Five Tweet Thoughts
Posted: December 18, 2011 | Author: Dr. Janice Presser | Filed under: Behavior, Communication, Metacommunication, Social Networking | Tags: communication, holiday season, metacommunication, social, tweet, tweetchat | Leave a comment »- Expressing yourself in a tweet forces you to remove anything that is not absolutely essential to communicating your thought.
- The impact of a tweet is measurable by RTs, and overall value by follows, except when people are ‘gaming’ the tweeconomic system.
- Having a lot of follows does not equate to leadership. You are judged on the merit of what you tweet.
- One tweet will never change the world, but a whole lot of them can create, or reinforce, a true seismic shift.
- Metatweeting is its own reward.
Get HR-friendly!
Posted: September 10, 2011 | Author: Dr. Janice Presser | Filed under: HR, Leadership, Social Networking | Tags: entrepreneur, Fast Company, HR, metrics, synergy | Leave a comment »I was hanging out with an old buddy a short while ago, catching up on life in our respective fast lanes. As with most entrepreneurs, high speed is my choice. I seldom slow down to smell the roses, much preferring to stomp the pedal to the metal while imagining – and sometimes designing – the future ‘flowering’ of our business. But my friend is a tried-and-true HR guy. He not only stops to admire the fragrance, he even buys a few, just to make people smile. Consequently, he is less than thrilled by the speed at which he is now expected to travel in order make grumpy stakeholders smile. They are just not willing to wait for his particular roses to unfurl.
My friend’s plight made me flash back to that classic article in Fast Company that caused HR people to cringe. Remember the banner headline “Why We Hate HR”? My friend has never forgotten it, and to this day will not touch a copy of that magazine.
It’s time to call a ceasefire! When it comes to building, promoting, and protecting the human infrastructure of any organization, HR and the rest of us need to be partners!
Here are a few things we can do to build productive synergy, even though we may be traveling at very different speeds.
- First, create ongoing conversations across departmental lines. When you do, you learn more about how other people think, how they do what they do, where you share needs and interests, and the business impact of your mutual efforts.
- Second, consider how YOUR focus might bring some clarity to that of other departments. Do you think about the message behind your communication, and how it will be received by the other side? Is there a simpler way to solve a problem, or get things working better?
- Third, keep score! This is a bit tricky, because you need to be doing this for the right reasons. Some people keep score for their personal zero-sum game, in which one wins and one loses. What I’m talking about is keeping score of the give-and-take, just to make sure you are giving at least as much as you are getting. This approach will always produce positive outcomes.
Those are my kind of metrics!
This Team Sport is Social!
Posted: June 2, 2011 | Author: Dr. Janice Presser | Filed under: Social Networking, Teams | Tags: social media, somebizlife, team, team player | Leave a comment »If you’re into networking, you probably know that a laptop, tablet, or smartphone will allow you to connect with people even when you’re sitting in a lounge chair on a magnificent beach, any time of the day or night. And you have access to millions of people to do it with.
Whether you really enjoy social media, or it’s just a ‘to-do’ to you, there’s a better way. It happens when you make ‘social’ a team sport.
The social experience is different for different people. That’s because, optimally, each person has his or her own ‘mode’ of contribution to group effort. When those unique efforts combine – and recombine – effectively, they generate human synergy.
Just as any physical network is powered by clear, reliable connections, so is a human network. But when people form a human network, their interdependencies also come into play. When those interdependencies are honored, respected, and celebrated, the network becomes a strong human infrastructure.
Unfortunately, even in real life, it can be hard to tell who the really good team players will turn out to be. How much harder does it become when all you have to go from are 140 characters, or a Klout rating, or LinkedIn recommendations from persons unknown?
Here are a few pieces of advice that will help:
Pay attention to people who stay on track, people who project a fairly consistent viewpoint, and people who maintain a good listen-to-talk ratio. The ones who display these qualities over time are more likely to be good team players.
Make sure you are clear on what YOU want to contribute to the social team effort. Then decide to add just one other person of like mind, because a team starts the moment there are two people. If you partner well, you’re ready to add more.
Think about how you will measure your results, because “good outcome” has no universal definition. What will YOU consider a success? New business or job? High Klout? Thousands of follows? Or are you out to change the world, make an impact, leave the planet a better place?
No matter what you set out to do, with the right team supporting you, you can do anything you dream. You will achieve more together than any individual could ever do alone. And that is the essence of the team sport that is Social.
This post was inspired by the first SoMeBizLife event yesterday. Kudos to @ChuckHall and friends for making it an inspirational day!
True Confession: Social Networking Made Me a Nicer Person, and It Could Bring Us World Peace
Posted: April 4, 2011 | Author: Dr. Janice Presser | Filed under: Behavior, Leadership, Social Networking, Teams | Tags: Barry Libert, Focus, iBooks, intellectual, libertarian, LinkedIn, networking, Quora, revolution, social, true confession, Twitter | 1 Comment »I used to be an ordinary intellectual. You probably know the type. NY Times crossword in ink. Knock out latest opus, magnum or minimalist, in a flash. Prefer to dream up ideas rather than actually work them.
Then I went ‘social’. And in the course of connecting – via LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Focus, and some other places I can’t even remember, with a large number of people who I would never have the time to call or write a letter to on a regular basis – I became a nicer person. I mean, I still do all my regular stuff. But now I’m more likely to think beforehand about its impact on other people.
This is why I am so enamored of an amazing little book that was my ‘first-time’ purchase from iBooks. The title is “The Revolution Will Be Tweeted“, and it was written by Barry Libert, founder of Mzinga and a pioneer in social media/mobility technology.
It’s a very intellectual read, but it’s not at all stuffy. It is the very nice kind of intellectual work that changes the world because it comes from caring. In a nutshell, Barry is saying that the road to peace is social. Not to be confused with socialist, which, imho, is not very social at all. (I say that as an unreformed, unrelenting, pit-bull libertarian.)
Nice is not the opposite of intellectual. Intellect is something that happens inside your head. Nice happens between people – in that magic space that is neither and is both. You can be intellectual and nice.
Try it. It’s worth the effort.
On the web, the past is never truly gone.
Posted: January 15, 2011 | Author: Dr. Janice Presser | Filed under: Social Networking | Tags: customer, experts, hire, innovation, interview, leadership, LinkedIn, Quora, rating, resume, sales, sport. sales, team, Twitter, Wordpress | Leave a comment »If you’ve been following me on LinkedIn, Quora, Twitter, or here at WordPress on Ask Dr. Janice or CEO2CEO. you may want to read past posts. Good news! They will remain where they are. For now, I’ll be blogging mostly on Leadership is a Team Sport.
For your convenience, here are some of my favorite past posts:
From CEO2CEO:
- Is ‘Sales Team’ an Oxymoron?
- 5 Wrong Things Experts Told Me
- How to Keep Your Resume Out of the Circular File
- Collateral Damage From a Bad Hire
- When Bad Things Happen to Good Innovators
From Ask Dr. Janice:
- The Lights of Winter
- Why Interviews Suck
- Are Your Customers on Your Team?
- The Falconi Test
- Riffing on Ratings
