My LinkedIn Success Story

I achieved a career milestone yesterday, my first talk at a professional conference. It went well. I channeled my nervous energy into enthusiasm. I shared anecdotes and metaphors and slides with more pictures than words. I saw myself quoted on Twitter and even had a few people tell me mine was their favorite session of the day. You wouldn't have guessed I was a rookie, unless you saw me photographing my badge.

So, how did I achieve this milestone? Two words... Or maybe it's one. LinkedIn.

I started using LinkedIn in earnest five years ago, when I was looking for a job halfway across the country. I wrote a detailed profile, joined a few groups, and connected with some strangers whose interests aligned with mine. It was on LinkedIn that I first spotted the posting that I called "the big bank job."

Nowadays, pretty much everyone knows that LinkedIn is helpful for job hunters. What I didn't know is how valuable it can be when you're happily employed.

I work in Internal Communications. We're a small team at a big company, and it's easy to feel like outliers, writers among bankers. But every time I go to a conference, I remember that we're not unique. Every big company has people like us. We tend to be alike: English majors, ex-journalists, storytellers who found a creative outlet in a corporate landscape. On our best days, we help bank tellers and cube dwellers feel connected to the company's culture and values. We have strong opinions on Oxford commas, Sharepoint, and most-hated corporate buzzwords (yes, no, and utilize).

We're all trying to solve the same problems. Why shouldn't we learn from each other? It's a non-competitive space. Customers don't see our internal communications. Employees don't study our intranet, compare it to a competitor's, and then choose to take their talent to the company with the prettier corporate news page.

I started following LinkedIn groups because I wanted to know what other communicators were doing. I started posting in them because I saw a space to contribute.

That's how I met Jane, a French consultant researching digital workplaces. She asked interesting questions; I answered them. She asked to quote me in her report; I got the proper permissions from my employer and said Yes. She invited me to Washington, DC to speak at this conference with her.

Last night, sitting around a dinner table with Jane and a dozen like-minded professionals from around the world, I remembered that there's a unique energy to in-person networking, an honesty and connection that flows from a bottle of wine and a shared passion for the work you do. Those connections can take shape online. They start with openness, curiosity, and intellectual generosity.

I'm writing this blog so perhaps it will inspire someone else to put him or herself out there. If you ever feel isolated in your job, you're not. If you wonder whether you can grow your career without changing jobs, you can.

Here are my tips for finding authentic connections online: Show up. Join groups. Be more kind than necessary. Listen to people before you speak to them. Add value. If people around you are being self serving and dull, fill the space with what is needed and be the person you would like to meet. Always, always show gratitude for those who help you along the way.

I was almost too busy to write this blog.

I almost didn’t attend the presentation yesterday. It was a noontime talk about "Reflective Leadership," the sort of learning opportunity that tends to fall by the wayside when you're busy. Wednesday was looking like a protein-bar-at-my-desk kind of workday as deadlines converged, meetings loomed, and my inbox swelled over capacity.

At the last moment, I decided to make the time.

As often happens, the message I almost didn’t have time for was exactly what I needed to hear.

Joe Cavanaugh, the speaker, leads a local nonprofit called Youth Frontiers. They work with schools to teach children and teenagers about kindness, compassion, character, and values. They hold retreats that fight bullying by helping young people see and connect with one another as human beings. He had a similar message for the grownups in the room today.

As we were waiting for the presentation to begin, the atmosphere was typical of an event where most attendees don’t know each other: a few conversations were sprinkled about, but mostly people sat in their chairs, looked at their smartphones or flipped quietly through the handouts. I checked my iPhone and chimed in on a Facebook discussion with faraway friends. There were people sitting on either side of me in the conference room, but I didn’t notice them. As the presentation began I put away my phone, a little reluctantly, knowing that if I left it out I’d be unable to resist looking at it.

I love technology. My iPad is a constant companion. When something interesting happens to me, I start composing the status update or blog in my head. Many of my closest friends are people I met online. I’m an unapologetic optimist about social media’s ability to connect people, bridge distances, and build communities.


Joe told us to turn to the person next to us and talk for 30 seconds each about our favorite childhood toys. I had never met the gentleman next to me, but after a moment of awkwardness I felt instantly connected with his story of setting up army men in the backyard and staging elaborate scenarios. I recounted my own menagerie of stuffed animals and their fearless leader, the lion.


It’s amazing what happens when people stop, look at one another, and have a simple conversation about something that is personally meaningful. The room sparkled with positive energy. People laughed. My phone suddenly seemed a lot less interesting.


Joe brought us back to attention by saying “We just wasted one minute.” He told us of a few minutes he “wasted” looking at clouds with his daughter, and how those were the most important minutes of his summer.


I won’t attempt to paraphrase his talk, but I can share the message that resonated most with me:

Slow down. Reflect. Notice the people around you. Listen to them. Remember what is most important and remember who is most important.

Technology and social media can help us build communities and connect with people, but they can also isolate us from people in our physical presence.

I’m inspired to do a few things differently:

• I will make more of an effort to smile and greet the people in my presence: store clerks, coworkers in the hallway, the neighbors whose names I don’t know.

• I will think twice before pulling out the phone or iPad in those little moments when conversation is an option: waiting for a meeting to begin, for example.

• I will carve out time in each workday to be human with my coworkers – stepping away from the blinking instant meessages and clusters of email – and dedicating my full attention to a person on the phone or in my presence.

• As a leader, I’ll be extra cognizant of being present and appreciative with my team. No matter how busy I am, they deserve to hear “Good morning” from me and to know that I care about what’s important to them today.

• When I am online, whether at work or at home, I will remember that those friends and coworkers deserve my attention also. I’ll make time to sit down, read their posts, and thoughtfully respond to and acknowledge what they’re communicating. My online friends deserve more than a distracted “like” from me while I’m walking down the street or waiting for takeout, especially if I’m just using the phone as a crutch to avoid eye contact with strangers.



Attention is a precious gift that we can give to one another. It’s worth a lot more when it’s undivided.

I wasted another lunch hour writing this blog… but if someone else needed this message, it was the most productive hour of my day.

Notes From New York: Internal Social Media

Last week, I had the opportunity to represent U.S. Bank at a meeting of Social Media.org, a council of like-minded professionals from large companies. The topic of our meeting was internal social media, or how we use social tools to connect employees. While I can’t share the details of the people or companies who made these statements, here are some of my favorite nuggets of knowledge that I brought home:



Finding expertise – There are people who need information. There are people who have information. In a big company, they may not be aware of who each other are… until the right tool allows them to connect.

Knowledge is power – This isn’t new, but an internal social network turns old dynamics upside down. Sharing knowledge gives you visibility and influence; hoarding knowledge makes you a non-entity. Anyone, anywhere in the organization, can share knowledge and build credibility based on what they know and how well they communicate it.

Leadership support is critical - While social media is a great democratizer, the voices of leaders (especially executives) resonate loudest. You don’t need every leader to be on board right away, but you do need someone to shine the beacon.

Leaders care what employees are saying – Gather key messages and themes from your internal social network and present it to leaders in a format they can use for their Monday meeting.
Asking questions – Even if the answer is in a FAQ somewhere, there is something important and inherently personal about asking a question of an online community. Give people that opportunity: Let them feel heard, valued, and supported through the act of asking and receiving an answer.

Trust your employees – Give real answers from real experts. If an employee is complaining about a benefit change, have a HR leader post a straight explanation of the rationale for the change. People may not agree with every policy, but they respect honesty. Don’t force a communications rep to be a messenger of vague platitudes.

Participation – When setting your expectations for participation, remember the 90-9-1 rule of online communities: 1% of members contribute original content, 9% comment or respond to content, and 90% are lurkers.

Conversations happen - If you’re concerned about giving employees access to social media, because they might have off-topic conversations or share incorrect info… remember that those conversations happen anyway in office hallways or on Facebook. Putting them on an internal social network gives you transparency, insight, a safe environment, and a chance to be part of the dialogue.

Blog your best news – Using a blog lets you brag and share your team’s accomplishments without blasting a self-promoting email to 200 people.



And, a few "Don'ts" -

Don’t design tools for the people who never use them. Find the people who are hungry to use social tools, and design with them in mind. Don’t waste your energy trying to please the people who don’t get it. They’ll adopt the tools eventually, when they’re left with no choice.


Don’t promote the tool for its own sake. Tell true, detailed stories about how social networking will make work easier, will make employees more effective, will solve real problems that people are facing today.

Don’t send everyone through the same training. Technical training should be optional, self-paced, and delivered at the time of need. Policies should be taught through examples: Offer a “social media challenge of the week” and ask employees how they would respond to a realistic scenario. Don’t make everyone sit through a boring class or click through a web-based course that they’ll instantly forget.



I expect more ideas to form as I continue going through my conference notes and having follow-up conversations with the people I met in New York.

Most striking to me was the similarity of our experiences. Even though we were in different companies, across different industries, using different technology, we all faced the same challenges. The adoption curve is steep, culture change is slow, and enterprise technology isn’t always nimble. But learning from each other, talking through our problems, and sharing our suggestions convinced me how important this work is. People are natural collaborators. We’re never going to achieve our best results working in silos, isolated from one another. It’s true for the tireless champions of internal social media at companies around the world, and it’s true for the employees we’re working to connect.

5 New(ish) Communication Skills Leaders Need

“I’ll never use Facebook. Forget Linked In; that’s why I have a Rolodex. The symbol # is called pound, and it’s a button on my phone – which is plugged into my wall.”

If this sounds like you, I have some bad news and some good news.

The bad news is, social media isn’t a trend you’ll be able to wait out. In 10 years, Facebook may look as dated as a pair of acid wash jeans, but the concept of being in simultaneous conversation with just about everyone you know – that idea is significantly, permanently changing the way human beings relate to the world and one another. Leading employees in this world requires us to strengthen and practice a new set of communication skills.

The good news is, you can develop these skills without sending a single tweet.

1. Do dialogue well.

Meetings make us worse at dialogue. In a crowded meeting room, time is limited, and the ideas that prevail are the ones that get spoken aloud before moving to the next agenda topic. Traditional business meetings condition us to await our turn to speak, rather than to listen with an open mind.

Dialogue is fluid, collaborative, and open-ended. With online dialogue, there are no limits to how long your conversation can last and how many voices can be heard. You can comment on a blog written four years ago. In discussion forums, "off-topic" threads tend to be the most lively. Respect this openness and resist the urge to control every conversation or spin it back to a pre-formulated agenda. Creative ideas and surprising connections often come from unstructured conversations.


2. Make feedback a daily habit.

We live in a world where people are accustomed to giving and hearing immediate feedback on matters large and small. On Twitter, people constantly and instantly share their opinions about everything from Congressional decisions to new flavors of potato chips. On Facebook, we post a photo or status update and wait for the comments and “Likes” to roll in.

It’s unrealistic and unfair to expect our employees to only give and receive feedback about their jobs once a year. While annual reviews and surveys are useful tools, conversations about job performance and work environment need to be ongoing. Facebook asks its users “What’s on your mind?” every day. Your employees deserve the same courtesy from you.


3. Be succinct.

Twitter’s magic is brevity. Whether or not you tweet, practice distilling important messages into 140 characters for impact and clarity.


4. Respect communication styles and preferences.

Quick: Identify the introverts and extraverts on your team. Can you do it?

Introverts tend to develop their best ideas through quiet reflection, while extraverts draw energy from social interactions and prefer to “think aloud.” Some people straddle the middle ground, but most of us have a dominant style. If you're unfamiliar with introversion, listen to this TED talk for an insightful explanation.

Engage your team in a variety of ways to let the different styles shine. Use brainstorming meetings to engage extraverts, but send out the materials ahead of time or keep a discussion forum going afterward so that introverts have time to process and analyze the data before responding.


5. Know which tool to use for maximum impact.

Not every message is best expressed via email. I recently blogged about how to choose among the tools in our toolbox. As online communication evolves, we’re likely to see new tools added and refined.

Also, find out the preferred communication tool for each of your employees. Some people appreciate the speed and simplicity of instant messenger, while others find it intrusive. Some people love to talk on the phone, while others order their pizzas online. With more tools than ever, there are more ways to perfectly reach the people with whom you communicate.

Even if your phone is still plugged into a wall.

E-Mail is a #2 Pencil: Choosing the Right Communication Tool

Most of us learn to draw with crayons and learn to write with a pencil. In elementary school, we’re handed markers, watercolor paints, glue sticks and elbow macaroni. Later, we get access to the dangerous tools like pastels, Xacto knives, and Adobe Creative Suite. If you’re brave and artistic, these tools are liberating. For the rest of us, it’s tempting to keep reaching for those trusty yellow pencils; they feel good in our hands, we remember how to hold them, and we always know which end is the eraser.

The tools we have to communicate with one another are like the supplies in an artist’s tool box. Knowing when to pick up the right one can mean the difference between a masterpiece and the grayest sunset ever.

I’m not claiming to be Rembrandt, but here’s my attempt at organizing the toolbox most of us bring to work each day:



E-Mail
Best features: It’s familiar, comfortable, and everyone uses it. It’s the #2 pencil of communications tools.

Drawbacks: Everyone uses it. Inbox overload is a common problem. Reply-All volleyball matches and unwieldy file attachments are excruciating.

What it’s best for: The two paragraph conversation. Direct requests for action or information. Urgent announcements.

When it doesn’t work: Discussions with large groups, very short messages (consider using instant messenger instead), sensitive topics or contentious debates (just pick up the phone, already!)

Tips for using it well: Be brief, but not curt. Start with a short greeting, and make your request or call to action clear. Close with a word of thanks. The key to using email well is to know when not to use it: If your message is more than three paragraphs long or takes more than 20 minutes to write, set up a meeting instead. If your topic is sensitive and you’re at all concerned about how the other person will react, pick up the phone or talk in person. If your file attachment is bigger than 1 MB, post the document on a file-sharing site and email your audience the link instead. If you’re hoping for a lively back-and-forth conversation with a group, use an online discussion forum.



Instant Messenger
Best features: You can get someone’s attention immediately. The conversation doesn’t linger afterward and clog your inbox. It’s easy to use and you can tell whether someone is available, busy, or offline. You can send file attachments or screenshots.

Drawbacks: Flashing messages can trigger anxiety if you’re busy or get too many at once.

What it’s best for: The two-sentence conversation: Little nuggets of info, quick questions with easy answers.

When it doesn’t work: Long, complex conversations. Requests that require research, follow-up, or a record of the conversation. Discussions with more than 3-4 people.

Tips for using it well: Start conversations with a friendly greeting. If you’re making a request of someone, ask if they have a moment to chat. Set your own status to “In a Meeting” or “Do Not Disturb” or sign out altogether if you are unavailable.


Meetings
Best features: Face to face (or voice to voice) contact strengthens communication with body language, vocal inflection, and full attention (or so we hope).


Drawbacks: Costly, in terms of time - a 1-hour meeting with 20 people costs the bank 20 hours of productivity. In large meetings, more vocal/extraverted participants tend to dominate the conversation.

What it’s best for: Brainstorming with small groups (fewer than 10), making big/high-level announcements to larger groups, team building and camaraderie

When it doesn’t work: Decision making and brainstorming with large groups, presenting detailed information to large groups

Tips for using it well: Keep your meeting small and ask yourself if it’s the best use of everyone’s time. If you’re including more than 10 attendees, consider using a blog (to give news updates) or a discussion forum (to brainstorm or make a decision) instead of or in addition to your meeting. Check out some of my tips for making the most of offsite meetings and conference calls.


Online Discussion Forum
Best features: Enables many:many conversation, where multiple participants can post messages, read, and reply to one another. More effective than meetings at giving everyone a voice, especially introverts.

Drawbacks: Newer technology, has a learning curve. People often need to be reminded to participate (email helps). Depending on your company's available technology, creating a forum or community with all of your participants may require extra effort.

What it’s best for: Brainstorming and problem-solving with groups of 5 or more. Socializing and team building with a geographically diverse group. Crowdsourcing – posing a question to a large group without knowing exactly who will have the answer.

When it doesn’t work: Quick decisions or strong declarations – If you open yourself up to everyone’s input, be prepared to receive and listen to it.

Tips for using it well: Follow the same rules of politeness that you would in a meeting. Don't try to rein in the conversation if it veers slightly off-topic; the magic of this medium is its openness.



Blog
Best features: Easy online publishing, supports sharing of photos and videos, allows user comments, reach an interested audience without imposing on people’s time or inbox space.

Drawbacks: Learning curve. Depending on where you post it, your blog may attract readers outside of your intended audience.

What it’s best for: Project updates, leadership messaging, knowledge sharing, an elegant alternative to meetings and emails

When it doesn’t work: Urgent messages – Since blogging is a “pull” communication method, your readers may not find you right away unless you email them.

Tips for using it well:  The next time you're getting ready to send a mass email to your team, copy/paste the message into a blog instead, and email your team the link. See how they respond.