Hide or shine? Finding your professional voice in social media

Did you hear about the CFO who got fired over his YouTube rant? What about the PR exec who torpedoed her career with an inappropriate tweet?

You probably didn’t hear about the banker who met his mentor on an internal social network, the unemployed marketer who found her dream job via LinkedIn, or the corporate communicator who accelerated her career growth by blogging what she learned along the way.

In a world where casual conversations can be shared with the public and archived forever, you have two options: You can hide, or you can embrace social media and use it to shine.

Hide or Shine

I advocate the latter. My blogs have led to professional connections and speaking engagements. At conferences, I use Twitter to capture notes and connect with other attendees. Facebook is more personal, but I occasionally share posts related to my work life, because I’m one person.

Hiding is becoming less of an option as more and more companies invest in internal social networks to connect employees and collaborate. Just like creating a PowerPoint deck or sending a coherent email, professional use of social media is becoming a core competency of workplace communication. The farther you go in your career, the more essential it will become.

What's Shiny in Social Media

I’ve identified three traits I consider most important to professional brand in social media. Do two of these well, and you’ll be pretty successful. Do all three, and you’ll shine.

Authenticity is showing up as your true, sincere, imperfect self. It means showing vulnerability, acknowledging challenges as well as successes, and posting about real, relevant things that happened to you. One of my most authentic blog posts was about a school project that I spectacularly failed. Was it hard to share that story? Absolutely, and that’s why it worked. Likewise, an authentic person steps up and owns his or her success without apology, qualification, or a contrived #humblebrag.

Digital Citizenship is what keeps authenticity from spiraling into narcissism. It’s about recognizing the human beings on your social networks and honoring their contributions. Digital citizenship starts with observing the social norms of your community. The conversational tone of LinkedIn is different from Facebook. Twitter and Instagram both use hashtags, but in different ways. Learn the rhythm of your network and pay attention to the people you know. Write thoughtful comments on their posts. Engage in conversations. Acknowledge their birthdays (Facebook) and work anniversaries (LinkedIn).

Intellectual Generosity means taking what you learn and paying it forward. I have a friend who shares health and fitness advice with her followers daily. It’s not her job, but she’s knowledgeable and intellectually generous. I try to blog on our internal social network after I attend a conference, because my employer invested in my learning and it seems unfair to hoard knowledge I could share with my coworkers. If you’re not a writer, you can still be intellectually generous by sharing links to articles that you find insightful, or quick little tips that make your life easier.

Communicating via social media is a professionally relevant skill, just like being present in a meeting. You can sit quietly, you can hide under the conference table, or you can stand up and shine.

My Year of 6 Bosses: Surviving Organizational Change

I had 6 bosses in 2014, and I’m still at the same company, sitting in the same desk.

#1 had been my leader for 3 years when she told me that my team was being moved under #2, who left the company two months later. #3 created a role for me, then helped me move to a new team under the freshly hired #4, who then decided to hire #5, who decided I fit best under the leadership of #6.

Each leader brought his or her own personality, style, and goals for the team. As I tried to adapt and adjust, I sometimes felt like a raft being tossed about at sea.

Change is part of corporate life, and it’s not new to me. I've been the leader drafting the new org chart. I’ve written emails explaining organizational changes. I've been surprised by HR and shuttled into the conference room with the people who get to keep their jobs, and I've been taken to the other conference room and handed a severance package. This year's changes, in the grand scheme, are not that significant. I still sit in the same office. I work with many of the same colleagues. I didn't bother ordering new business cards.

But I’ll be honest: It was hard. As I look back, I'm trying what I consider the best approach for difficult things: Seek the wisdom in the experience, and pay it forward.

Find your North Star.

The North Star is how you navigate when you have nothing else. It’s what you’re working for, no matter whom you’re working for. Mine is: “I use language to make people’s professional experiences more meaningful.” It connects my skill (communication) with my target audience (professionals) and a sense of purpose (meaning). It’s broad enough to apply to a variety of roles, and has stayed constant even as the details of my job changed.

Write a professional summary.

I had never met Boss #2 when I found out he was going to be my leader. Before our first meeting, I made a one-page document summarizing my skills, experience, and interests, from the perspective of “What would a new leader want to know about me?” It was less formal than a résumé, and organized around how I might be able to contribute in the new team structure. I let him know that I’ve managed people, designed training, and led online communities. I shared my Myers-Briggs type and my StrengthsFinder traits. I told him that I value frequent feedback and that I love presenting to groups. His response: “This is so much more useful than a résumé.”

Try bold ideas.

When the very ground of your company is shifting, cracks open up. You can stare at the cracks, hoping they don’t swallow you, or you can throw seeds into them.

Two years ago, I started a project that ran out of steam when it didn’t get the necessary support from a few key groups. I still believed in my idea, so I brought it up again after the leadership changed. They loved it. The project is moving again, and I get to lead it as part of my new role.

Organizational changes can be a great time to suggest new ideas and better ways of doing things, because new leadership is not attached to the old ways.

See in systems.

Companies are living ecosystems just like ponds or cities; big changes in one area flow through the system and impact the whole population. The organizational changes that I went through were the downstream effects of our company’s growth and reaching the limits of our former structure.

Applying the lens of systems thinking is comforting, because it reminds me that what I’m experiencing is not unique, it’s a predictable pattern, and it’s much larger than me.

Take care of yourself.

During my year of 6 bosses, I gained 25 pounds. I didn’t sleep enough, and I compensated by keeping a Keurig under my desk. Wine was my only sure path to weekend relaxation.

When I found myself hiding behind strategically placed children on my Christmas cards, I joined a fitness class and started making changes to my nutrition and sleep. As my physical health improved, I felt increasingly optimistic and resilient. Everything is easier when you’re healthy, including work.

Show up and shine.

I wrote this note to myself and posted it above my computer. As I wrap up 2014, it feels good to be sitting at my desk and reading this note. I’m still here. I have a job in which I get paid to do work that I love. No matter what the future brings, these are two things that I will continue to do.

25 Leadership Blogs You Could Write Today (with 5 bonus tips!)

Blogging is a great way for leaders to communicate with employees. It fosters community, conversation, learning, and relationships that cross the org chart. If you’re stuck on “What do I write about?” here are a few suggestions.

1. Include a link to an interesting news or business article that you read, and share your own perspective on it.
2. Did you recently go to a conference or seminar? Share highlights of what you learned.
3. Share career advice with employees who aspire to your role.
4. Share career advice you wish someone had given you.
5. Write about the best mentor, leader, or teacher that you ever had.
6. Write about the worst day you ever had at work, and what you learned from it.
7. Is this the career you planned to be in, or are you surprised by where you ended up? Discuss.
8. Write a “day in the life” journal of either a typical day, or a unique one.
9. Write about how one of your hobbies or outside interests (sports, family, gardening, etc.) has shaped your professional perspective.
10. Give your own take on a broad business topic, e.g., customer service, personal accountability, planning, time management.
11. Take one of your organization’s values or principles and explain what it means to you. Depending on how many values your company has, this could be a series of multiple blogs.
12. Tell us how you do that thing that makes others ask, “How did you do that?”
13. Share the most important things you learned in college or graduate school, now that you’re X years after graduation.
14. Compare and contrast: What you thought effective leadership was at the beginning of your career, versus what you value today.
15. Share the spotlight: Celebrate the success of a team or work group by telling their story.
16. Make a list, e.g.: 10 Things You Don’t Know About Me, 5 Mistakes New Leaders Often Make, or 7 Tips for Presenting to Executives.
17. Visit one of your company’s stores or branches where you don’t know anybody, or call the service center. Write about your experience from a customer’s perspective. (Only mention employees by name if your feedback is positive)
18. Do the above, but with a competitor.
19. Test-drive a new technology, such as Google Glass or 3D printing, and write about your experience.
20. Compile a list of the mobile apps that you can’t live without.
21. List 3-5 books that greatly influenced you, and explain why.
22. Share your goals (personal, professional, or both) for a specific future timeframe – 3 months, 1 year, 10 years.
23. Write a “Throwback Thursday” entry – Tell us about something interesting that happened to you a long time ago.
24. Is this your first blog? Acknowledge your newness and tell your readers why you decided to start blogging, and how it feels to be putting your words out in this format for the first time.
25. Turn it around: Pose a question you find interesting, invite readers to answer in the comments, then join in the conversation by commenting on your own blog.

#170024763 / gettyimages.com

5 Bonus Tips!

• The tone of your blog should be conversational, friendly, and sincere. Write in the same voice you would address your employees in a meeting or via email.
• Even if you’re brand new to this, you already have the skills to do it well. If you can write a clear email or present before a group in a meeting, you’re over halfway to a great blog.
• Break up your text visually with frequent paragraph breaks, subsections, bulleted lists, or (better yet!) photos. Big text blocks are ugly and hard to read.
• Personal stories are always more interesting than vague platitudes.
• Vulnerability is the new black for leaders.

The Best, Worst & Weirdest Parts of Business Travel

Best:

Going out to eat by myself. In my everyday life, a restaurant dinner requires forethought, spousal agreement, and either a babysitter or crayons and a paper placemat. On a business trip, I can eat what I want, when I want, and not have to share the bread basket.

Having two beds to choose among, or a king-size all to myself. Plus, ALL the pillows. Not enough pillows in the room? I'll just call for more.

Meeting new people - or not. On a recent flight, I sat in front of a mom traveling alone with a 9-month-old baby. I played peekaboo with the baby, chatted with the mom, and reassured her that the little coos and whimpers and occasional cries didn't bother me a bit. On my flight home, I read a novel and didn't speak to a soul.

Seeing coworkers in a new way. I can build a good rapport with a colleague through online communication and conference calls, but there's something uniquely powerful about meeting in person. It extends beyond handshakes and body language; there's a basic understanding of what someone is like that comes from interacting in an environment away from everyday work. 

Feeling important. The company valued my contributions enough to pay for me to be somewhere else. That, in and of itself, is pretty awesome.

Worst: 

Missing my family.  As much as I enjoy the extra pillows and the in-room coffee and the polite strangers calling me "Mrs. Wiant," it doesn't take long for me to miss my husband's company, my kids' hugs, and the happy chaos of our household. If I go somewhere dull, I long for home. If I go somewhere beautiful or fun, I wish they were along to share the experience.

That guy with the sinus thing. No matter where I go, he seems to always stay in the room next to mine. I'm tempted to call the front desk and ask them to send a box of Kleenex and some cough drops to his room.

Worrying about the expense report. Is it a prudent use of company resources to pay $50 to check a bag on an overnight trip? Did that Clif Bar I stole from the minibar show up as alcohol? Did I remember to get a receipt from the taxi driver? These are the things that keep me up at night.

Waking up in the middle of the night with no idea where I am or why I am there. This doesn't happen on every trip, but it always freaks me out when it does.

There are never, ever enough outlets in the hotel room. And the odds are approximately 80% that I will leave my phone charger plugged into one of them.

There isn't much time. I typically try to keep business trips short, to minimize time away from my family and to be a responsible steward of the company's money. I was just in Kansas City for less than 24 hours. I didn't eat barbecue. I didn't hear blues music. All I saw of the city was the inside of a Marriott and a few nice views from the back of a taxi.

Weirdest:

The perfection of ginger ale on an airplane. I don't drink sugared soda very often. I don't even think I like soda. But for some reason, a little plastic cup of ginger ale with cylindrical ice cubes served at 34,000 feet tastes like an effervescent bit of heaven.

The "Stand up or you'll miss it!" people. When the gate agent at the airport says, "We'll begin boarding in a few minutes," I figure I have time to finish a chapter of my book, visit the restroom, and get a snack before they're through with first class, passengers needing extra assistance, frequent fliers, active military personnel, and the 4 zones ahead of me. I am amused by the people who hear the same message and spring to their feet, gripping their bags, ready to pounce on their opportunity to stand and wait 20 minutes.

The aging effect of air travel. No matter how long or short my flight, I always look 10 years older when I step off the plane. My makeup is gone, my hair is flat, I have dark circles and new lines under my eyes.

The inconsistency of plumbing. I have heard that every person thinks him or herself intelligent, until faced with operating someone else's shower. It's embarrassing to call the front desk and ask for an explanation, but still better than showing up unwashed for an important meeting.

The welcome I receive from my cats. Tonight, after I returned from a 1-day trip, my cat Max sharpened his claws on our nicest furniture, jumped onto the countertop, knocked a bunch of picture frames onto the floor, and began aggressively transferring white-and-orange fur onto my black jacket - all within 2 minutes of my walking in the door. I've never had a dog, but I believe they are happy to see their owners come home. Meanwhile, cats are irritated that their owners left.

Do you have a best, worst, or weird experience? I'd love to hear about it.

Do's and Don'ts of Communicating Organizational Change

For the last few months, my organization has been changing. I have a new leader, I'll soon have some new employees. I've been through more org changes than I can count on my fingers, but this is my first as a leader, and the best one yet. I'm not steering the ship - I'm one of those org chart boxes in the middle - but I've learned a few things that I would like to pass on to other leaders and communicators.


When planning an organizational change:

Don't take the surprise party approach. It never works. Employees can smell change in the air, and they notice when certain leaders start having long meetings with Human Resources in conference rooms. It breeds suspicion and fear. Instead, be transparent: "We're looking at our team's structure to see if it's the best approach." Chances are, your employees have already noticed that your department might benefit from some shuffling, and they may have some useful feedback or suggestions.

Do make space to dream. When we first found out that we would be reporting to a new leader and that our roles would be changing, I started by having a lengthy conversation with my employees about our team's work. What was working well? What needed attention? What would they do completely differently if we could start from scratch? These conversations are inspiring and energizing. 

Do ask your people what they want. I manage a small team, and I feel like I know each of my employees well: their strengths, their interests, their career aspirations. We talk about these topics at annual reviews, at goal-setting sessions, and regularly at our 1:1s. However, an org change can stir up new ideas and interests. It's worth asking questions like "What do you most enjoy doing?" and "Where would you like to go next?" even if you think you know the answer.

Don't lie to people. I was once in a conference room, listening to a HR manager explain a new organizational structure. She said, "This is not a RIF" (our internal acronym for Reduction in Force). The problem was, the PowerPoint document on her screen - which was projected for everyone in the room to see - was titled with the name of our department and the acronym "RIF." My job was officially eliminated a few weeks later.


When announcing a decision:

Do tell the affected people as soon as possible. The people most affected by an org change are the ones who are getting new managers, new job titles, or new teammates. Or, of course, severance packages. Once a decision has been made, they should be the first to know. The rest of the "FYI" list can wait. There's nothing worse than finding out about your own career change through the office grapevine.

Do follow a communication plan with clear dates, time of day, and order of notifications. During a layoff at another company, the telecom team shut off voice mail and extensions for terminated employees before HR had the conversation with the affected people. Nobody knew why certain coworkers' extensions were showing as "vacant" - until an hour later, when everybody knew. Time of day matters.

Do bring people together as humans. Shortly after I found out I had a new leader, he invited me to lunch. A few days later, he invited our entire local team to a hockey game. These little gestures went a long way to alleviating my fear of the unknown. Nobody wants to report to an unfamiliar name on the org chart. If you're inheriting new employees, get to know them in a friendly, low-key setting as quickly as possible. If those employees are spread across different offices, invest in the travel if at all humanly possible.


When you don't know any more about what's going on than your employees do:

Don't be Chicken Little. Leaders set the tone. Don't tell everyone that the sky is falling or the department is crumbling, even if you sometimes fear that it is. Remind yourself and your employees: You're smart, you're skilled at what you do, and the best thing you can do each day is show up and shine your brightest and embrace the opportunities around the corner.

Don't make it all about yourself. A friend found out on a Thursday afternoon that half of her team was laid off. When she returned to work on Friday morning, her manager wasn't there. The manager still had a job, but she had spent the morning exercising with her personal trainer and getting a massage. She was so tense, she explained to her employees when she arrived two hours late. So were they, and the support and reassurance of their leader would have gone a long way.

Do acknowledge the emotions that it stirs up. Even a re-organization with no layoffs, no budget cuts, and great opportunities for everybody is still incredibly emotional. Your employees have been working for a boss they know, doing a familiar job, and suddenly everything is thrown into chaos. There's the uncertainty of adapting to a new leader and new coworkers, the merging of different teams' processes and cultures, and often an insecurity about where they will fit in the new world order. For some people, it's an exhilarating time of opportunity. For others, it's a terrifying loss of control. Often, it's both. Acknowledge this. Let your employees know that it's perfectly normal to grieve for the old way, and to be apprehensive about the new one. Soon, the new way will become familiar, and you'll wonder how you ever worked any differently.

Do embrace the positive. Change can be scary, but change can be wonderful. It's a catalyst for creativity. Things that were previously too difficult suddenly become possible. It can bring clarity and insight. It can bust you out of a rut and turn you into a better, braver version of yourself.

The best thing about change is that it always, always teaches us something. I'm here, excited, and ready to learn.

After the tone, please hang up and text me: Why I hate voicemail

"Woohoo, voicemail!"

Do you ever think that? I don't. I see the red light on my work phone and I feel like I've been sternly called into the boss's office.

Voicemail is among my least favorite forms of communication, somewhere between "barely legible Post-It note" and "swift kick to the shins." The good news is, I think it will soon go the way of the pager and the overhead projector, and here's why:

It's awkward. There is something disconcerting about hearing one side of a conversation. It's why hearing a stranger yammer on their cell phone is more annoying than hearing two people chatting nearby. Our brain perceives the gaps and longs to fill them with replies or questions. I'll sometimes say, "Wait, what was that?" while replaying a voicemail, but the person at the other end never pauses.

It's slow. My office phone won't let me delete a message until I've played it all the way through. This is annoying when our school district's auto-dialer leaves a 3-minute recording listing every after-school activity that's cancelled because of the truly awful weather. (All of them. They're all cancelled. Let's move on, please.)

Replying isn't always simple. When you receive an email, you can see who it's from and reply with a click. About once a month, I get a voicemail from an elderly woman who has mistaken my office phone number for that of her adult son or daughter. She begins with "Hi, it's your Mom" in heavily accented English, then switches into an unfamiliar Asian language for a 15-20 minute monologue which ends with "Call me, I miss you." I don't know how to tell her she has the wrong number. Meanwhile, her actual son or daughter is receiving bilingual guilt trips for never returning Mom's calls.*

It puts the burden on the receiver. Is leaving a long voicemail easier than sending an email message? Yes, for the person who's leaving the message. Email requires you to organize your thoughts. Texting requires you to pare down your message to its most essential components. A stream-of-consciousness voicemail is much easier to give than to receive.

It's mostly obsolete. Answering machines and voicemail filled a  gap before email or texting, when you needed to get a message to a person who wasn't available to take your call. Pagers and fax machines were handy, too, but we're doing fine without them.

It's the worst of both worlds. Talking on the phone has some huge advantages over written communication: You can hear tone of voice, express empathy, and engage in warmer dialogue than via email. But much of that warmth dissipates when you're leaving a soliloquy at the command of a disembodied robot voice.


I can think of two scenarios in which voicemail is the best tool available: 1. When you're driving (although, really, 99% of the time, it can wait) and 2. When you need to reach somebody, the only contact info you have is their phone number, and you're not sure if that number accepts texts.

If you can think of another scenario, let me know. Just don't leave me a voicemail.

* This is especially weird, because I also have an immigrant mother whom I don't call often enough. She leaves me sweet voicemails in Polish, in which she introduces herself as my Mom. I'm teaching her to email.

This wasn't in the course catalog: A lesson about feedback and failure

It was an embarrassment to the university, a sad omen for the future of corporate America. Those were perhaps the gentlest words that my professor used.

In the last year of my MBA program, I took a logistics seminar that felt easy. There were no quizzes or homework assignments. The lectures were loose and breezy, full of the professor's anecdotes about his consulting experiences. Our entire grade was based on two group projects, the first of which was to analyze a local company's supply chain.

My academic strategy involved waiting until the night before something was due, panicking, pulling an all-nighter, cranking out a few pages of stream-of-consciousness writing that I'd be too embarrassed to re-read later, and earning a B, or an A- if I was lucky.

My group included two guys like me: deadline driven (i.e., procrastinating), busy people with full-time jobs and a heavy courseload. One of them even had a kid. We split out the work: one guy would research shipping costs and times, I'd build a database to compare vendors and track the inventory, and our third teammate would work on our presentation. Divide and conquer. Easy. Done.

The day of our presentation, I arrived at class an hour early to meet my group, my data sheets still warm from the office printer, ready for that heroic feeling of delivering in the nick of time. My teammate said there was no PowerPoint, he had been busy, but he could wing it. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. It was titled "Things to talk about" with a few messily scrawled bullet points below.

What followed was the longest class of my academic career. For 5 hours, we watched each group present their supply chain recommendations to the local business owners and the professor. Mostly, they were the type of lightweight, surface-skimming presentations I had seen at work, at conferences, and in other business classes. Only this time, instead of the polite acknowledgement I was used to, the professor ripped them to shreds. He asked detailed questions and watched the students falter. He told them their presentations were boring, shallow, obviously thrown together at the last minute.

We went last. I nervously rambled through my database, and it was obvious I didn't really understand the data. When my teammate produced "Things to talk about" and started rambling, the professor interrupted us.

"That was the stupidest thing I have ever heard," he said. "Sit down. Your paper had better be f*ing brilliant."

Paper? We were supposed to write a paper?

The professor apologized to the business owner for wasting her time, excused her, and delivered an impassioned, obscenity-laden admonishment to us. Several students, myself included, were in tears by the end. I jotted down every insult and swear word so I could prepare a letter to the dean the next morning.

My first reaction was outrage. How could he talk to his students like this? Where was his professionalism? If every group failed, then didn't he share some accountability? The assignment wasn't clearly written, there weren't enough checkpoints, and the lectures didn't tie to the project.

The other feeling, the one that took longer to surface, was my knowledge that he was right. We had blown off the assignment. As MBA students, we should have had the intelligence to dive deep into the subject matter, the discipline to produce high-quality work in a loosely structured course, and the leadership skills to collaborate and hold our teammates accountable.

He let us redo the assignment. I set aside the database and volunteered for the part of the project that aligned with my strengths: I wrote the paper. And I wrote the hell out of that thing. I compiled my teammates’ detailed research, I did multiple revisions, I sent it to my team a week before the due date, I even made my husband read it as an objective third party. He needed a glass of scotch to get through it - well-written or not, supply chain management just isn't that fun to read about.

On a Saturday morning, we took another shot at our presentation. We had collaborated on the slides and practiced beforehand. We stood in front of the class and confidently shared our knowledge. We answered the professor's tough questions. We got an A. We immediately got to work on our final project and got an A on that, too.

I don't remember much about logistics, but I remember exactly what it felt like to be called out for performing below my potential. It was humiliating and it was physically uncomfortable (I can pinpoint the spot in my abdomen where I felt the shame) and it motivated me to do and be better. If he had politely applauded our presentation and given us a B-, we might have turned up our effort a little bit for the final, but probably not by much.

My professor gave me a gift wrapped in a rough, ugly package. He showed me the power of honest, critical feedback.

The hardest part of receiving feedback is rising above our natural, defensive reaction to criticism. If the criticism is delivered poorly - as it was in my classroom - it's easy to demonize the person who delivered it and brush it off altogether. We frame it as an either/or proposition: He was rude, and therefore his criticism of me was unwarranted. More often, it's both/and: He was rude, and I did a poor job on the assignment.

I wish I could say that I never procrastinated another assignment, or that I became a maestro of group work and team projects. It's not true. My professor shined a harsh, glaring light on a piece of myself that I am still working on, 10 years later.

This, I learned: Applauding and accepting mediocre work perpetuates it. Giving honest feedback in a respectful way is a skill that every leader must hone. And, if a message is so hard to hear that it hits me in the stomach, I best sit up and pay attention – because there’s something valuable in there.