When asked to identify the greatest challenges we expect to face this year as corporate communicators, our IABC WestFair communicators presented a picture of life in the trenches, where responsibilities were anything but predictable and change was the only constant.

Not surprisingly, the effective use of social media topped the list, followed closely by change management communication and the changing role of the communicator.

Practical approaches to social media were discussed, including the importance of social media guidelines, internal social media champions, executive sponsorship and interaction through micro-blogging platforms like Yammer and Chatter. Corporate culture emerged as the definitive arbiter of social media success on social intranets, and organizations with a non-consensual or command-and-control leadership with a lack of trust in workforce feedback should not expect to see results with social media—nor should social media efforts propelled by grass roots efforts alone.

We considered the dizzying array of social media tools and differing workforce attitudes about them, including exacerbating factors such as age, job scope and geography. Instances were reported where social media was “written off” by a business leader as the pet project of marketing and communication: “When we see engineers interacting on blogs we’ll be convinced,” they said. The blurring of internal and external social media efforts was discussed, and the challenges of using external social media channels to showcase internal business expertise and thought leadership.

The changing role of the communicator was discussed, including our responsibility to influence but not control two-way conversations on intranet communication platforms with social media tools. The need for tight relationships with human resources was reiterated, as well as connecting with the C-suite for brand and reputation management and, more than ever, business knowledge to help organizations be more productive as an essential requirement to earning a seat at the table with senior leadership. Being comfortable with constant change—or addicted to it—was mentioned, as well as the need for ongoing personal development to stay current and sure-footed in our constantly shifting communication landscape.

In terms of public relations, the importance of getting your message into the hands of social media influencers and “tastemakers” was stressed, who would then cultivate your message through to trusted real-time conversational channels. What the company says about itself, it was acknowledged, is no longer the trusted source of information it once was, now that breaking news and opinion has shifted to popular interactive journalism sites like The Huffington Post. Getting your message into the hands of the right blogger can now make all the difference.

In terms of change management, the importance of understanding the changing business models of older manufacturing-based companies was underscored, as were the challenges of communicating to a younger, more entrepreneurial and tech-savvy workforce who expect messaging on real-time mobile platforms. A continuous improvement mindset related to change strategy and tactics was considered essential for communicators, as was an appreciation for the positive dimensions of change—personal and organizational growth and opportunity.

The importance of gathering unfiltered workforce feedback and calibrating change communication content accordingly was considered essential to communication success, as was the importance of our role within the context of expanding corporate boundaries (due to globalization) and highly-matrixed organizations resulting from frequent mergers and acquisitions.

What communication challenges and solutions are you working with in 2012? Feel free to leave your comment here or on our IABC WestFair LinkedIN Group.

photo credit: Sò lông

In considering ways to get more employees to provide feedback on an internal corporate site, as a client recently asked, it’s good to remember that feedback is provided when there is an assurance that the worker’s voice will be heard, considered and acted upon. This is a cultural issue, really. Companies modeling a consensual decision-making style will have no problem gathering employee feedback—since the culture is not risk-averse, but transparent and inclusive.

Contests or incentives are ill-advised, since they cut against the grain of the discretionary effort (engagement) and self-motivation required to capture authentic feedback.

Direct appeal from a senior leader: A straightforward, honest and sincere appeal from a senior leader with skin in the game is the best way to approach this issue—and a senior leader blog is an appropriate channel. It may be pertinent to acknowledge the mistakes of the past—or at least a failure to emphasize the importance of gathering direct, unfiltered employee feedback, if this is, in fact, the case.

The senior leader post could be titled, “the gift of feedback,” and lay out in the clearest terms why she requires employee feedback; namely, to guide her decision-making process, to keep an ear to the ground and make decisions based on the facts as they really are. In the clearest terms, the request for feedback should be described as an essential requirement of a servant-leadership model, not a nice-to-have after-thought of old school command-and-control leadership. It should include examples of how feedback has changed her thinking in the past.

Ask for feedback on relevant topics: It stands to reason that the senior leader blog/message topic must be relevant to the work people do every day. The senior leader should inquire about which topics would resonate most with the workforce readership. Toby Ward speaks of a using a CFO Blog with a particular client, where the CFO solicited innovative ideas to save money from the front-line workers. It was a topic within their purview, something they could speak about comfortably. The response was overwhelming.

Offer more than one way to provide feedback: Employees should be able to provide feedback in a number of ways—by liking posts on the site, by having an option to share posts on the site with colleagues via email (or social media, if applicable), and through comments after each post or message. The frequency and quality of this interaction is an important success metric. This capability for two-way interaction should exist after every post/message, not only in a dedicated area for feedback on the page (as was the case with this client). People are accustomed to weighing in on the post they are reading—not in a general feedback area, unless it is a customer service page.

Provide a feedback mechanism for every communication: Every email and corporate message should have an option for workforce feedback, or link to the full story on the intranet, where an option for feedback can be provided.

Build a culture of feedback: Feedback should be ingrained into the culture, encouraged not only at town halls and annual engagement surveys, but also during 1-on-1 meetings, staff meetings, skip-level meetings, web chats and Twitter town halls, and manager walk-arounds. It should also be a vibrant tenet of the performance management process, where a mid-year employee stay interview or career-development discussion should occur.

Once ingrained in the culture, feedback will flow.

What best practices have you come across to encourage feedback?

Related articles

• Eight tips for getting employees to comment on CEO intranet blogs (holtz.com)
• Daily Thought 12/1/11: Feedback (leadershipstudy.wordpress.com)

This is part two of a discussion about the factors affecting workforce adoption of social intranets (see Key drivers of social intranet adoption), answering the question so often heard: “Hey, wait… how come no one’s using our new social intranet?”

1/ The Importance of Culture can not be overstated when it comes to variables affecting social intranet adoption, and the level of workforce engagement and willingness to put forth discretionary effort is perhaps its most reliable indicator.

• Workforce Engagement: Take a look at data gathered from the annual employee survey. Is employee feedback encouraged and is it acted upon? Is feedback gathered once a year, or systemically throughout the year? Have there been layoffs and, if so, how were they handled? Relationships with managers: Are workers micro-managed or treated like trusted partners whose opinion matters?

• The social intranet is discretionary!! This may sound obvious, but you can’t force workers to use a social intranet, or force them to collaborate and share ideas. Your workforce may be saying: “I don’t care about SharePoint or your Open Source intranet with all the social media tools if I’m not motivated to work here!”

2/ Senior Leader Support: Cisco’s social media manager, LaSandra Brill put it this way: “An important lesson learned at Cisco is that social media has to make its way into an organization top down (emphasis mine). All too often it makes its way in via the bottom layer – young people who know about social media try to make colleagues enthusiastic and launch small projects. This is a positive thing, but it is important that social media are integrated on a strategic level. This entails the need for budget, time and people.

And don’t forget, you will face critics within the company. In order to get a good start to success, the top management’s support is vital. At Cisco, the CEO, CTO and other executives are active bloggers and often initiate conversations. They show the way to other employees and inspire them through their personal story.”

I’ve seen too many well-intended attempts to drive social media adoption from small groups within an organization, only to learn that C-level executives wants nothing to do with it or offers only token appreciation. These efforts are limited in value because senior leadership must set the tone of transparency, facilitating the cultural milieu required for social intranets to thrive.

3/ Intranet Governance: Accountability for a social intranet must be distributed throughout the organization or it will die on the vine, usually sooner rather than later. Again, Cisco uses a coordinated strategy for social media that’s determined by a team of ten called the Center of Excellence. This strategic governance team should be collaborative and cross-functional, and works best when represented by major functional stakeholders from Communications, Human Resources, Operations, Information Technology, and Business Units/Departments.

• Business Unit Tactical Teams (each chaired by a governance team member) should be responsible for managing business unit intranet operations with responsibility for day-to-day decision-making, compliance, creation of customized local standards, along with summarized reporting to the enterprise governance team once a month.

4/ Social Media Guidelines: You want to encourage community interaction on your intranet, not box it out with too many rules. Effective social media guidelines, many of which are available through public search online, encourage active participation in the creation and sharing of information, from interaction through threaded blog comments, wikis, and group discussions, to creating a blog or group of one’s own. The social intranet should be a hub for collaborative business solutions and workforce engagement, so the rules should protect not police the workforce. Clear guidelines for acceptable use should help not hinder the adoption of social media tools for productive, internal purposes.

5/ Graphical User Interface (GUI): A number of user-friendly interfaces can increase adoption to your social intranet. Team sites, group sites and wikis are not always intuitive, and My Site Profiles must be filled out completely to fully inform the search function, the most important navigational tool on the intranet. But this can be dicey as workers get hung up on “profile completeness” as a measure of success, and communicators must find some inducement for compliance. The workforce says, “Just give me my Facebook interface (Yammer, Chatter, Jive) where I can engage with others using status updates, share comments and links, collaborate on documents and video, and follow others I care about in threaded conversations. Training required—none; ramp-up time required—none, these platforms are immediately intelligible because your workforce is already using them.

6/ Training: Companies like Southwest and Cisco succeed with an integrated social intranet—beyond simply using Twitter and CEO blogs—because they care enough to make social media a core workforce competency. Living out the values of the organization on the social intranet is a business goal for these organizations, and employees are responsible for carrying it out. With proper social media training the workforce becomes ambassadors for the organization, ready to handle anything a customer might throw at them in or outside of the workplace.

But I don’t work for Zappos—what can I do?

Some ideas for communicators working at a risk-averse or legacy-based organizations, who are looking to gain C-level executive buy-in for a social intranet:

Start small/look for small wins: Pilot your social intranet to a defined business area prior to enterprise launch. Your looking to mine the intellectual capital of the organization, and looking for workforce collaboration that leads to business solutions. Teach it, model it, capture it.

Tell it to the C-suite: Harvest video testimonials to persuade senior leadership of the value of social intranets, demonstrating the business value of an open, consensual organizational culture.

Have a plan: Create a strategic communication plan to drive social intranet adoption or hire a consultant to help (…ahem), leveraging various proven communication tactics to bring about cultural change, such as a corporate blogging calendar with suggested topics and frequency, communication tools for managers and project success metrics. Show senior leadership that you have a plan, while underscoring the value of harvesting employee feedback to guide their decision-making process.

Related articles

• Key drivers of social intranet adoption (domcrincoli.com)
• Bertrand Duperrin: What does an intranet strategy look like? (my.intrateam.dk)
• Intranet Governance: Ownership, Management & Policy (Toby Ward)
• How Cisco successfully integrates social media (social media today)

There are a number of motivational factors communicators need to understand when trying to drive participation on social intranets. By definition, when we say social intranets, we mean an internal organizational site offering tools for two-way (or many-way) discourse and collaboration, rather than intranets of the bulletin board variety—one-way posting areas used to push out information like a website.

I had the privilege of guest lecturing a social media class at New York University recently, and wanted to share some gleanings from our discussion.

Key Behavioral Drivers

There are some common denominators when it comes to behavioral drivers on external social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and Google+ and drivers of social behavior on social intranets.

Relationships, and what we derive from them, are a key behavioral drivers—a sense of belonging and affirmation, a sense of recognition and connection through collaborative observations, ideas, feelings, dreams.

The organic nature of threaded conversations and where they lead is another compelling value proposition of social media interaction.

Relationship-building on sites like LinkedIN has in many ways supplanted in-person networking at trade shows. Now you can use LinkedIN to expand your reach and influence virtually, and expand your thought leadership through blog posts, LinkedIN Groups and LinkedIN Answers.

We have challenges to overcome and decisions to make, we enjoy the recognition, connection and affirmation that comes from interaction with colleagues and friends, and we enjoy growing and developing, learning new things. These motivational levers drive our interaction on social intranets as they do on social networks like Twitter, LinkedIN and Facebook.

Social Intranet Value Proposition

The value proposition of social intranets lay in their invitation to two-way communication (think pull, rather than push), a respectful offer to provide our opinions and feedback to help guide the decision-making process, and an offer to collaborate and work as a team to achieve the goals of the organization.

In a nutshell, social intranets work because they leverage the value of relationships and two-interaction, while incorporating employee feedback into the senior leader decision-making model.

The immediacy and direct connection of social intranets—it’s the default browser for workers at many organizations—means that it is the right medium for crisis communication and for quelling rumors, and its the right medium for storytelling through affordable HD-quality video. Social intranets offer opportunities for increased collaboration and two-way interaction, and the potential to mine the intellectual capital of the organization to meet business challenges. Successful initiatives using CFO & CEO blogs have generated money-saving ideas from workers while driving workforce engagement through contests to come up with sustainable green practice ideas for the home and workplace. Page and story rankings on social intranets allow workers to see what other colleagues are reading, while subscription-based services allow them to see what they’re working on or writing about on their blog or project site.

Does this resonate with you? Please share your comments below.

And why aren’t workers using the social intranet at your organization? Stay tuned, I’ll cover that in the next installment, part two of this discussion: “Variables of social intranet adoption.”

Photo credit: Image by fredriclandqvist via Flickr

Related articles

• 4 Reasons Why Socializing Your Intranet Makes Organizational Change Easier (AuthenticOrganizations.com)
• Social Intranets catch on (gautamblogs.com)

Matching the right technology platform and communication channel to the right organizational goal has become a core competency for corporate communicators, underscoring our role as facilitators of conversation in addition to communication planning, writing and editing.

Using curation, collaboration and crowdsourcing (somebody slap me for using these 3 words in one sentence) communicators can facilitate conversation to enhance the senior leader decision-making process while driving workforce engagement.

Shel Holtz discussed the value of curation recently at a BlogWorld presentation I attended in New York City, casting the communicator in the role of “curator of content,” or one who delivers informative content from various sources to a targeted audience. As Shel says, it’s a great way to become a trusted guide to useful content about targeted topics. Ragan.com is a source of curated content for communicators, offering a variety of blog posts on internal communication, public relations, social media, and human resources. Ragan is diligent to find and deliver this useful content to your inbox on a daily basis, and the value of the two-way conversation emerging from the comments can exceed the article itself. Communicators can offer curated content to targeted groups within their organizations, offering a valuable service to their time-strapped workforce. Curated content may help them work more efficiently and make more informed decisions. Just be sure to secure the permission of content creators before you publish.

Micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Yammer, Jive and Chatter offer opportunities for communicators to facilitate collaboration through real time Tweet-chats, using hash tags (denoted by the # sign) to identify topical conversations. I participated in a Tweet-chat last week where internal communication topics were discussed in messages of 144 characters at the #ichat hashtag. You can easily isolate these conversations on Twitter and join in yourself, closing each remark with the identifiable hashtag.

“There’s something fun, enjoyable and pleasantly interactive about this channel of communication,” says Judy Jones (@redjudy), the executive director of employee communication at The New York Times, who was part of the same Twit-chat. “But like most social media,” she wisely observes, “Twit-chats are hard to explain and best understood through firsthand experience.”

Twit-chats can be a great learning and collaborative experience. The conversation doesn’t always stay on point, but there’s always something interesting to be gleaned from where they go organically. Participation in Twit-chats is well worth the effort, and internal communicators can use them strategically to help senior leaders mine the intellectual capital of the organization.

Which leads to the third way communicators can add value; namely, through crowdsourcing—community-based decision making by design. There was a thoughtful post in Michael Selzner’s Social Media Examiner on this topic last week, where crowdsourcing was described as a multiplayer experience that relies on collective, thoughtful engagement.

It’s the idea of connecting more deeply with our workforce and integrating feedback into the senior leader decision-making process. Communicators can drive engagement by teaching senior leaders to sound out ideas (marketing or otherwise) and provide context for change initiatives through conversations on micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Yammer, Jive or Chatter. It’s another example of the communicator as a facilitator of useful workplace dialogue, matching the right communication channel and technology with the right organizational goal.

What ideas do you have for facilitating strategic conversation at your organization?

Image by Mark Fidelman via Flickr

The promise of social media in the corporate context is inclusion—inclusive, consensual decision-making, not tacit acknowledgment. There’s a difference.

In the absence of C-suite support, social media in the corporate context is like the tail trying to wag the dog

I was privy to a conversation with an individual at a particular organization who left for a time and then returned:

Senior leader: “I think you left because you felt like you weren’t appreciated for what you did.”

Colleague: “No, I wanted to be included—I wanted to be consulted as a respected member of the decision-making team for my experience and expertise.”

Employee recognition vs. inclusion

The difference is less than subtle. We have paltry look-alikes for inclusion at most organizations that travel under the name of employee recognition and rewards. Employees are recognized and praised at various award ceremonies and in company newsletter write-ups, often with some sort of modest financial reward attached to it. These awards are sometimes named after the organization itself—the Company B Award—in an attempt heighten their importance.

But this is not inclusion, and in some cases amounts to little more than a condescending pat on the back. Reward and recognition programs may result in some emotional connection and have some transitory effect on employee motivation. But in the long run—taken on their own—they send the wrong message. Employees gain satisfaction and motivation from the work they do—from the work itself—and from the value their contribution brings to to the organization.

The gift of employee feedback

Motivation and engagement result when senior leadership actively listens to employee feedback, demonstrating that they not only appreciate them (which costs them nothing) but value their contribution and opinion as a trusted partner in the decision-making process (which costs a lot). Establishing a trusted partnership costs more in the short-term, in the time and effort it takes to reach a consensus of opinion, but the payoff is invaluable in the long-term; namely, motivated and engaged employees who actively contribute to the bottom line.

This is where social media comes in. Social media communication channels can help bridge this gap between employee appreciation and employee inclusion.

A word on employee-sponsored social media efforts

And let me say this unequivocally: Social media efforts work best when sponsored by executive leaders as part of an overall commitment to inclusive decision-making and transparency. Some organizations accomplish a great deal with bottom-up social media initiatives, deploying listening tools like Radian6 to monitor online conversations and advance important charitable causes. These social media efforts may even bring bottom-line value to the organization, as they respond in real time to negative chatter on social media channels. Negative customer perception may be dispelled and adverse impact on sales may be averted through personal social media interaction, and the number of calls coming in to call centers can be reduced.

But overall these employee-led initiatives result in pockets of social media activity, rather than widespread adoption across the enterprise. There is no consensual decision-making model in place because the effort was not sponsored by C-level leadership. In fact, at some of these organizations, C-level executives wouldn’t go near social media channels with a ten-foot pole. Participation remains bifurcated at these companies, and a hydra-headed organization emerges where social media is encouraged in some quarters but not all. Ask yourself what message employees receive about social media in the absence of real C-suite endorsement.

Do I think employees who kick-start social media efforts at an organization can ladder-up to something more strategic? Yes, I do.

But it’s like the tail trying to wag the dog: Without C-suite commitment to inclusion social media efforts do not ring true and do not result in cultural change.

Without cultural change an organization’s social media efforts amount to little more than employee appreciation.

Employee appreciation—2,4,6,8 whom do we appreciate? Oy—spare us.

When it comes to choosing communication channels employee newsletters are viewed as an anachronism by most organizations, harkening back to days when publishing required something more from us like manual layout, typesetting and the assistance of a graphics or print shop.

Like other traditional communication vehicles, newsletters nosed out into traffic on the digital highway, settling into occasional pockets created for them by emerging online media. But they’re not sexy like blogs or tweets, and their moldy residue remains like the petrol-leathery smell of ink drying on an offset press.

So what of it? Traditional newsletters have lost some luster, but we shouldn’t be too quick to say print is dead. It may be the communicator’s best option when it comes to non-tethered employees—construction crews, manufacturing or mailroom personnel, for example, who may have little or no computer access at work (at least until we can afford to provide an iPad for every employee!)

Online and traditional print newsletters have also lost none of their potence as storytelling vehicles to drive employee motivation and engagement, especially when information is properly chunked and arranged with sub-heads. What’s more, the opportunity for robust interaction through online newsletters provides senior leaders with feedback needed to make informed decisions.

• Recognition by Peers: Good writing and storytelling require a journalist’s intuitive ability to search out the story behind the story, reading between the lines to discover what’s really going on. This skill will never lose its luster. Newsletters are a platform for highlighting the exploits of a workforce, providing an essential means of recognition among peers—and this is more valuable than anything any company could put in a paycheck. I’ve seen individuals transformed by a well-worded and thoughtful newsletter story published before an audience of his or her peers.

• Archived Search Capability: Still stuck? Try using your newsletter to ladder up to something more strategic. I created a best practice story archive (in SharePoint) for one of my clients and we’re in the midst of making it searchable by application. Interactive database functionality will take this useful information to another level, putting program management information at the fingertips of subcontract program managers looking to benefit from the wisdom of lessons learned. How might a searchable best practice archive be leveraged at your organization?

For some related reading, Steve Crescenzo had some interesting thoughts on newsletter content at: Corporate Editors: It’s time to kill the fun page.

What say you? Thumbs up or down on the employee newsletter? How are you using them at your organization?

Photo credit: jessamyn’s photostream

Clients might interview a law firm, but they hire the lawyer. They extend their loyalty to the lawyer.

It’s personal: Does the lawyer understand my business, does she understand the issues I’m facing? What sort of image is your firm projecting? Social media can help present your business in a more personal way. View it as an opportunity to give back—yes, a chance to build conversation and dialogue in your specialized area of legal expertise.

Clients need more than your legal competence and your technical expertise; they need to know you care. They have a myriad of choices; you’re not the only firm in town and Internet sources of legal information and counsel are plentiful. Will you join the conversation or hope it goes away? Social media can present an essential point of differentiation—trust. Here’s five ways you can begin to use social media to build trust.

Add a blog to your website: Are you an expert in estate planning? Map out your strategic thought process when helping clients so readers gain a sense of what they’re missing by not talking to you.  Potential clients don’t know what they don’t know—most think they can handle estate planning on their own: Enlighten them. Create a simple blog calendar and enlist your associates to post periodically on relevant topics. Invite clients and colleagues to explore and weigh in.

Blog to provide context for current events: Students looking to pursue an environmental legal education aren’t simply looking for the highest ranked environmental law program. They’re looking for an essential point of differentiation; namely, thought leadership. A fine example of this is GreenLaw, the weblog of Pace University Law School’s top-ranked environmental law program, which aims to provide information, context, and commentary on current events and developments in environmental law. You can do the same in your area of specialty.

Join the conversation: Which firms are using Twitter in your area? Use Twitter’s search functionality to search them out by zip code. Are they using Twitter to build their business? How?  As a rule, only one in twelve of your tweets should be sales related in any way—realize that folks subscribe to build a relationship. The business will come when the trust is established. Comment on blog posts just for the fun of it—just to give back. When using Twitter embed a link in your tweets to advertise new blog posts. Invite the input of others and courteously and promptly respond to all comments. But don’t make an orphan of your blog—don’t even create one if you don’t have the willingness or resources to keep up the interaction.

Use your face not your firm’s logo on Twitter: Another blogger in the legal social media space rightly points out that using a logo on your Twitter profile instead of the more personal approach, your face, is the biggest mistake you can make. Remember, clients want to connect with a person, not a logo; they want a relationship not another sales pitch.

Inbound marketing: Have you invested in search engine optimization so your firm comes up in Google searches? Now what? What are you doing with the traffic? Track who’s coming to your website, especially those taking action (downloading a free e-book, brochure, or whatever). Continue the conversation and build relationships with these people using a “drip e-mail campaign.” You may need a marketing expert and a software solution like Hubspot to accomplish this, but it’s a great way to build your business by connecting with those who are already visiting your website.

Here’s some other helpful social media resources to get you going:

Shear on Social Media Law; Social Media Law; Social Media Law News; 10 Social Media and Law Epic Fails.

Photo credit:  905bosun‘s photostream/Bob Kelly

Sarah Palin’s unprecedented use of social media to set the agenda in Washington is something communication strategists and leaders should study, regardless of their political persuasion.

“I tweet; that’s just the way I roll,” says Palin, somewhat annoyingly.

But she’s no shrinking violet and doesn’t need our permission to speak out. Some say she should have packed her political bags long ago, that she should have simply lain down in the face of withering assaults against her Presidential fitness. Instead the second most popular politician on Facebook and uber-purveyor of Twitter missives continues to shake the GOP establishment to its good-old-boy core. Her star continues to rise owing in no small part to her surprising emergence as a social media visionary who purposefully circumnavigates the beltway gasbags who would silence her, opting instead for a vital connection with her ardent base of supporters as well as the entire White House press corps, who stand in the cue awaiting her next tweet.

Like or loathe her—but observe the kind of influence a leader can have when she chooses communication channels that promise a direct connection, refusing to capitulate to forces of political correctness and settle for the advice of public relations mavens and party speechwriters seeking to prescribe her every word.

The New York Times Magazine records the exasperation of recently departed White House secretary Robert Gibbs, as he describes the political suicide that would surely follow his inability to respond properly to Palin’s tweets: “If I would have told you that I could open up a Facebook or Twitter account, and simply post quotes, and have the White House asked about those, and to have the White House press corps focused on your Facebook quote of the day—that’s Sarah Palin. She tweets one thing and of a sudden you’ve got a room full of people who want to know…”

In what she’s accomplished she’s thrown down the gauntlet for leaders of every stripe, be they corporate, political or otherwise, calling them to use social media to achieve new levels of transparency and engagement with those they seek to lead. Some user guidelines we can glean from her use of social media include the following:

1/ Be confident; speak your truth: Her description of Rahm Emanuel included “shallow/narrow-minded/political/irresponsible as they come,” and she called Politico writer Jonathan Martin “full of crap.” Thing is a lot of people agree with her, and a kind of movement has grown up around her tweets and status updates. My point is not to debate the merits of what she is saying, but to point out the number of followers or friends who choose to hear her opinion through Twitter and Facebook subscription feeds– the discretionary effort required to actually subscribe to and check these feed messages on a daily basis is the kind of engagement most senior leaders and communicators would kill to have.

2/ Be persistent: Palin could have called it quits after coming under fire for some of the things she said—or more specifically, failed to say during the Katie Couric interview in 2008. Instead she is seeking to remake her image through direct access to her support base through social media channels. Time will determine her success in swaying the wider American public, and whether a run for the White House is sustainable. But her public relations initiatives—her instinct to harness social media communication channels in new and creative ways— is a lesson for all communicators.

3/ Be unafraid to make a mistake: Palin’s lawyer Thomas Van Flein found out about her much publicized tweet calling for peaceful Muslims to “refudiate the ground-zero mosque” at the same time everyone else did. “This is her political instinct in action,” he said. Love it or hate it, this is Palin, bringing the unvarnished truth as she sees it, unfettered, unafraid. We can obsess about her wrong use of a word (even though we understood what she was trying to say), or we can choose to admire her ability to speak out.

4/ Use social media to find change agents to help you lead: Where did Palin find her primary speechwriter (when she uses one), researcher and online coordinator? She found Rebecca Mansour at Conservatives4Palin, a blog Mansour started without pay simply to right what she perceived as biased treatment of Palin and her record.  Amazing! You mean she didn’t find her through a single-spaced two page resume posted on a job board? A lesson for HR Talent Acquisition: Mansour already had the fire! She was already engaged and she didn’t need anyone’s permission. She was a self-starter already using social media (blogging) to find her voice and explore her passion with whomever would listen. Palin simply harnessed her near encyclopedic knowledge for the good of her campaign.

5/ Stay connected: The ease and simplicity of communicating through micro-blogging platforms may be just right for many busy leaders who don’t have the time to keep a full-blown blog but who nevertheless seek to remain in vital contact, and who are interested in gathering vital feedback from those they lead in order to make sound consensual decisions. Palin can land a hard punch without moving from her living room sofa in Wasilla, Alaska. Being home with her family doesn’t preclude participation in the ongoing political dialogue– pretty strong argument for work-life balance too, wouldn’t you say?

6/ Show your human side: “Out for a jog in Central Park. Beautiful,” tweets Palin. All work and no play made Jack… well, it ain’t all business folks. Social media offers senior leaders a chance to show some vulnerability, even the occasional chink in one’s armor. Facebook especially has been considered to be a place where you might invite someone you met on another social media channel—like LinkedIn or Twitter— to get to know you better and form a deeper bond. But the lines continue to blur in this area and many believe most of us will opt for one social media platform for both business and personal pursuits in the future. Mark Zuckerburg is certainly banking on it.

There is no over-arching strategy, Palin claims in The New York Times article, just political instinct and an ongoing commitment to participation in the political dialogue. Don’t underestimate this woman and her deft use of social media to get her message across. She’s not asking our permission. She’s not waiting around for the beltway or media elite to provide her with a communication channel. She’s created her own—she’s going direct. Social media made it possible.

How are you doing with what you have to say?

Photo credit  david_shankbone’s photostream (2,706)

What are the engagement and communication competencies every organizational leader should possess during times of change? We counsel senior leaders, saying communication content must roll up to the strategic goals of the organization. But what does that mean, exactly? Does this corporate-speak belie the fact that a leader must be good with people? A look at pro football’s Rex Ryan of the New York Jets—the player’s coach—may provide some answers and a working model.

Most players across the NFL say they would love to play for coach Ryan. The reason, most players say, is that he’s found a way to make the game fun again. He’s criticized for being dyslexic, and for joking, cussing and eating too much. But he’d take a bullet for his men, and is known as a defensive auteur—a man with “a beautiful football mind.” As of this writing the Jets have won five in a row after losing their season opener, and are now the team to beat. But this winning season was clinched long before the season began. Why? Because Ryan knows how to lead and communicate, skillfully weaving motivation and engagement principles into the fabric and culture of his organization.

1. “I’ll Always Tell You”—This is one of Rex Ryan’s signature phrases. He’s all heart and always up-front. He retains a boyish wonder for the game that’s contagious: “Tell me what we don’t have!” he exults from the sidelines during a recent practice session. Today, coaches are cultivated in the league’s image, with the result that they seem like bottom-line executives — corporate, compulsive and always on message, says Nicholas Dawidoff in a recent New York Times Magazine article.

But Ryan is open and candid to the point of making people nervous. He interviewed for many of the top coaching jobs but was thought to be too much of a risk and was turned down, but his most enthusiastic supporters are players and fellow coaches, who regard his “supposed flaws as great virtues:”

“Some say he’s too brash. But he’s just telling you what he really believes. He has tremendous leadership skills. He’s the hard-charging general who doesn’t do everything by the book but wins. He gets other people to buy in,” says 40-year veteran linebacker coach Bob Sutton. He gains insights from the close working bonds he develops with his players. They trust him because he works hard to put them in a position to succeed.”

Personal charisma? Or is there an engagement competency at work here—something every senior leader could cultivate to engender this kind of trust?  Imagine if senior leaders were intentional, dedicating time each week to getting out of their offices and walking around among those they lead, listening, counseling and motivating when and where they could. Change management communication consultant Linda Dulye calls it “management by walking around.” Read how she perfected this communication tactic to drive engagement at Rolls Royce.

This is a far cry from the communication plan at many organizations: Large scale change announcements—“We’re restructuring; your pay grade will be affected”—followed by a duck and cover routine, laying low in hopes that things will get better with time. This rather than a systematic plan to communicate often about how changes will affect the organization—a plan to communicate and capture feedback in order to dissipate rumors that inevitably fill the void created in the absence of robust communication.

2. Believe in Your People— Is it all about them, as Ryan seems to say? If employees are your organization’s most important asset, then yes, it is all about them. The ability to form a strategic business plan to lead the organization is an assumed competency, but what may be missing is belief in your people. Players say of Ryan: “Everyone in Baltimore {his last gig} misses him. Guys in Baltimore who left Rex, they didn’t play as well after leaving him…Once you play for him, you don’t want to play for anybody else.”

Are your senior leaders coached to communicate in a way that instills this kind of confidence in employees—not manipulation, but a true belief in their ability to get the job done? Confidence is a fragile, discretionary, and non-tangible asset, but it is the secret weapon of the overcomer, the motivational factor that’s missing from so many organizations, the antidote to so many things.

By contrast, another Super Bowl-winning coach is characterized as “cold and unsentimental.” Though his team performed well he led in a way that seemed dehumanizing for players and fans: “He created an atmosphere of suspicion and unease and had a penchant for humiliating individuals in front of the team.”

Dawidoff sums it up: “It has become anathema for athletes to endure serious injuries and play on—but not for football players. To them, toughness is the essence of the sport and anguish is a form of effort, something you nobly give. As Sutton, the former Army coach, will tell you, like soldiers who fight not for flag or country but for officers and comrades, football players make their sacrifices for their teammates and coaches. In Baltimore, players stayed in games with lacerated kidneys, torn-up knees and shattered hands for Ryan because he was, in turn, all about them.”

3. Be Drawn to Unlikely Talent—“He has things in his past. So do I,” says Ryan of one of his players. “If the Ravens turned their back on me, I’d be nowhere.” He’s drawn most to unlikely athletes, “players taken in the last rounds of the draft or not drafted at all, denizens of practice squads, misfits and afterthoughts.” How many game-changing recruits miss the cut at your organization because certain keywords aren’t lifted from their resume by scanning software? Maybe there’s a better way. In pro football the non-recruited players who show up and try out for the team are called “walk-ons.” Jim Leonhard, the 5-foot-8, 180-pound linchpin of the New York Jets league-leading secondary, is one such individual. “I noticed how smart he was,” says Ryan, who saw the opportunity to develop Leonhard into a kind “on-field air-traffic controller.” He had ability to communicate what each player on defense was supposed to do on every play. Ryan spotted him during a three-day tryout after he was cut from the Buffalo Bills. He would have never made it past the resume scan at most organizations—how stupid.

4. Encourage Individuality—Ryan makes every player feel unique and important.This may sound counter-intuitive against the backdrop of corporate teamwork and collaboration. Not at all: The individual operating in his or her gifting is what defines the organization as a whole. Ryan’s interest in each of his players is personal:

“Another day, while addressing the team after a close loss to Jacksonville, he broke down in tears. “Everyone took it as a young coach in over his head — he’s losing it, he can’t handle it,” Leonhard says. “That’s not it at all. He knew the talent and ability we had, and he wanted us to live up to it. That’s what you want in a coach. Someone who genuinely cares about you.” The next week, the Jets coaches found custom-made KleenRex boxes on their desks. Thus spurred, the Jets rallied into the playoffs and all the way to the A.F.C. championship game, where they led the Colts at halftime.”

5. Make Work Fun Again—Can we make work fun again? Read Dan Pink’s book on Motivation (Drive): The feelings of accomplishment and recognition—the joy we derive from engagement with our work far exceeds the monetary compensation we receive from it. We know this intuitively. When our work is informed by our unique giftings and calling we enjoy what we do and we shine—but this could take a lot of tinkering. We must have the freedom to try something new and fail. That’s where communication content and culture hold sway. Is such tinkering encouraged where you work, or is your organization risk-averse—more interested in assigning blame than listening and seeking to understand?

Ryan knows how to make the work fun again: “When he coached the Baltimore defensive line, Ryan devoted much time to keeping players interested. Linemen like Sam Adams, Tony Siragusa and Rob Burnett enjoyed the football Jeopardy! and the kicking contests, but they most looked forward to Thursdays, when Ryan gave each player a chance to go one on one with him in a line drill. ‘I know what to do,’ he says. ‘I just can’t do it. I’d get the crap beat out of me. You’re messing with some of the strongest dudes on this planet. They can hurt you by accident. Grab you, you’re all bruised up. It’s fun. I’m a kid anyway.’”

Photo credit: by cool13902008′s photostream (Ryan) by mondopiccolo (water faucet) and by Hawk Eyes Charlie Lyons-Pardue (Jets)