Article: The Missing Ingredient in Leaders – Social Skills

Subhead: It’s Time to Stop Giving Our Employees and Customers Concussions

I was flipping through the TV channels this past weekend and I noticed that the most prevalent
programming was sports. What really caught my eye was not just that it was about sports, but about
winning and by how much. One of the key debates was how football players were going so far in their
desire to win that they were ‘butting heads’ with their opponents and causing concussions that resulted in
serious injury to the brain.

What came across my mind was that in my 30+ years of advising boards, as well as working with
institutional investors and large companies, almost every discussion ultimately turned to similar
conversations about ‘crushing the competition,’ ‘beating the opponents’ and ‘gaining,’ or ‘stealing’ market
share (e.g. sounds a lot like football to me). Rarely were any of the discussions about how to maximize the
value of the organization by working with customers and employees as a ‘community’ or using open
communication, real collaboration and social skills to drive positive sentiment and true organizational
potential.

Now I know you are thinking that I have gone soft, or that I don’t care about winning, or even worse, I am
biased because I am a member of the social media industry and believe in the ‘socialization’ of business
and leadership. None of these reasons could be further from the truth. Rather, as part of my own selfreflection
on leadership and the skills necessary to succeed today, I have noticed a growing number of
articles and research suggesting that the old ways of thinking and doing business – including winning,
command and control and beating others – is causing great anxiety and distrust among us as citizens,
customers, employees and investors (http://www.forbes.com/2010/10/11/united-states-anger-leadershipmanaging-rein.html).

Luckily, social media, and more importantly the impact it is having on how individuals are beginning to
communicate and interact, is forcing organizations and their leaders to consider new ways of leading,
managing and participating with their people. Further, leaders are also discovering that they need new
skills and competencies in order to participate in a socially networked world in which everyone is
interacting online.

Backing up for a moment, since I co-founded Mzinga, we have worked with hundreds of organizations
helping them understand how social communications and interactions can create happier and more
productive employees, more satisfied customers and more engaged partners. The good news is that some
of these conversations have resulted in the dramatic realization that a leader’s heart may be in the right
place, but not his/her company’s people, processes, skills or technologies. More often than not, I noticed
that most leaders were frightened by the prospect of ‘socializing their organization’ and therefore only
paid lip service to the idea of improving their people’s morale and experience through open and
transparent communications and collaboration. For that reason, I consider Zappos to be the poster child for
success in our socially connected world, because their core motto -- ‘Delivering Happiness’ -- is the
central value of their leader, Tony Hsieh.

For all these reasons, it is clear to me that it is time for a change. As a result, I am resolved to push
forward with a new leadership model that is based on a collaborative, experience-driven approach that I
call ‘followship.’ I am committed to the concept that all future leaders will be great ‘followers’ of their
customers and employees, prospects and alumni because the Followship model, which is based on
compassion and social intelligence, will reduce the number of customer and employee “concussions” that
are unnecessarily created by business leaders today based on existing leadership frameworks.

I am; however, aware that traditional companies and their leaders are going to struggle with obstacles as
they strive to become more socially adept and develop their social and empathetic skills. A few examples
of these obstacles include:
· Obstacle 1: “We are doing pretty well right now, so why should I change?” Organizations
that experience this obstacle should ask themselves if they could they benefit by joining the
conversations that their community of employees and customers are already having about their
organization.
· Obstacle 2: “I don’t believe that being social will produce improved results.” The research is
clear; word of mouth marketing using social media and crowd sourcing for innovation using social
software produces real ROI. In short, engaging people can and does produce real results for
organizations.
· Obstacle 3: “I don’t know many social organizations so what are the best practices?”
Companies like Nike and Starbucks are great examples of organizations that are using social
media to build friends, fans and fanatics to test new products and services, as well as to
supplement customer support and improve employee education.

Almost all organizations wrestle with each of these obstacles in some form or shape, despite the fact
that most leaders know that listening, sharing, and working together are the foundations for
building strong families, friends and communities. However, until recently, they have not been able
to understand how to translate that knowledge into organizational actions or strategies – or worse,
they are frightened to be ‘social at work’ because that is not their core skill or because they have not
been trained in these new skill sets.

To get started, I recommend looking at your company through the same lens you view your personal
life and asking yourself if there is a difference. Do you value one set of values at home and another at
business and, if so, why? Are you really okay treating people differently – whether they are
customers and employees or friends and neighbors? Shouldn’t the same principles of care be
applied? If that argument doesn’t sway you, how about financial rewards? Remember, Omniture --
a web analytics company that tracks social interactions? It sold for $1.8 billion; a very large sum
based on the fact that investors valued the information that Omniture was capturing and analyzing
regarding our online actions and communication (www.omniture.com). Confirming the importance
of social interactions and the organizational intelligence that can be gleamed from them, Kleiner
Perkins, a leading venture capitalist, just established a separate $250M fund to invest in social
organizations. Why? Because they believe we are just at the beginning of the social age and that big
profits are yet to be realized.

To help you and your leaders get started building your missing ingredient – social skills and
capabilities- assess where you and your organization are in your social development by asking the
following questions:
· Our past – How do we treat our people from the perspective of our customers,
employees, partners, and investors?
· Our present – What are we doing today to ‘follow’ our customers and employees and
join the online conversations that are happening all around us?
· Our future – What steps and strategies can we implement to help our customers,
partners, investors and employees achieve their true potential so we can achieve ours?
Our Past: Making and Selling Things
In plotting your future, part of the answer is to look backwards and understand how all
organizations got to where they are today. Most organizations in their rush to make, market and sell
things (cars, boats, trains, software, hardware, even healthcare delivery), spent the better part of the
industrial and information ages perfecting processes – manufacturing, sales, marketing and
distribution.

During that period of time, organizations mechanized everything in sight, and what was not
mechanized, they dehumanized. One might even argue it was for a good reason - because customers
needed the basics – including houses, cars, refrigerators, you name it – and companies needed to
perfect the skills to make and deliver them. Many times, those that did it best in the industrial age,
‘beat the competition’ as well as hurt their employees (by firing them) and customers (by delivering
subpar solutions) in the process.

But in today’s increasingly open and crowd-sourced economy, where anybody can buy anything
from almost anyone, I am sure that ‘beating’ the competition into a pulp and driving customers and
employees into submission doesn’t work any more. So it’s time for real change!
Our Present: Two Parts – Creating Communities and Helping Others Achieve Self-Mastery

Whether we accept it or not, every leader and organization faces the luxury of unprecedented
choices. Leaders are able to do almost anything and go anywhere in the world, but this ‘freedom’ can
turn out to be a terrible burden. Psychologists call it the Paradox of Choice (http://www.amazon.
com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005688). It’s a relevant problem for all leaders and
their organizations today – especially given that they are trapped between the industrial/
information age on one side (and the skills they developed to win) and the social revolution that is
coming fast and furious at them on the other side which requires different skills.

But they have a choice. Leaders can keep playing the same game of ‘making and selling things’ and
hope for a different outcome beyond slow growth and shrinking margins or they can choose to a
new path that includes open innovation and social network development. My argument is an
economic one (http://www.thesroinetwork.org/) that is based on real returns for those that invest
in building social organizations. In today’s highly connected world, all organizations need to build
communities of friends and followers in order to reduce their marketing costs and increase the
number of sales leads, at the same time embracing crowd-sourcing and open innovation to drive
new products and services. To get there, leaders need to embrace their social self – the skills and
values they cherish at home – so that they don’t have to carry two sets of values any longer (work vs.
personal).

Our Future: Compassion and Self-Actualization
In our rush to overachieve, we are at risk of rushing to the next meeting, jumping on the next flight,
replying to the never-ending emails or texts we receive each day. We forget to pause, and check in
on ourselves as leaders and managers. We forget to really ask ourselves some critical questions:
· “Are we really serving each other in the way we want to be served?”
· “Are we helping our people achieve their true potential and through them, our
organization’s full value?” and
· “Is there anything we could do better that creates value at home which we could
use at work?”

I believe we all have a deep need for life and all its parts to make sense. We need to connect the dots
of our past to our future and our personal lives to our business lives. We need a sense of coherence
that explains where we are coming from and how that connects to where we are going. Finally, we
need to live a life that enables us to connect and help each other achieve our true potential –
individually and collectively. The good news is that the advent of the social web is giving us that
opportunity.

If you don’t believe me, read the research done by Abraham Maslow 60 years ago on the levels of
needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs). The only thing that prevents
us from achieving our greatness is developing our social skills at work. It’s time to start reshaping
yourself, especially if you are a leader, because your organization will follow your direction. If you
embrace your social and empathetic self – your people will too. Take our social skills test (http://
www.socialnationbook.com/) and see where you and your organization is in its journey to achieving
its full potential.

You can’t re-live the past, but you can build a new future. There is no time better than today to start
your journey.

Barry Libert is Chairman and CEO of Mzinga®, the leading provider of social software, services, and analytics that improve business performance. He is author of Social Nation: How to Harness the Power of Social Media to Attract Customers, Motivate Employees, and Grow Your Business and has published five books on the value of social and information networks. He can be reached at www.mzinga.com.