- Politics & social media: The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a new report last week, “Politics on Social Networking Sites.” The survey noted, “The vast majority of SNS users (84%) say they have posted little or nothing related to politics in their recent status updates, comments, and links.” And a fairly small number of people said their political views had changed as a result of political activity on social networking sites. Only “16% of SNS users say they have changed their views about a political issue after discussing it or reading posts about it on the sites.”
- Future of media: The Columbia Journalism Review’s “Special report: the future of media” provides interesting fodder on “the long view” of the future of media.
- Wikipedia and PR: This month’s edition of the CW Bulletin (a monthly e-newsletter) from IABC, “PR and Wikipedia: Building a better relationship,” dives into the issues and current topics around the relationship between communicators and the world’s largest encyclopedia. There are feature articles on ethics, strategy and engagement, as well as additional column articles and case studies. For a complementary view on the challenges people sometimes face in updating incorrect or outdated information on Wikipedia, read the novelist and author Philip Roth’s “An Open Letter to Wikipedia” from the New Yorker last week. (Note that the Wikipedia entry for Roth’s The Human Stain has since been changed and is now correct.)
- Corporate social media management: Jeremiah Owyang has published a helpful series of blog posts over the last few weeks on the internal structures and management of social media at large corporations: “Breakdown: Social Media Workflow, Process, Triage,” “Breakdown: Converged Media Workflow (Coordinating Paid + Owned + Earned),” and “Breakdown: Corporate Social Media Team.”
We hope everyone enjoyed the long holiday weekend here in the U.S. Now back to our usual schedule.
- Trust and the media: A recent study found that even though trust in media institutions has been falling, most people would still rather get their news from professional journalists. From Poynter‘s story on the study: “More than 60 percent of U.S. adults say they “prefer news stories produced by professional journalists,” and more than 70 percent agree that “professional journalists play an important role in our society,” according to new survey data from the Reynolds Journalism Institute.” The full survey also looked at the role of mobile technologies on news and views on media consumption.
- Social technologies and business value: The McKinsey Global Institute issued an interesting research report in July, “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.” The report “explores [the technologies’] potential economic impact by examining their current usage and evolving application in four commercial sectors: consumer packaged goods, retail financial services, advanced manufacturing, and professional services. These technologies, which create value by improving productivity across the value chain, could potentially contribute $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value across the four sectors.” In essence, the research found that although the majority of companies are using social media in some capacity, “very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefit.” (report via Shel Holtz)
- President Obama and Reddit: The President participated in an “Ask Me Anything” (or AMA) forum on the social site Reddit last week, notable as a new presidential social media tactic. The Nieman Journalism Lab has a good round-up of opinions on the tactic, and David Carr at the New York Times has some background on Reddit, for those not familiar with the site.
Hello again. After a summer break (including the launch of my colleague Fred Garcia’s book The Power of Communication), the Worth Reading updates are back, with highlights of items that have caught our interest in the last week or so.
- Journalism and politics: The topic of politics is inescapable as we head into the heated fall political season, but a couple of notable pieces caught our eye this week. From Nieman Journalism Lab, an inside look at how decisions are made and the process works at PolitiFact. Then, from Jay Rosen, a discussion of the current divide between “‘You’re not entitled to your own facts.'” vs. That’s your opinion. Kiss my ad.”
- Wikipedia and breaking news: This interesting ethnographic study summary looks at “How Wikipedia Manages Sources for Breaking News,”
- Gender diversity and corporate performance: A Credit Suisse Research Institute report, “Gender diversity and corporate performance,” looked at various measures of diversity and performance, including stock market and financial performance. From a global view, the report analyzed “the performance of close to 2,400 companies with and without women board members from 2005 onward.” They found that, “over the past six years, companies with at least some female board representation outperformed those with no women on the board in terms of share price performance.”
- Social media and risk management: Another excellent report from the Altimeter Group, on “Guarding the Social Gates: The Imperative for Social Media Risk Management.” They found that “organizations need to be more proactive in managing social media risk.” The report looks at types of social media risks and risks by platform, and then outlines concrete steps for organizations to identify, assess, manage and monitor those risks.
I sometimes tell a bad joke in response to a client’s question about whether the boss will improve as a result of coaching: How many executive coaches does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. But the bulb has to really want to change…
That bad joke has a very serious subtext. Executives won’t rise to the occasion if they don’t take seriously the need to continuously improve their communication skills. As Winston Churchill famously said, “The most important thing about education is appetite.”
Nonprofit organizations need to win hearts and minds no less than corporations or governments.
And the skills that work in other areas of leadership are particularly important for nonprofit leaders.
As Amazon Vine Hall-of-Fame Reviewer Harold McFarland wrote recently, although many of the examples in The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively are drawn from corporations or governments, the book has relevance also to non-profits.
In fact, I note in the book that I have used its principles and techniques with dozens of non-profit organizations, including religious and multi-faith advocacy groups, social justice groups, human rights organizations, museums and other cultural organizations, and universities. Sometimes the very idea of using techniques also used by corporations causes some initial discomfort. But folks get over that quickly when they see the results.
Today The NonProfit Times, the leading business publication for nonprofit management, weighed in. It quoted from the book on the need for not-for-profit leaders to be strategic in planning communication. Excerpts:
“6 strategic questions to consider
When it comes to marketing, words matter. The words you choose to use in one of your campaigns can be the difference between a success and a failure.
That’s the point that Helio Fred Garcia made in his book The Power of Communication. He wrote that effective communication begins with strategic thinking. Strategy is all about what he called “ordered thinking.” For example, a communicator should never start with the question “What do we want to say?” because it skips the essential questions that establish goals, identify audiences and attitudes, and lay out a course of action to influence those attitudes.
Garcia recommended asking six strategic questions to become an effective habitually strategic communicator:
- What do we have? What is the challenge or opportunity we are hoping to address?
- What do we want? What’s our goal? Communication is merely the continuation of business by other means. We shouldn’t communicate unless we know what we’re trying to accomplish.
- What stakeholders matter to us? What do we know about them?
- What do we need them to think, feel, know, or do in order to accomplish our goal?
- What do they need to see us do, hear us say, or hear others say about us to think, feel, know, and do what we want them to accomplish?
- How do we make that happen?”
Two years ago yesterday BP CEO Tony Hayward inadvertently got his wish when, in the thick of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he told a press conference, “I want my life back.” He was sacked soon thereafter. In the battle for public opinion – for trust, support, the benefit of the doubt – Hayward lost. It was a failure of leadership on a massive scale. And it began with a failure of communication. And that failure, in turn, was a failure of discipline.
Hayward’s blunder is not unique to him. It should be a wakeup call to CEOs and other leaders, to all whose leadership responsibilities require inspiring trust and confidence verbally.
Whatever else leadership may be, it is experienced publicly. While it may emanate from within, it is a public phenomenon. And however technically proficient someone may be, if her or she does not communicate effectively, he or she will not lead well. Communication has power. But as with any form of power, it needs to be harnessed effectively or it can all too often backfire.
In 33 years of advising leaders on the actions and communication needed to win, keep, or restore public confidence, I have concluded that many leaders, much of the time, fundamentally misunderstand communication. This misunderstanding has consequences: corporations lose competitive advantage; NGOs find it harder to fulfill their mission; religious denominations lose the trust and confidence of their followers; nations diminish their ability to protect citizens and achieve national security goals.
Today SmartBlog on Leadership published an excerpt from The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, starting with Mr. Hayward’s blunder, and moving from there.
The full excerpt is published below.
General Management, Inspiring Others
Guest Blogger
Leadership communication isn’t about saying things; it’s about taking change seriously
By Helio Fred Garcia on June 1st, 2012
Tony Hayward, then CEO of BP, told the media in 2010 that he wanted his life back. He got it, but not in the way he intended. His quote was part of an ineffective attempt to show he cared about the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
The full quote: “I’m sorry. We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. And you know we’re — there’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back.” But the back end got all of the attention. He had stepped on his message.
It was the beginning of the end for Hayward. He was out of a job a few months later, having lost the trust and confidence of those who mattered to him. His blunder was a failure of leadership on a massive scale. And it began with a failure of communication. And that failure, in turn, was a failure of discipline.
A burden of leadership is to be good at communicating. If you can’t communicate effectively, you will not lead. But there’s a paradox: Unlike most other skills a leader needs to master, communication seems to be something leaders already know; they’ve been communicating their whole lives. So leaders often are unaware of their communication abilities, or lack thereof, until it’s too late.
Harnessing the power of communication is a fundamental leadership discipline. Effective leaders see communication as a critical professional aptitude and work hard at getting it right. And getting it right requires becoming strategic as a first resort: thinking through the desired change in the audience and ways to make that happen. And then making it happen.
Effective communicators take change seriously: They ground their work in moving people to be different, think differently, feel differently, know or do things differently. Effective communicators also take the audience seriously. They work hard to ensure that all engagement moves people toward their goal. That means caring about what the audience thinks and feels and what it will take to get the audience to think and feel something else. It means listening carefully to the reaction, adapting where needed and not saying things that suggest they care only about themselves (I want my life back!).
Effective communicators also take words seriously. They know that words trigger world views and provoke reaction. They plan engagement so the right words are used to trigger the right reaction. Effective communicators also know that the best communication can be counterproductive if it isn’t aligned with action. And effective communicators take seriously the need to package all that an audience experiences — verbal, visual, abstract and physical — into one powerful experience.
The Discipline of Effective Leadership Communication
Six questions to ask before communicating
Effective leadership communication never begins with “What do we want to say?” but rather with a sequence of questions. An effective communicator always begins by asking questions in a certain sequence.
- What do we have? What is the challenge or opportunity we are hoping to address?
- What do we want? What’s our goal? Communication is merely the continuation of business by other means. We shouldn’t communicate unless we know what we’re trying to accomplish.
- Who matters? What stakeholders matter to us? What do we know about them? What further information do we need to get about them? What are the barriers to their receptivity to us, and how do we overcome those barriers?
- What do we need them to think, feel, know or do to accomplish our goal?
- What do they need to see us do, hear us say or hear others say about us to think, feel, know and do what we want them to?
- How do we make that happen?
CommPro.biz excerpted Chapter 2 of the Power of Communication, focusing on the need to take audiences seriously:
Will We See a Netflix Summer Sequel? How Brands Can Rebuild Trust and Inspire Loyalty
Posted on May 21, 2012 in Crisis Communications, Public Relations
By Helio Fred Garcia, Author, The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively
Let’s hope Netflix doesn’t see a summer sequel this year. While it was easy to critique the company during its Qwikster fiasco a year ago, it’s looking like a third of its new customers are actually returning customers who were angered and disgusted.
Forgive and forget? Maybe for Netflix’ subscribers—but its shareholders aren’t yet hopping on the bandwagon, according to Daily Finance and other media sources. There’s a reason for that—and a lesson for all other companies.
Let’s dig into it here: Read more
FastCompany excerpted Chapter 9 of the book: Audiences: Attention, Retention, and How Hearts and Minds are Won:
Expert Perspective
Hijacking Emotion Is The Key To Engaging Your Audience
BY Helio Fred Garcia | 05-08-2012 | 9:45 AM
This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.
The default to emotion is part of the human condition. Read more
Marrakech Mosque at Sunset
Over the past 8 months I have had the good fortune to spend time in Beijing, Paris, Zurich, and Marrakech, Morocco, speaking with leaders of governments, the military, religious institutions, humanitarian organizations, universities, and other social institutions.
And in my travels I detected something I hadn’t noticed before: a meaningful deterioration in the regard with which the United States is held. Not about particular events, but a general decline in respect and admiration. Not of Americans, but of the nation’s role in the world.
I’ll blog about this more later, but Sunday’s New York Times has a series of pieces that prompt me to revisit those observations and also to use them as a teachable moment to illustrate some key principles from my latest book.
Now in Circulation
Friends,
I am pleased to announce that The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively is now in circulation!