I was resting this past weekend watching an NFL football game on TV and I picked up my BlackBerry to check my Facebook page during halftime. I learned two important lessons right then that will alter my leadership behaviors and disposition in the future. I learned a thing or two about life in those moments on Facebook. One lesson was simple and the other was much more complex.
Lesson #1
The first thing I realized is that if I am watching a professional big time game, that I need to try to remember whether or not I am watching it live or whether it is on a recorded version on TiVo. I say this because I was watching the game several hours after it ended and I looked at a post on Facebook that gave the final score that I didn’t want to see. I wanted to watch the game and experience the whole thing independent of the final results. But of course, I checked Facebook (FB) and got hit with quite the spoiler :O(
However a big lesson this TiVo/FB thing was for me on Sunday, this lesson is small in comparison to the other lesson that sank deep into my soul upon reading a few more posts on the popular social networking site.
500+ Facebook Friends. It’s a different place than the others.
I have a little over 500 friends on Facebook. I try to keep my FB more personal than I do my LinkedIn and my Twitter, but I realize that they are all melding together online anyway, so I stopped keeping my “personal” life away from “professional” one. (I decided early on to simply be myself on all social networking sites and live simply. It’s so much easier!!)
My LinkedIn professional network has over 2000+ connections from around the world and about that many follow me on Twitter. My Linked 2 Leadership Group on LinkedIn has over 10,000 members.
I consider LinkedIn to be strictly business and I think that Twitter is just a mess. When it comes to the topic of leadership, I usually have on my LinkedIn or Twitter hat and not my FB hat. That is becasue, to me, Facebook is different from other professional networking sites because it has so many people from my past that are now accessible. Being in my mid-forties, I get a glimpse of a class reunion almost every week now. I also get a great fresh picture of what my kids friends are doing as many of them are my online “friends” on FB. I don’t get that personal interaction on LinkedIn or Twitter or other places, so FB is kind of a treat.
You see, I have a lot of friends, acquaintances, former neighbors, etc on my network there and I have a historical memory of them. My past is well represented there, unlike my LinkedIn site which really only connects me with my professional/adult life.
This is why I was so struck from a leadership point-of-view while checking the updates from people who I knew from high school.
What did I really learn from Facebook?
Lesson #2
The second, much more important and striking lesson I learned on FB is that I am judgmental deep into my core. I try not to be that way, but I realized that I have remnants from yesteryear that I have been holding on to. This surprised me (again) because I actually teach people how to not be that way in my day job as an executive coach and leadership development trainer.
I teach people the skills to look at others in a fair and balanced way so that they can remain influential with them. But I had to take some of my own medicine on Sunday when I read some of the posts from people in my past.
With 500+ people, I get a wide variety of updates on any given day. I see how people think and how they represent themselves. But today, just from reading a few poignant posts, I was able to read some things that showed me how intelligent, mature, outstanding, wonderful, gracious, and insightful some of those formerly “less mature” people from my past have turned out to be.
I found myself harboring and preserving memories from the past and placing them on people long after they changed their ways and matured into seemingly great people. I feel shameful for holding on to images and perceptions from decades long since passed. I realized that I felt justified in thinking of people from how they were in the past and mostly from the silly or stupid things I had witnessed from them back then.
How stupid could I be? I mean really??? Why would I do this?
What I learned from Facebook was that I need to closely examine both my present realities and my past memories and cut people a lot more slack. I learned how easy it is to be judgmental and allow those determinations to stick with me for decades. I learned that I need to stop thinking so highly of my ability to discern and simply re-train myself to look at the better side of people much more often.
What convicted me during half-time of a football game is that I have been judgmental, unforgiving, and harsh toward people with whom I grew up with. How silly of me.
I thought “If I ran into someone from high school at the grocery store that I haven’t seen since the early 1980’s, would I REALLY think of them as a stupid teenager?” Sheesh! I wonder if I am doing the same people now with those I lead??
Time to Reboot my Leadership
I was very humbled this past Sunday watching an NFL game and sneaking a peek at FB. I will take that lesson and think about how much more influential I would be if I thought more highly and respectful of EVERYONE around me. It would have to show on my face and they would most certainly pick up on that. I’ll do just that and report back on my findings.
Ah….Facebook…………….(Maybe I should just stick with TiVo???)
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Tom Schulte is Executive Director of Linked 2 Leadership &
CEO of Recalibrate Professional Development in Atlanta, GA USA.
He can be reached at [email protected]
Image Sources: seattlelighthouse.org, pulse2.com,
Tom: thanks for sharing that. Gives me pause for thought as well.
But one thing I have always been curious about. How do you manage 2000 Linkedin connections? Do you actually check in or use these connections? I limit my connections to those I really know, will continue to network with or collaborate with. Otherwise, I’m not sure why i would be connected to people I have no real connection to. I am curious to learn how you use these connections or why you have them.
respectfully,
deborah
Hi Deborah,
When I first engaged with LinkedIn, I had the mindset of managing my contacts and relationships with others there. Having a few hundred was all I ever expected because getting more that that is simply impossible to manage.
However, since starting Linked 2 Leadership Group, I have been asked by so many to join that I had to rethink my position on this. I have many great relationships that foster other great relationships and expectations (in the minds of others) is that I would be welcoming to them, too.
As leader of a growing group, I also want to be accessible and welcoming, so I decided to allow my contacts to grow organically as they come. As I add 25 new members to L2L every day, I am privileged to contact others as they join the group and can ask them to be in my network. These are people that I feel I can serve or benefit from in the future.
I think of LinkedIn as people I can serve, while I think of Facebook as being more with people with whom I can fellowship. What I have found is that I am able to better serve others with a growing group on LinkedIn and L2L. I can be a greater equipper of others as my contact numbers grow.
Now with this, I am very careful not to connect others who request unless I know them well enough to do so. And, I will not make a recommendation unless I know them extremely well, or have personal experience with them.
I hope this helps you understand how I look at these things. Thanks for commenting!
Tom
Thanks Tom: Makes sense to me. I don’t use FB much- too much to manage with Linkedin and Twitter. But I have found that having high quality relationships with those on Linkedin requires limiting the numbers. Otherwise, it’s meaningless.
Now the big challenge to me is how anybody can follow over 50 Twitterers!
deborah