Listening = Leadership

I had two unusual visitors today here in my home office. Jordan and Chris, two FBI agents came calling, and yes, they were both wearing dark suits and ties, although I didn’t they were not wearing dark sunglasses.

They were conducting a background check on a former colleague of mine and came to ask a few questions. (And said it was fine to blog about conversation.)

One question was what leadership qualities my colleague had exhibited. My immediate answer was that he was a great listener. My new FBI friend stopped short. He said he had been doing these interviews for a while and had never heard that answer. Really, I said, that’s a shame because in my mind it is the most critical for effective leadership.

As Beth and I are writing our book the question of where to put listening has come up time and again. Basically, we want to put it everywhere because it affects everything that an organization does, can do, should do in concert with their ecosystems. Social media are unique tools in that amplify good listening and bad listening, as well. So, for instance, it is clear when an organization has their ear to the ground and is hearing what bloggers and Twitterers are saying about the organization, and joining the conversation. All of the staff at the Sunlight Foundation are really adept listeners.

But when an organization is being talked about and the organization or company isn’t listening it’s far more aggregious. Remember the angry mommy blogger storm about the tone dear Motrin ad about all of those crazy and tired moms with sore backs from lugging their babies around in slings?

Beth has written extensively and beautifully about the power of using social media tools for listening. We ought to expect that organizational leaders are adept and appreciative of the power of listening as an important, in my mind the most important, criteria to effectively lead their organizations in the Connected Age.

SearchLite Widget from VolunteerMatch

I received an email from Robert Rosenthal of VolunteerMatch the other day providing na update on their SearchLight widget.

Anyone with a site or a blog can embed the widget on their site. There’s a great example from the FIXNOLA site. Anyone using the widget can just plug in where they are and what they’re interested in and a list of volunteer opportunities pops up. Cool.

Now, I’m wondering where the intersection of the portable portal for mainly on the ground volunteering is with the microvolunteering opportunities being created by a group like Extraordinaries.  And where do people go from here, do they become more connected to an issue or a cause, a particular group — or the intermediaries providing the opportunities. All good, interesting, stuff, thanks, Robert!

Land Lines as Buggy Whips

A friend dropped off her son at college last week. There were a host of new fangled differences about dorm life from when she had gone to college, well, let’s just say a while ago. One in particular caught my eye.

He brought the usual stuff, clothes, posters and a toothbrush, the same things we did. He also brought his laptop, and a flat screen TV. But then she noticed something different. Instead of calling the telephone company to turn on the land line, they called the cable company instead for the DSL line. He had his cell phone, which is good because there are no land lines in dorm rooms any more.

This makes perfect sense, why should the university have to wrangle with the maintenance of the phones when kids aren’t using them.

But it gave me pause beause although I know that land lines have been replaced by cell phones by millennials as part of the research I did for the Social Citizens paper, I never really thought about a land line less world. Would it matter?

Well, one thing for sure is that it reduce one ugly wire that runs from the street to the house. That’s good.

It should be less expensive as it is overseas, however, it isn’t and may not be here because of the telecom vice grip on pricing. Hooray for deregulation, so glad they broke up that AT&T monopoly!

The fact that most everyone has a cell phone now, and the tiny sliver that doesn’t will soon, certainly is a great thing for social change. Think about these data according to International Telecommunications Union, ” our planet is now home to about “1.27 billion fixed lines and 2.68 billion mobile accounts,”As MobileActive.org has shown us over the past few years, there have been amazing efforts to organize people with the ease of cell phones and text messaging.

I think the big thing for social change organizations is that they won’t have to worry so much phone lists aging out of date. We’re all going to carry our numbers with us regardless of the carrier or hardware. Organizations are going to be able to reach supporters wherever they go. They onus is then on those same organizations to treat those numbers and their owners with great respect so that they won’t opt out of those lists.

Numbers staying wiht us are also a huge plus for those of us who have a really hard time remembering our own phone numbers!

Note: The same friend who just dropped off her son at college just forwarded this article from the Des Moines Register on the growing trend of colleges removing land lines.

Are You Ready to Tweet?

I like this post from Mikey Ames of TechHermit about his response to an inquiry about whether a University president should tweet. What I liked in particular was his rundown of which ones are tweeting and how well they’re doing. Too often, I think, we hear that so-and-so CEO or celebrity or muckety muck is tweeting.

Mikey answers the “so, what” about that statement. Anyone can create a Twitter account, but are they astroturfing, is their account simply a logo using by a communications staffer to basically send out press releases. Or is this person person and organization authentically engaged in a real conversations?

Here’s Mikey’s description of one particularly good University prez tweeter:

http://twitter.com/johnmaeda
– Rhode Island School of Design, President Maeda is extremely engaging, uses the tool well. Intentionally follows others and has a huge following because of his obvious transparency and willing to use twitter as it was intended. Notice all the Retweets and questions and @replies. This user has actual clout and influence in the tool. He likely never has anyone else share his feed. He has completely embraced it as part of his daily rhythm.

If one thinks about Twitter as a conversation and not a tool than the question of if your organization should use it becomes clearer. Use it if you are ready and willing to engage in conversation. If it’s a new fangled fax machine for press releases than please don’t, the airwaves are crowded enough.

The bottom line is that no everyone needs to use every social media tool (although I hope that they’ll try them all!) But whichever ones you choose to use you need to follow the basic principles of social media use: be yourself (as Oscar Wilde said, “be yourself, everyone else is taken”), engage in two-way conversations, listen and learn.

Puget Sound Off How-To Videos

Puget Sound Off is an effort spearheaded by Lance Bennett to engage and educate high school students in Seattle about the use of social media for civic engagement.

The project was launched about a year ago and the website has blogs by young people, lists of local events and and groups for discussion. A few weeks back I received an email from Lance highlighting a new area of the site. The How-To area is a series of videos about how to use social media for story telling, engagement, social networking, and advocacy.

It’s a great series, but what I was really struck by was the utility of this How-To section for adults as much as young people. And since the videos were developed largely by young people, it’s a great example of reverse mentoring!

If you know an older person struggling to use social media point them to these videos as a great starter course.