Tweet This: Leading with Social Media Tools

Harvard Business Publishing featured a piece, ‘Is Social Media Worth Your Time?’ It was an interesting piece that begs the relevant question: do such media tools actually benefit the organization?

If you spend most of your working hours in meetings, are you being productive? Meetings are not exactly a place where things actually get done. Sure, there are discussions about issues, strategies, problems, opportunities, and the like but do interventions take place in the meeting room?

Everyday, I am alerted to requests for connections on Facebook. As flattering as it may be, at times it can be challenging to accept all requests, as you may not be familiar with these potential friendships. Do you accept, or do you ignore? Do you want to impress others with your invitations to join others, and do you accept unreservedly all invitations to befriend others? Do you stay in touch with most of your community of friends? Do you relate and connect actively with your business associates on LinkedIn?

Do you tweet messages because you wish to share a vignette of important information? Or do you submit these messages to let others know how you are doing? Do you truly think that your Twitter community cares if you just did your washing or shopped for groceries?

Excessive use of social media tools may be an indulgence. It can consume our lives if we cannot pass an hour without looking at our mobile phones for an e-mail or text message alert. These tools may make us feel vulnerable at times, and rightfully so. Identity theft is a risk we take – so much is written and described about individuals that it can lead to paranoia. People judge us, and this readily available information may create preferences and prejudices with those accessing it. The lack of direct control over content management is cause for worry if somebody posts a picture taken of you in a wild, drunken state at a private celebration through a phone-camera. Good intentions may be misconstrued.

And, we may allow such good intentions to communicate our whereabouts and happenings to dominate our time from more purposeful work.

Certainly, when we wiki things up we get more knowledgeable and informed. If we Skype others, we get to hear the human voice and perhaps see the other person screen-to-screen. This allows us to personalise and humanize our communication if we restrict ourselves to two-dimensional media like e-mails and text messages.

As a leader, how do you harness such technology and remain high-tech, yet high-touch? How do you expand your span of influence and spread your availability to your people? How do we become more responsible and mindful about how we adopt such communication technology? How do you lead by example your ability to utilize such applications?

Give it some deep thought. And, you do not have to tweet it.