy.

Is talent attraction the no. 1 priority?
4 out of 5 people would people would prefer to work for a socially active CEO.

Are we looking at the bottom line?
How can you prove that social media engagement will have a direct impact on profitability? If you listen to employees working at the most socially-engaged companies, they do feel that sales are made easier by leveraging social media. 57% of them expressed that opinion in our latest survey.

Is it about building morale?
Your CEO has just appointed a Head of Happiness, making clear that employee engagement is key for the business. Great news: social media can help.

Nayomi

Last year, LinkedIn collaborated with Altimeter Group to better understand the benefits of social organisations and uncovered a number of key findings relating to Employee engagement.

27% more engaged and optimistic about the future of their workplace
20% more inspired
20% more likely to stay
15% more connected to co-workers

These stats point towards strong benefits to staff morale and engagement.

At the heart of engagement is relationships and with the advent of social platforms, like LinkedIn, your leaders have access to an enabling technology to further cultivate relationships without borders, in a scalable, authentic and transparent way.

Source: (LinkedIn and Altimeter Group research 2014)

Nayomi

Leaders who get on the path to social engagement set in motion a snowball effect as other leaders and employees share their content and follow their lead.

…and this is the ultimate - the end goal – a socially engaged company; a company full of passionate brand ambassadors…but that’s a topic for another day.

Daniel

Thankyou for your attention.

Before we take questions, I suggest you write down the link you see on the screen.

At this site you can download a great e-book that further explores these themes: “Executive Playbook: 12 Steps To Become a Social Leader”.

The Age of Socially Engaged Leadership -- Breakout Session at Talent Connect Sydney 2015

The Age of Socially Engaged Leadership -- Breakout Session at Talent Connect Sydney 2015