GREAT ADAPTATIONS

The public gazes through a window of possibility

Are you a media-based leader, a media-aware leader, or both?

Media-aware leadership means that the leader understands what is available to her public, and understands how her core demographic is engaging new media. This awareness helps the leader listen. Even if a leader does not personally spread messages through modern media, she must be able to use the tools to listen to her public.

It’s possible to be a media-based leader, that is, able to engage the tools of new media, yet still function at a low level of media-awareness. Again, it is a matter of listening. It’s not enough to “get on Twitter and Facebook.” Leaders have to care enough to keep building their listening skills and grow that brain area to the level they can participate in thought leadership.

If you care, it shows

This profoundly positive shift in marketing is worth embracing as a daily practice. Modern leaders including corporate executives must realize that listening to their public is the cost-effective way to set their compass points. The level of listening now available gives business a whole new playground of connection to their customers. It streamlines everything – once a leader or company acquires the skills (or hires a modern media professional).

MODERN MEDIA IS MESSAGE-GENERATIVE. Topics, outcomes, urgencies, fears, advice, discoveries, and desires are a few of the messages which proliferate, generate and infiltrate the public conversation.

Sort through the noise and listen

When leaders begin to enter modern media, all that proliferation is quite a din. It’s noisy, busy, distracting and confusing. That’s normal. Think of any experience of learning a new language. You can learn hello, goodbye, thank you, and where’s the bathroom, but after that you enter a brain-confused state for a phase of deepening into the language.

If you’re groping your way into modern media right now, I recommend starting with search tools. Play with searches on Twitter, for example, to see how people talk to each other in that universe. Raise your tolerance for seeing incomprehensible characters in your search results. Look for meaning. Relax, drink water, and let your brain grow into it with playful curiosity.

Suzanna Stinnett

Thank you to Valeria Maltoni of ConversationAgent.com (@conversationage), for juicing up my mind on these ideas.

The posts of 2010 often relate to my focus words and/or my manifesto, Cloud Alchemy. This post relates to my focus word “nature,” as the organic nature of leadership deepens in meaning. It relates to Points #5 and #8 in Cloud Alchemy.

Focus Words Post: In progress

Cloud Alchemy: See on Scribd.com