 ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light, despite all of the darkness.’ (Desmond Tutu) A struggle I encounter existentially and in conversations with so many colleagues and clients at the moment is how to hold onto hope. Look at the news headlines and story after story of things going wrong. Not just small things but potentially world-ending things like climate disaster or nuclear war. The sense of overwhelm that this can create, along with a sense of complete powerlessness to change anything on that macro scale, can lead to feelings of deep despair. One option is to turn off the TV and social media news feed. It’s a bit like burying our head in the proverbial sand or sticking our fingers in our ears and singing, ‘La, la, la’. To be honest, on the mental health front, this kind of withdrawal can prove helpful and life-giving, at least for a while. After all, why burn ourselves out mentally, emotionally and physically for things over which we have zero influence anyway? Better, perhaps, to engage in mindfulness. Pause, breathe...relax. Except I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work for me. ‘I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.’ (U2) I’ve had to find a different way, and I’m still trying. German theologian Jürgen Moltmann wrote, ‘Hell is hopelessness.’ The need for hope is buried deep in the human psyche and the human condition. I find hope in Jesus and in taking action in my own small spheres of influence. I’m with Greenpeace on this: ‘The optimism of the action is better than the pessimism of the thought.’ How do you find and hold onto hope?
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 ‘The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.’ (John Maynard Keynes) Once upon a time…I would often get tens if not, on occasion, hundreds of responses to blog posts on LinkedIn. It was a thrilling experience to receive insights, ideas and experiences from people all over the world. Over time, however, the huge flood of responses gradually diminished to a tiny trickle. I felt surprised, disappointed and bemused. What had changed? I began to ask myself some searching questions: Were people bored with my content? Were fewer people using LinkedIn than before? Were fewer people engaging with posts on LinkedIn generally? I looked at which posts seemed to be getting lots of responses and noticed that they often looked more like Facebook posts: e.g. walking a dog, taking a child to school. This set me off down a different track. Had there been a shift in societies so that people were no longer interested in thinking through issues and more interested in sharing personal experiences? Had Covid lockdown and isolation shifted our focus from insights and ideas towards the social and relational, to feel less alone? Had we all slipped into a TikTok world? The problem was, I was asking the wrong questions. My starting assumption was that the critical issue was with my blog content. It led me, like Alice in Wonderland, down perplexing rabbit holes. It took a revelatory conversation with a marketing consultant, James Rowe, to discover the core issue was with my media, impacted by changes to LinkedIn algorithms. What assumptions are you making? How do you avoid getting stuck? How are you finding online leadership, OD, coaching and training? What are the pros and cons and how are you making it work? Pav Ponnoosami blogged satirically this week that, during the lockdown, ‘The bedroom has become the boardroom’. As we find ourselves staring at each other on screen, we often see a backdrop, a glimpse of a person’s home life, an insight into the person-beyond-the-role. I find myself intrigued by the different things I see-hear that lay behind: books on the shelf; flowers on the desk; photos on the wall; a child that stumbles in unexpectedly, asking for attention. They all add context, meaning. Yet is an online relationship a real relationship? I’ve certainly never spent so much time with clients and colleagues on Zoom as I have done during this past few weeks. Is it real? The question itself begs at least two underlying questions: what constitutes an authentic relationship, and what do we mean by real? We could of course apply the same two questions to evaluate encounters and interactions between people in the real world; that is, the world that we think of as real, not just the virtual one. So, some thoughts. Can an online conversation allow us to know and understand each other better? Yes, although I will know someone better if I see and experience them acting-interacting in a range of different situations and relationships. Can it enable effective task communication? Yes, if both-all parties have access to suitable and stable technologies. Can it enable practical teamwork to achieve a common purpose? Yes, if all have equal access. Can it build friendship or love? What do you think? It was great fun to work with a professional cartoonist. Bill Crooks has a remarkable gift for capturing, expressing or stimulating a thought, an idea or a feeling with a few quick strokes of a marker pen. We were leading a workshop that aimed to reveal and challenge the assumptions that participants bring to customer, client and beneficiary relationships. Bill quickly sketched a large person looking down at a small person through a magnifying glass. He then asked the group, simply, ‘What do you see?’
Participants looked down, thought, discussed then spoke up. ‘We – the organization – are the large person. We are scrutinising the client.’ The inference here was that the organization holds the power, the influence, the prerogative to evaluate and to choose. The wider group agreed. Bill responded provocatively, ‘And what if, unknown to us, the client is connected to unseen networks that dwarf the power, the influence, the prerogative of our organization? Who now is looking down on who?’ It was a sobering moment. Silence hit the room. How easily we make assumptions about ourselves, about others, based on what we see, know or think we understand. Imagine, for a moment, the leader who believes that he or she holds far greater power and influence than individual front-line staff. Hold that thought. And now: think of front-line staff who are connected by social media to key networks and influencers in the organisation’s wider arena. Who now is looking down on who? We are talking here about the dramatic power of re-framing. As we change the metaphorical frame through which we view a person or situation, different pictures, perspectives, opportunities and challenges can emerge, change colour/shape or come into sharper focus. Shift the frame, shift what appears, how it feels and what options become available to us and to our clients. What have been your best experiences of reframing or achieving a radical paradigm shift? How did you do it? Hashtag leadership. What’s going on in the social media world and what could it mean for leaders and organisations? In a nutshell, it’s simple and complex, clear and confusing. If you need structure and control to feel safe and secure, have tissues and paracetamol ready. Think rollercoaster – but on tracks that keep changing, shifting, evolving. The ride is far from certain and so is the destination.
Yet it can be so exciting! Social media like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have made networking possible between people, professions, sectors, countries and continents that would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago. It’s self-organising, self-selecting, unpredictable and emergent. At heart: ‘Great conversations with interesting people about stuff that matters.’ (Euan Semple, 2016). This all means that ideas can be accelerated and amplified at incredible speed with all the potential and risk that carries (Steve Hearsum, 2016). We can learn, share information and ideas and thereby increase our resourcefulness faster than ever before. We’re also responsible for how we exercise wise leadership, what voices and messages we amplify or not and how we self- and peer-moderate. And, as leaders, we have never felt so exposed. It’s a double-edged sword: exposed in the sense of accountable in the public domain along with unprecedented opportunity to influence ideas, culture and behaviour. It shapes the focus of leadership in organisations too from positional to distributed, from control to trust: noticing who exerts most influence and how to work creatively with them. What have been your experiences of social media in leadership and organisations? What have you encountered, or tried, and how? What have been the pros and cons? I’d love to hear more! |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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