Unlocking Human Power: It is all about the social networking

Have you ever wondered what could be standing in the way of your leadership effectiveness?

Perhaps, you feel like you are doing all of the right things — giving your employees a clear picture of the direction your company is headed and the employees obtaining "buy-in", consistently delivering results and meeting customer expectations, relentlessly measuring and striving for improved quality to customers, partners and stakeholders; and demonstrating that your employees are important to the success of the company.

Yet, you are not having the impact as a leader that you feel you should be. What could be happening? To borrow from today's craze — perhaps the problem is all social.

Let's borrow an insight from Kevin Efrusy, from the vaunted Silicon Valley firm Accel Partners, and link it to leadership for a powerful truth. Kevin was the venture capitalist smart enough to recognise Facebook for what it is — a potential business powerhouse.

He reminds his followers that businesses find their business through word-of-mouth.

Large purchases

This is true for most all purchases, even large ones. When someone considers where to buy a car, how to choose a doctor, where to send your kids to school, or even where to go for dinner — people they know and trust heavily influence these decisions.

And this is what social mediums are great at — being avenues for word-of-mouth. Social media helps make that process really efficient. People do not live in the search paradigm. Since, data is easy to come by people want to hear from someone who has experienced it before. This brings us to the connection to leadership — people who have experienced your leadership before are the ones who spread word-of-mouth about you.

In reality, you may be ticking all of the boxes and doing the right things, but your success is still dependent on what is being said at the water cooler, on Facebook, or in the cafeteria over lunch. If you were to use Facebook and Twitter as a barometer — how often do you read positive comments from an employee about his or her direct line manager?

Unfounded truth

Many leaders dismiss negative social comments as simply being an unfounded truth. But they are really a vote of confidence or lack of in a leader and confidence is the fifth dimension of leadership effectiveness. For someone to achieve leadership effectiveness, the employees must have confidence in him or her (they do not have to like the leaders, but they must believe in them).

Just as in gathering an opinion in choosing a restaurant for dinner, another person's previous experience with a leader is the builder of confidence. So, what are you doing to build your employees confidence and give them something positive to talk about?

Additionally, positive social interactions boost esteem. So when positive comments make their way into the word-of-mouth network they boost the morale and esteem of the business. This may not be the deepest way to build confidence, but it certainly is a positive one.

Word of mouth

Social mediums, including word-of-mouth allow people to talk about what they want. In today's socially networked world, it seems that word-of-mouth has been given steroids as people can speak up even when no one is listening.

Social is built into everything; it is simply that the platform for employees to communicate is changing from the semi-private water cooler to the public hallways of the internet, iPhones and blackberries

So if we where to listen to your employees, would they be saying, "My boss is an exemplar because of…"

Dr. Tommy Weir is the vice-president of Leadership Solutions at Kenexa.