by Charlene Li
These shifts in sharing norms leave leaders feeling vulnerable. What if people don’t like how I share? What if I share the wrong thing? Even worse: What if nobody cares?
As we will see as we go deeper into the art and science of sharing to shape, any one tweet is neither a home run nor a black mark. The cumulative effect is what matters. Sharing is the foundation for building relationships, accumulating and connecting with followers, and shaping behavior in a strategic way.
The Art of Sharing
Fast, frequent, and informal makes it all sound simple, but admittedly there is an art to sharing that requires cultivation. In taking a deeper dive into relevant tips and techniques, we will examine the types of things that leaders can and should share as well as how to present these for the greatest impact.
At a fundamental level, successful sharing connects to three things: strategic goals, common ground, and relationship focus. Leaders should share with a purpose in mind. Engaged leadership is a strategic endeavor. What and how you share always corresponds with the goals you’ve set forth for yourself as a leader and for your organization. In addition, the common ground and shared interests you glean through listening at scale play a key part in informing the types of things you share. Sometimes sharing may be as simple as responding to emerging concerns before they become serious issues; other times it will be a direct appeal to followers for ideas or input. Regardless, both of these require listening before sharing. As for the relationship focus at each phase in becoming an engaged leader, we return to the basic question—what type of relationship do I want to have with followers? That is where the art comes into play.
Take the case of Padmasree Warrior, chief technology and strategy officer for Cisco. Warrior is someone who has raised sharing to an art form more than almost anyone else I’ve seen. She shares constantly with 1.5 million Twitter followers from across her widely diverse network.15 Part of her goal is to be a cheerleader for Cisco, and she’s swift at disseminating research and products related to “the internet of things,” among other Cisco priority projects. But does Cisco’s intellectual property really have what it takes to appeal to so many people around the Twittersphere? Probably not. Warrior also posts frequently on topics that are important to her personally—immigration reform, philanthropy, women in technology, and even art.16 She posts photos of her own paintings and shares poetry, particularly haikus.17 Her approach to social media is authentic and thick with her personal perspective on life—and this candor deepens the relationships that she has with her followers. They appreciate her unique spin on topics. The result: Warrior gets Cisco messaging in front of thousands of people who ordinarily would find little interest in tech talk.
The sharing style of Warrior (along with that of others whose style we will examine) offers a cross section of best practices in the art of sharing.
Sharing That Spreads—Emotion, Authenticity, Point of View
There are three things you should strive for in your sharing: emotion, authenticity, and point of view. Warrior’s tweets are often repeated and retweeted outside her own web of followers and certainly beyond Cisco’s spheres of interest. Her messages spread out and take hold because they have authenticity. She speaks from the heart, and her point of view is evident in every post. In one post, she artfully melded insights into self-expression and transparency (see Figure 2.3).18
Warrior is not alone. Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman, the world’s largest independently owned public relations firm, is another whose style of sharing packs a powerful punch. His blog posts get amplified, discussed, and passed around because he uses emotional appeal in the right doses and frequently shares a part of himself.19 For example, he spoke with pride in one post: “Why I Joined My Father’s Company,” and then wrote in another post about a poignant moment at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in Lower Manhattan:20
I was most profoundly affected by the small items in the gallery, much more than the crushed police car or charred ambulance. There was a pair of high heeled shoes with blood marks, worn by a woman who walked down the stairs before the buildings collapsed. There was a red bandana worn by a trader at a financial firm, a young former football player who went back to help colleagues escape by screening his mouth from the smoke and perished for his valor. There were ephemera from the building, including legal documents and trading slips.
I asked Edelman why he shares the way he does—what value he sees being created for him and his firm. He responded, “It connects me with the people of Edelman and our clients in a personal way. It allows me to opine on topics in the PR industry, which very few of my fellow CEOs do … I am going to the 70th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation. I will meet survivors. I will also be in Davos. Why not share my experiences?”21
As Edelman and Warrior show, emotion hits people harder than facts and frameworks, and sharing that is done with humanity and a point of view gets noticed and amplified.
Sharing That’s Memorable—Stories
Roger Martin, dean emeritus of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, writes in a blog post about the torturous process known as strategic planning.22 Rather than approach planning as a series of constructed spreadsheets, he says, “Think about a strategic options [sic] as being just a happy story about the future.” The best way to express and share a strategy is to show there’s a beginning, a middle, and, most important, an end, as in a story. A story is memorable—people can remember it, talk about it, and articulate it. They might not remember the five points of a strategy, but they will remember the story behind it. The same holds true with sharing to shape. The more you can tie leadership to real stories or other memorable formats, the more people will remember, repeat, and adopt the ideas you are trying to convey. That’s how shaping comes about.
Visuals Add Depth and Dimension to the Art of Sharing
It is possible that sharing to shape is in the water at Cisco, because CEO John Chambers seems to have the rules committed to memory as much as Warrior does. One of the most memorable videos from a top leader I’ve ever seen is one in which Chambers stands in his office in suit and tie, demonstrating duck calls with a series of successive whistles in perfect pitch.23 One of his executives captured the scene with a Flip camera, and the rest is corporate history. It is a story that’s told and retold, and the video was viewed 45,000 times on YouTube. Why would Chambers agree to do something like this? A quick look at the comments on the video reveals the video’s impact—at least on a few Cisco employees (see Figure 2.4).
I’m not suggesting that all leaders get out their duck whistles and make a racket at the office. Instead, I am saying they should commit to sharing one story or memorable anecdote at a time in a way that will serve their purpose and help them shape relationships.
As the Chambers video illustrates, visuals introduce new dimension into the art of sharing. Seeing the Pope’s selfies reprinted in Vanity Fair, for example, or watching Chambers quack online creates a much richer and potentially memorable experience than sharing with text exclusively. Text, pictures, videos—the art of sharing is a multimedia affair. Leaders need to use their judgment, but suffice it to say that a picture really is worth a thousand words and video is worth a thousand pictures. A well-crafted blog is fine, but photos and videos are easier and faster to produce.
Still, taking a picture and posting it may seem audacious to a leader who’s more comfortable presenting a five-point plan. He may think, Why would anyone be interested in this? But let’s say that he visits a key customer and she talks about how thrilled her organization is to be working with this. He could go back to the office and relay the positive news and hope it filters down to everyone involved. Or he could take a picture with that customer, looking thrilled and giving a thumbs-up. Here I am standing with our customer Jane. Jane is really happy. We’re sitting here in her office and she’s giving me the thumb-up. Great work everybody! That takes things to a higher leve
l in terms of team building and engagement. You might even accompany the photo with a recording of Jane saying how much she loves the work everyone is doing. This type of thing creates an instant glow around the organization that a text message or simple conversation can never match.
The Science of Sharing
While the art of sharing to shape is all about what to share, the science described in this section is intended to clarify how to share. Such tools should simplify implementation in order to lessen the risk and restore predictability.
It’s important to point out that sharing is simpler and (if done right) less time-consuming with the help of social and digital tools. Our vast connectivity means that it is just as possible to share with a workforce of 30,000 people as it is with a leadership team of 30. There are scheduling tools to enable posting at the proper hours across time zones, apps to abbreviate unwieldy links and condense lengthy files, and mobile platforms that make it a snap to share photos and other media, at any time and from any place. Yet even with the mobility that so many applications provide, thereby clearing the runway for sharing, many leaders need a framework to help them get started and become comfortable.
With that in mind, what follows is a playlist of implementation techniques to make sharing less messy and more manageable no matter what platform a leader chooses to use.
1. Create a Plan—Why? What? How?
When I talk with leaders and executives about sharing, they tend to go right to implementation questions, such as, When should I use YouTube as opposed to Facebook? This is a good query but nonetheless premature. Leaders need to begin by looping back to their objectives: What do you hope to take away from sharing and how does it connect to your overarching strategy? What relationships do you want to cultivate and why? Once you know why you are sharing, you can start to put together a content calendar for your audience and map it against social venues for sharing. Leaders like to have a plan, and this is a simple, linear starting point: 1. Goal (Why?), 2. Relationship (What?), 3. Venue (How?). Creating order around sharing helps leaders manage their time and create content strategically and with a larger purpose.
2. Curate Based on Listening
Sharing seldom requires creating all new content. If you’re doing a good job of listening, you will be in a position to curate existing news and ideas and add your own perspective about why they are relevant. I tell leaders to start with messages and memes that already exist and add their own smart analysis. Ideas, research, and stories that your followers care about will come your way frequently. You can be the filter—decide what is sharable and portable. Similarly, retweeting on Twitter and re-posting on LinkedIn or your blog are excellent ways to lend your perspective without becoming a full-time content creator.
3. Switch It Up
If you get stuck in the idea stage of what to share, try shifting your attention to the medium, and vice versa. You can publish a different version of the same content on a variety of platforms and it will look a little different every time—and reach a different audience to broaden your followership. Instagram features photos, Twitter allows 140 characters, and a video blog can be as long or as short as you’d like. This approach allows you to keep what you share fresh and still remain on message. Alternately, many leaders have a casual style that allows them to switch between business messaging and personal interests. Padmasree Warrior does this very well. She shares a little bit of everything and pulls it off because her point of view acts as the anchor and common denominator.
4. Schedule It
Besides having an authentic voice, Edelman PR CEO Richard Edelman is the iron man of executive blogging. He has been posting once a week for 10 years. You might think it comes naturally to the PR maven—and it might by now—but he got himself into it by creating a routine. Since September 2004 he has blogged, without fail, every single Tuesday morning at 6:00. He shared, “I almost never miss a week. I find something of interest somehow.”24 Likewise, I coach leaders to set aside a small chunk of time regularly in order to write or plan content. Keep in reserve what you don’t use so you have it when you need it. In the same way company announcements are scheduled, find a way to make a routine out of sharing.
One of my favorite routines is tweeting in advance. I use tools like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, and Buffer to binge-write tweets so they are queued up for a week to post at times when people are reading Twitter. I’ll also schedule tweets to go out when I’m onstage giving a speech, as many of my audience members will be on Twitter during the event. These will be tweets that reinforce or extend my message. This way, I can amplify my message to a broader audience than the one in the room while also sharing content in a number of ways simultaneously.
5. Play to Your Strengths
One of the fundamental messages I have for top executives is that the transformation to digital leader should not take over their lives or overshadow the nature of their work. The job of a leader is to motivate others to act on behalf of the organization and provide them with inspiration and direction. Social and digital tools make that job easier—they don’t replace it.
Contrary to what some would say, leaders needn’t always be the ones to press “Send” when sharing. If they delegate some of the legwork—no problem. Bill Marriott, the executive chairman of Marriott, who is in his 80s, blogs all the time, despite the fact that he doesn’t type. Sometimes he writes posts in long form, for example, during air travel, and then passes his notes to an assistant to post. Other times he sits in his office and dictates a blog. He’s not letting the fact that he doesn’t type hold him back. He’s the brains behind the operation, and that’s what matters. Here’s a recent post where he tells the story of how his parents drove a Model T across the country from Salt Lake City to Washington, DC, and started what eventually became Marriott (see Figure 2.5).
No one expects Michelle Obama to schedule tweets on her own. Sometimes she does, but more often it’s a staffer posting on her behalf. As with everyone else, a leader’s time is limited. Part of the point of mobile technology and social platforms is that they are easy to use anywhere, but that’s not necessarily important for leaders. If someone else manages the password to their Hootsuite account, it does not necessarily diminish the quality of their sharing or the results of their efforts.
6. Be Intentional and Recalibrate
Before you share anything, think about how you will measure the return on your time investment. Knowing what kind of action you want to inspire, or what outlook you want to shape, needs to come first. Some people aspire to generate feedback, commentary, or retweets. Others want to gauge the traction their ideas are getting in the marketplace of ideas—and that type of concrete outcome is simple to measure. (Leave the job of tracking tweets and the pass-along rate to your social media team.) But the results that most leaders are looking for are more subjective. Changing minds and shaping behaviors over the long term is not an exact science. It’s more like trial and error. Yet, because the investment is relatively low, you can make a change when you are not getting the type of response you want. As with anything else, if one particular activity is not adding value, then you shouldn’t be doing it. There are always trade-offs, so you need to give various approaches a try to see what will work for you in the digital world.
The Eye of the Beholder
Before moving on to the next chapter on engagement, it’s important to acknowledge that not everyone will like everything you share. With 1.5 million Twitter followers, Cisco’s Warrior is seen by most as dynamic and authentic. But occasionally, when I share Warrior’s more personal posts, a few people react differently, and consider them inauthentic, as if she is trying too hard to be “real.” I know Padmasree personally and see the authenticity behind every post she writes. But authenticity will always be in the eye of the beholder—you can be as authentic and transparent as you want, but you may not be perceived that way. You can’t and likely won’t please everyone. As you share, you will need to put
yourself out there a bit and grow a tougher skin while making the transformation into an engaged leader. Sharing in a way that shapes and inspires action is a trial-and-error exercise that is worth the time and risk.
Let’s take a moment to consider how you can share to shape strategic outcomes. Who would benefit from hearing from you? What stories would you want to share with them, and what actions would you like them to take as a result? Take the goals you identified from the introduction and think through how sharing could help you accomplish those goals. Figure 2.6 uses the example goals as a starting point for some sharing initiatives.
Questions to Get Started
What stories can you share to advance your top goals?
What stories does your team/department/company/customers need to hear to develop affinity toward the organization?
How will you know that your content has made a difference?
What won’t you share—what’s off-limits?
What tools (and help from others) will you use to enable your personal sharing?
Chapter Three. Engage to Transform
The CEO of the health-care giant Aetna threw the industry into chaos with a series of successive tweets. With one keystroke after another, Mark Bertolini dismantled the traditional rules of engagement assigned to CEOs: He reached out directly to an incensed policyholder via Twitter. He pointedly questioned the fundamentals of the managed-care business model. And he publicly agreed to override a cancer patient’s policy parameters and pay every last penny of his considerable treatment costs.
The tweets that prompted Bertolini’s response, and that touched off the firestorm of debate came from Arizona State University graduate student Arijit Guha, who decried the inadequacy of his medical coverage and accused the industry and Bertolini himself of abandoning him in his hour of need. Guha was a young man with Stage IV colon cancer. After surgery and chemotherapy, the 30-year-old found that he had reached the $300,000 lifetime limit on his health coverage while additional medical bills were still piling up.25 It was a public relations nightmare for Aetna and for Bertolini—whose salary at the time, including bonus, topped $10 million.