Toogood - The new articulate executive look, act, and sound like a leader

Look, Act, and Sound Like a Leader

GRANVILLE N. TOOGOOD

For Carolyn and Wayne

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NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA WITNESSED the golden age of the oratorpeopled by rhetorical giants such as Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Henry Clay, Frederick Douglass, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Phillip Brooks, among many others. By the power of their words alone, these masters of the language helped us understand who we are and for generations steered the political and cultural evolution of the great American story.

The twentieth century saw the rapid rise of mass communication and media. Newspaper empires sprang up in the United States and Britain. Science fiction morphed into reality as radio, and then television changed our lives in ways we could never have imagined. A tiny community of orange orchards in California spread the fantastic magic of a new art form called the motion picture around the world.

In the twenty-first century we are still in the pioneering phase of exploring new frontiers as different from radio, TV, and newspapers as talkie color movies were from silent black-and-white films. We are in the dawn of the age of social media. A quick visit to Google will tell you that social media has hundreds of life-forms, endless definitions, thousands of experts, countless books on the subject, and tens of millions, soon perhaps billions, of discrete voices all clamoring to be heard. Social media is a chaotic, jubilant expression of personal freedom and affirmation, a forum for all, a universal ocean of connectivity and interrelationships unlike anything the world has ever seenand its getting bigger every day.

Barack Obama was the first U.S. president to successfully surf the wave of social media (until recently also sometimes referred to as new media) and ride it all the way to the White House. As the contest heated up in 2008, his campaign ignited political buzz with chat rooms and posted daily barrages of online clips showing the candidate in action and talking in sound bites. In effect, social media put the candidate on the air (in this case, in The Cloud or Ethernet) twenty-four-seven and kept an interactive dialogue of millions of Americansmostly his target audience of younger votersstoked and buzzing right up to election day. Some pundits have suggested Obamas success in the voting booth was due in part to his mastery of the new media such as YouTube and Twitter, while the McCain campaign relied far more on old media, such as newspapers, magazines, and traditional networks.

So social media can be a great political resource, and we will see more of social media in future campaigns. But without a candidate, social media is just a tool and can never take the place of the candidate. Without Obama, social media was just social media.

No one knows how big social media will eventually become, how far it will go, or how it will ultimately effect and influence our behaviors. No doubt social media will present opportunities for future business leaders. But it can never trump flesh-and-blood transactions and interactions. Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more on the way can help market your businessand youbut they can never be you.

Social media can never be:

the new CEO who so impresses the analysts that the stock soars 20 percent the next day

the team leader who drives productivity up 15 percent

the entrepreneur who articulates the vision that shapes a whole new industry and makes markets

the salesperson who keeps raising the bar year after year

the coach who breaks through mental barriers to forge a championship team from mediocrity