by Caroline Leach | Oct 30, 2019 | Careers, Learning, Social Media
It’s almost the end of the year. Do you want an easy way to gather your accomplishments for a year-end performance review?
You may be preparing for a performance discussion with your manager in the corporate world. Or maybe you run your own company and want to identify how you did this year.
In either scenario, reflecting on this year’s highlights helps you clearly see what you did well and where you can improve. It’s an opportunity to pause and celebrate the accomplishments of you and year team. It’s a chance to elevate what’s working well and make changes to what’s not working well.
But in the rush of meeting year-end goals, how can you simplify the process?
Try looking to your social media feeds. If you’ve been sharing consistently what you, your team, and your company have been doing, you have a ready-made record. (Of course, this presumes you follow your organization’s social media policy and haven’t shared any confidential, private, or sensitive information.)
A former colleague (and now an author!), Angelica Kelly, has a year-end ritual that relies on LinkedIn. “At the end of every year, I take stock of the personal and professional. I consider what I’m grateful for and what I want to improve,” Kelly says.
“After this reflection process, I use LinkedIn like a notepad and do an annual update,” she says. “Everything professionally relevant goes into my LinkedIn profile. This includes accomplishments, interests, volunteering, and big projects that highlight transferable skills and new knowledge I’ve gained.”
In addition to Angelica’s approach, if you posted content to LinkedIn or other social networks throughout the year, you can scroll through your posts to identify the highlights. You can capture instances where you and your team:
- Launched a successful new product
- Completed an important project
- Won an award for your accomplishments
- Spoke at a company or industry event
- Attended a conference and applied new knowledge
- Championed company news as a brand ambassador
After that, here are a few things to consider …
1. Link your achievements to the goals you set at the beginning of the year, as well as your bigger department and company goals. Does your social media content show how you made a difference for your company? Did you contribute to some of your company’s key goals and share about those (to the extent you could) on social media?
2. Quantify how others responded to your accomplishments. See what data you can cite from your social media posts. Did your content reach a large number of people? Generate multiple comments and a dialogue on an important work topic? Get shared in a way that helped build your organization’s reputation as an industry leader or a great place to work? Use numbers to quantify the impact of your social sharing.
3. Identify where you got feedback. Perhaps some of your posts served as mini feedback moments on some of your work. Did people make suggestions for improvements that you ended up using? Did people ask for more information so they could apply your learning to their own work? Social media can serve as an online focus group. See if that was the case for you this year.
As you reflect on this year, it’s also a great time to lay the foundation for the coming year. Are there new and different ways you could share successes and learnings on social media? Would you use social media activity to seek feedback and help solve problems? How could you hit what I call the social media trifecta — sharing equally about you, your team, and your organization?
With the year — and the decade! — coming to a close, I hope you reflect on and celebrate the accomplishments you and your team achieved this year. And if you have rituals you use to make the most of your performance review preparation, please share!
by Caroline Leach | Oct 16, 2019 | Careers, Learning, Social Media
photo by istock.com/akinbostanci
What question do people ask the most about social media?
This is a busy speaking month for me, and I’ve been reflecting on themes in questions. I’ve been talking about personal brands and building careers and companies through social media.
What am I hearing across a diverse group of audiences? What do people ask in the Q&A following my talks? What do they want to know in one-on-one chats?
This month includes talks with CEOs affiliated with the Community Associations Institute, and community members at an author’s panel. It includes employees at Ericsson North America, and employees and guests at Otter Media‘s We Gather women’s leadership event. At the end of the month, I’ll speak with students at the USC Rotaract Club.
What people often ask is a form of this question: what’s the best way to share professional updates on social media without sounding too self-promotional?
Said another way: what’s a good approach to being active on social media professionally without coming across as arrogant and turning people off?
We’ve all probably seen people in our social media feeds — whether it’s LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter — who make it all about themselves. Sometimes it can be tempting to tap the “mute” button and make those posts go away.
Yet, if we don’t share about our professional accomplishments, there are downsides. We run the risk of being underestimated in our abilities. We may be overlooked for future opportunities. We may not be able to make the impact that we want in our work.
The happy medium: a social media trifecta
So what’s the solution? It lies in a formula I call the social media trifecta. In every post you share about your work, strive to balance three elements of your content.
- First, share what you did and why you’re excited about it.
- Second, share how your team and your colleagues contributed.
- And third, share what’s special about your organization that enabled your contribution.
With this approach, you highlight your own accomplishments in an engaging way. You also showcase the work of others — something good leaders do frequently. And you’re a good brand ambassador for your organization, in an authentic way for you.
In addition, offer something of value to your network. What insight or idea could you include that would help them in their work?
Here’s an example. Laura Ramirez and her colleagues at Ericsson created a fabulous Career Learning Day. Workshops, activities, and employee groups engaged colleagues in career development. My keynote speech included 3 questions to help people create a personal brand statement and 4 steps to build a personal brand. Afterwards, I posted pictures about the event and the great people at Ericsson. My post included bullets for the questions and the steps in my post. People who weren’t there could also benefit from the key concepts.
Who does this well? Here are a few …
Who do you know who does this well? Please share and tag people in the comments. And maybe it’s you!
by Caroline Leach | Sep 17, 2019 | Social Media
What’s one thing you should never do after someone accepts a LinkedIn connection request?
Don’t ask for anything.
Don’t ask for a job. Don’t ask to meet for coffee. Don’t ask to set up a phone call. Don’t ask about the person’s goals.
Just. Don’t. Ask.
These words of advice turned out to be the most viewed topic so far in my weekly social media minute videos. In them I share tips from my book, What Successful People Do in Social Media.
What To Do Instead
What’s better to do instead?
Anything that will help solidify the relationship.
Share a warm greeting. Congratulate someone on a recent accomplishment. Offer up something that may be of interest that doesn’t take too much of the recipient’s time. Maybe you saw an article or a video they might find helpful. If you want to pass it along with no obligation to read or watch it, that’s great. Simply focus on building the relationship.
Think about how you react when people immediately start pitching business to you — what I call spamming — right after you’ve connected on LinkedIn or other social media platform. More and more, it happens before the connection itself. Now I simply decline those requests. It’s clear as soon as I accept I’ll be bombarded with offers for services I don’t need right now or requests for meetings I can’t do right now, if ever.
When I first left the corporate world to start my own business, it was financial planners who contacted me. Now it’s people pitching lead generation services. Recently someone claimed they can guarantee story placements in major media outlets. As someone with an accreditation in public relations, I can say it’s never possible to guarantee a media placement. Maybe they were really pitching paid advertising.
Learning from what not to do, there’s a better strategy.
What is it?
Let Your Goals Guide You
Consider your professional goals for the coming season, quarter, or year. Do you want to get a new job? Position yourself for a promotion? Find great new talent for your team? Get asked to be on a non-profit board? Be invited to speak?
Write down your goals, and then identify who can help them become reality.
- If you want a new job, create a list of job types of interest, both at your current employer and other companies
- If you want to be promoted, consider who, in addition to your boss, will have a say in the decision
- If you want to find new talent, think about the skill sets you’d like to find to round out your team
- If you want to be invited to be on a non-profit board, identify specific causes and organizations of interest
- If you want to be invited to speak, think about where you’d like to speak and who might hire you to do so.
Next, look to the people associated with the group and organizations you identified. Who do you already know? Who would you like to get to know? You can use the search feature in LinkedIn to further refine a list of people of interest.
Raise Your Profile with Key People
After that, create a plan to raise your profile with the people you identified. Start by sending a personalized LinkedIn request. Say why you want to connect and what interests you about them. Follow them on Instagram, Twitter or YouTube … wherever they spend most of their social time.
Then keep an eye out for content they share. Scroll through your feeds once or twice a week. Read or watch what they post. Start to engage with their content in a meaningful way. Comment on something that stood out to you. Share how your thinking has changed or what you might do differently as a result. Offer up additional data points or perspectives. Do it in a helpful way, and not to try to show you’re smarter or more informed.
The secret is to find the right balance, not engaging so frequently that you become annoying, or so infrequently that you don’t make any lasting impression.
The best outcome is to start building a mutually satisfying relationship. It’s ideal to build one where the other person enjoys and even looks forward to your comments. And one where the other person is positively motivated to engage in a conversation with you.
Find the Strategic Serendipity
Another way of thinking of this is called strategic serendipity. By engaging with and helping people in your network with a positive approach, you never know what good things might come your way.
In my case it’s been social media consulting clients, business and leadership coaching clients, speaking engagements, and teaching opportunities. Exactly zero of them resulted from my searching through social media, cold pitching services to people I don’t know. Instead, they came as the outcome of being helpful, in a targeted way, consistent with my top goals.
To make it easy to fit this into your busy life, you can create a note in your smartphone of people you want to make a point of engaging with. Set aside a few brief times each week to scroll through your social media feeds and interact with their recent content. Be as helpful as you can. Make it easy and enjoyable to engage with you. And let the strategic serendipity flow.
How have you built relationships in positive ways?
by Caroline Leach | Aug 30, 2019 | Learning, Social Media, Work/Life
August is the Sunday of summer. So said a chalkboard sign I spotted by the beach a few years ago.
And so true. It’s bittersweet when summer comes to an end. The longer, more leisurely days start getting shorter and filling up with more commitments as Labor Day approaches.
Businesses and teams have year-end goals to meet. Children are back in school. Maybe the Sunday Scaries are staring you down as you head into Labor Day.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. During a last-minute summer getaway, I learned something important. Maybe it will help you, too.
Although it’s summer, it’s been an intense season with two fledgling businesses in our household – mine and my husband’s. I realized I was putting life on hold, so I headed to the Eastern Sierras for a few days. A mini-retreat, I called it. Or a working vacation. Or working remotely.
Whatever it was, it was delightful. With the backdrop of mountains, trees and summer breezes from my desk, I worked on some of my big projects, did client calls, and dipped into the flow state of being completely consumed by what I was doing, oblivious to the passage of time.
The Lingering Project
One of my projects has been on my list for the better part of a year. As a new author of What Successful People Do in Social Media, I know I need to build an email list of subscribers. I even created a free workbook to accompany my book as a reason for people to sign up.
But I ran into a roadblock in the spring, figuring out how to integrate the MailChimp email service with my download document on this WordPress site. I did research. I leaned on the chat and email service functions of the various providers. I reached out to experts to see if someone could do it for me.
And completing this project has been standing in my way. As much as I talk about the need for everyone to have a social media strategy for their career, I also emphasize the importance of owning your own online real estate.
That means your own website where you control everything. That way, an algorithm change on a social media platform doesn’t impact your ability to connect with your community.
And it was standing in the way of my next project — turning my book into an online course or series of courses. If I don’t have an email list of devoted fans who are interested in what I have to say, it’s much harder to launch a course.
I even did a workaround on my free workbook. Not wanting to delay to release of my book in April, I simply put a note on my website that people interested in the workbook could email me to request it. It wasn’t the most efficient or elegant of solutions, but it enabled me to keep moving forward.
One of the lessons I’ve learned over the last year of launching my own business is to fight the oppression of perfectionism. It’s hard to balance a standard of excellence with taking it too far and delaying, as marketing guru Seth Godin would say, shipping the work.
Learning the Way
My last day in Mammoth was my day to tackle my website. The night before, I decided to refresh my WordPress knowledge by completing an online class called WP Savvy by Iglika Mateeva-Drincheva.
It came in a group of online classes called the Entrepreneurship Bundle. And it’s thanks to Marissa Stahl that I learned about it. She’s the COO of Something Social LA along with founder Callie Cholodenko. Marissa and I met through the USC Alumni Association earlier this year.
Marissa was kind enough to speak to my social media class at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising this spring. It was right about the time the Entrepreneurship Bundle was launching. She and Callie had a course in it called Instagram Strategy for Business (great class, BTW!).
The bundle of 31 classes had a special offer for $99, so I thought, why not?
As life often gets in the way, though, I didn’t complete many of the classes right away. Has this ever happened to you?
But what a lifesaver WP Savvy turned out to be. Even after a few years blogging on my WordPress site, I learned several new things from Iglika’s course. And I felt re-energized to tackle the email integration issue.
Figuring It Out
The other inspiration came from Mark Cuban, the business leader and investor on Shark Tank, among other things. He gave a talk at my former employer’s headquarters in the early 2000s.
As the head of communications at the time, my job was to play host while he was onsite. He had driven all night from Texas to Los Angeles to speak to our employees, but he was full of energy.
And I’ll never forget what he said. In the early days of his business, he said they’d be in client meetings, taking in what the client wanted, and telling them they could deliver.
Later, Mark and his colleagues would look at each other and say they had no idea how to do what they’d just committed to. But they had all night to figure it out. And figure it out they did. Time and time again.
If they could do it, so could I.
Figuring it out in this case took a lot longer than I planned. I had to figure out the original email list subscription I started with wasn’t going to work. I had to download existing subscribers and move them to a new platform. I set up the sign up forms, the welcome forms, and the thank you forms. I tested them by subscribing myself. The look and feel still isn’t great yet, but that’s relatively easy to fix.
The Breakthrough
What I couldn’t figure out was how to make my free download available to subscribers. After some web searches, I decided to start clicking through every screen on WordPress to see if I could find something that would work.
And I finally found it. Buried six screens down, in the middle of the page. Even though I wasn’t selling a product, I wondered what would happen if I checked a box that said “enable shop with the plugin I’m using.”
VOILA! That was it. Which was mentioned exactly nowhere in all the online materials I consulted. Or perhaps it was there, but I missed it, which is entirely possible.
The point is, I told myself I would spend whatever time it took to resolve the problem. I was not going to let up until I figured it out.
It now feels like a huge weight is lifted from my shoulders. So many other actions depend on this, and now I can move forward. It’s a release of positive energy and momentum.
I’m going to tackle part two over Labor Day weekend, which is a long-overdue new look and feel for my website. That way, when Sept. 3 rolls around, I’ll have a big project behind me and I can truly move forward with my big goals for the fall.
What’s Holding You Back?
My question for you is, what’s on your list that’s holding you back? Could you devote a morning or an afternoon of your Labor Day weekend to tackle it? Or at least start the process? How much would that jumpstart your fall season? Would it help you greet it with energy and enthusiasm?
I bet it could. And there will still be plenty of time for being with family and friends, celebrating the last of the summer season, and recognizing the social and economic of achievements of American workers on Labor Day.
In thinking about the value of work, I’m inspired by author and poet Maya Angelou, who said, “Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”
What do you love to do?
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Here’s how to join my email list (on the left-hand column) to get a free copy of Your Social Media Success Roadmap. You’ll also get an email update from me once or twice month with tips about boosting your career through social media.
by Caroline Leach | Jul 22, 2019 | Careers, Change, Leadership, Work/Life
photo credit: iStock.com/wildpixel
“I’m in the process of changing my brand. I love what I do and I’m thinking about creating some new avenues for myself. I would love to get your thoughts. Let me know if you have some time to chat.”
“I appreciate your latest blog post, as it makes me contemplate my own situation. I think I’m making a difference in my work, but I’m under appreciated. I know you were in the corporate world for a long time, and I truly value your opinion.”
“I’m trying to figure out what to do next in my career. I’m focused on survival where I am, while feeling a bit of imposter syndrome. I want to make sure whatever it is I choose to do next is totally worthwhile. What do you think?”
These are a few samples of different notes I got this year from different people in different roles at different companies. Yet for all the differences, there’s a definite theme.
People ask for my advice on making changes in their professional lives. Whether it’s moving up where they are, shifting direction into a new area of interest, or clarifying if they’re really doing what they want to do, the obvious pattern finally hit me.
People want to know how to successfully navigate change, sometimes reinvent themselves into someone new, and make their professional lives more fulfilling.
Finding a Perfect Coach
Early in my corporate career, I wanted a coach. I was intrigued by leaders in business, sports and the arts who had coaches helping them be their best. I wanted one too.
I was looking for someone who could guide me in making difficult decisions. I wanted someone who could help focus my efforts. I was eager to achieve my initial career goal of becoming a VP of Corporate Communications.
But how to find one? It couldn’t be just anyone. It had to be someone who I felt a strong connection with. Someone who I felt really “got me.” Someone who could help me figure out the next steps on my path and nudge me in that direction.
The law of attraction came into play. It often does when you declare an intention, mentally file it away, and then subconsciously take steps toward it.
When I was a communications director in the early 2000s, my supervisor gave me an opportunity to attend a week-long leadership development program at the Center for Creative Leadership.
To say it was life changing is a major understatement. Along with fellow participants, I completed multiple leadership assessments, joined team-based activities to further uncover our leadership styles, and got one-on-one coaching.
My coach turned out to be the person I’d been looking for and more. We had an incredibly intense afternoon session. It uncovered some of my deepest fears and called into question many of the beliefs and assumptions I had let guide my career to that point.
At the time, I was struggling with integrating an ambitious corporate career with being a loving parent of two young children. I looked around the company and my community and didn’t see a lot of role models who were combining both. I felt isolated and alone, not to mention overwhelmed. I was almost ready to leave the corporate world to focus exclusively on parenting.
The only problem is that would have been a disastrous choice for me. My leadership profile is one who likes to be in charge – planning, building and orchestrating large-scale activities. (In the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, I’m an ENTJ, affectionately known as “the commander.”) I needed to figure out a way to make the work/life situation work for me, my family and my career.
And that’s what my coach helped me come to see. I was so happy with her guidance that we worked together for seven years. Sometimes I had a boss who approved a company payment for her services, and sometimes I paid on my own. Because it was just that valuable.
Either way, the impact was incalculable, both for me and the company where I worked. Within two years, I achieved my goal of becoming a VP of Corporate Communications. And I accomplished other important goals as well, although some still proved to be elusive.
Reaching a Painful Inflection Point
Fast forward another seven years and I found myself in another difficult place. “Bored and burned out” was how I described myself to a new coach. A life and leadership coach, Tina Quinn had long been someone I admired in my community. We connected through a friend who was trying to help me move forward with my life.
For a time, though, I resisted meeting with Tina. I just didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to confront the issues, because that would mean making a change. And change can be painful.
Although the funny thing about change is that in retrospect, I can say that every major change in my life has ultimately been a good one.
We began with my one-year goals and an assessment of my energy leadership, a tool that surfaced how I viewed my work and my life. From there, Tina and I explored ways I could change my view of the world and consciously choose to show up differently.
It’s thanks to this work that I’m where I am today. I’m still striving toward newer and invigorating goals and dreams. And I have a set of tools to better show up in the world and make the journey a more joyful one.
Navigating Waves of Change
In reflecting on change, I’m grateful for some of the changes in my own life. After a few difficult early years in the work world, I chose a new career in corporate communications and took a series of steps to get there.
When another employer was acquired, I had the opportunity to move into marketing analytics. And while I didn’t choose that role, it did give me the view of marketing I wanted.
More recently, I made the leap from the corporate world into the entrepreneurial life. I’m not sure I would have been able to take the steps I did without everything I learned in working with a coach. Talk about a life lesson in feeling the fear and doing it anyhow!
Along the way, I always enjoyed the opportunity to inspire and uplift others. One way I do that is through speaking.
One of my favorite volunteer roles in a philanthropic group called National Charity League was being the inspiration chair. I opened each meeting with encouraging words and stories to uplift fellow parents, professionals, and community leaders.
And my corporate roles gave me opportunities to help others with their development. It was deeply gratifying to put together the first-ever leadership development program, a week-long experience for top executives, at a former employer.
Later, I got to work with HR colleagues to create a marketing leadership development program, to develop future-focused skills among high-potential marketers.
When I was launching my business to write, consult, speak and teach about what successful people do on social media to build their careers, some of my colleagues and friends suggested that I offer coaching as well.
At first I resisted. It didn’t seem core to what I was doing in the social media space. And back to my ENTJ profile, I confess that sometimes I like being the field marshal, organizing and directing a team toward a common goal. Coaching felt a little bit behind-the-scenes to me.
And yet …
The requests kept coming. One of my first social media clients told me how excited he was to be getting social media advice and coaching all in one. Several other people wanted to bounce ideas off of me.
And I found I loved our conversations. It was energizing to help people solve problems in their work lives. I enjoyed asking questions that could help people see new possibilities for themselves and begin taking steps to get there.
Which is a long way of saying that I’m launching a new service with leadership coaching. The focus? Successfully navigating change and transition to achieve big goals.
Introducing a Coaching Practice to Help You Navigate Change
What does a coach do? There are many definitions. An especially good one comes from the International Coach Federation. ICF defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
With my background and experience, my focus is on helping people successfully navigate change in their professional lives. This includes:
- Changing careers by choice or by necessity
- Navigating a corporate merger or acquisition
- Moving up to the next level of performance and responsibility
- Managing life as a high-performing leader and a dedicated parent
- Leaping from the corporate world to the entrepreneurial life
If you’re contemplating how you can change, reinvent and transform your career, I’d love to hear from you. We can work together on a short- or long-term basis, depending on what you want to accomplish.
If it involves reinventing your personal brand, we can couple our work with a customized social media plan to launch and build your new brand.
And wherever you choose to navigate your career, I’m wishing you all the best on your journey!
by Caroline Leach | Jun 30, 2019 | Social Media
Social media was supposed to be fun.
Wait, what?
That panel name grabbed me at Social Media Week Los Angeles and wouldn’t let go.
As a perk of being on the faculty in the Social Media B.A. program at FIDM, the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, I got to go with my students. (Opinions expressed in this post are my own.)
Along with the department chair Tom Henkenius, I enjoyed the conference and its sessions on storytelling, influencers, AI, gaming and more.
But why did the session on fun jump out at me? Well, maybe because the last several months have been intense. I completed project after project, racing from one to another in rapid succession, without breaks in between.
Yes, it was exciting to publish my first book, give a TEDx talk, work with clients, and develop a social media consulting class for FIDM.
Yet the intensity of so many projects at times left me yearning to take a short break and recharge. I wanted to do something fun. But I couldn’t think of what that would be. Literally nothing came to mind.
Maybe the dictionary could help me. Fun is defined as, “something that provides mirth or amusement, enjoyment or playfulness.”
But I still had no ideas.
Wait, what?
Which is likely why the Social Media Week session on fun stood out. Usually when I face a problem, I assume it’s unique to me. It’s something to figure out on my own.
But this session painted a picture of a societal problem. “Modern life is really good at taking things that used to be fun and, well, making them NOT fun,” the session description began.
“Real fun is built on spontaneity and surprise, opening up possibilities for experience and memorable moments,” it continued. “Social media was largely considered fun when it first boomed in pop culture. So, what happened?”
Holland Martini and Bevan Mahaney of Grey talked about bringing the fun to life. It was based on Grey’s research study, the Famously Effective Business of Fun.
We learned some sobering stats:
- the U.S. ranks #18 in the world on happiness
- people rate fun as number 5 out of 9 options
- people are doing “fun” activities for reasons other than fun, like reading for their mental well-being, working out for physical health, and going on social media just to pass time.
Ooof.
The problem, they said, is we don’t know what’s fun anymore.
Apparently, we are collectively experiencing a dearth of fun. It’s not just me. It’s many of us. It may be you. Or someone you know.
Holland and Bevan then related those findings to business. It turns out that “50% of people are more likely to consider or purchase a brand if they knew a brand could help them have more fun. And 76% would spend more on that brand.”
So, not only is fun good for us individually, it’s also good for business.
Holland and Bevan had valuable strategies for bringing fun back to social media:
- Create supportive communities for like-minded people
- Provide shareable, memorable cultural currency
- Give people canvases to enjoy life.
From my perspective of social media as a career booster, here’s what I would add. These are three things that make social media fun on a professional level for me. Maybe they will for you, too.
Yes, this does introduce a “good for you” aspect, beyond having fun for fun’s sake. But fun can foster an environment where people feel happier, more connected, and more creative. Fun has a unifying feel-good element that can help bring more enjoyment to your professional life. And there are echoes of my post on what to do when social media gets you down.
First, encourage others to have fun at work. Who says anything you do can’t be more fun? How could you make it more fun and enjoyable? Whether you’re a team leader or an individual contributor, you can share fun ideas and make them happen. Celebrating a big accomplishment, coming together for people’s birthdays, bringing in dinner when the team is working late on a project, and making a point to laugh and be silly at times can help a team bond and have more fun.
One of the most gratifying experiences for me in the corporate world was fellow colleagues laughing and bantering together as we worked under significant deadlines to put out a communication or make a big event happen. Enjoying the high points of our work and the celebration afterwards made it all the sweeter.
In these moments, you can encourage your colleagues to share their experiences on social media in a work-appropriate way. It amplifies the joy and shows how work can be fun. Images and emotions can be contagious, so you just may be contributing to making the world a more fun place to be.
Second, share the fun in what you’re doing professionally. Just because work can be intense doesn’t mean that you and your team shouldn’t enjoy the process and have fun in the process. Making a point of sharing those fun moments on your social media can increase the good feelings among your colleagues, amplify your employer’s brand, and encourage others to make their workplaces more fun.
Recently I spoke at a Town Hall meeting for a former colleague, Kim Keating, at AT&T. (Again, opinions expressed are my own.) Kim leads a data science team, and she wanted to better equip them to share on social media about what it’s like working at the company. My talk was covered how to tell your professional story on social media. Everyone I interacted with made the process simple, easy, and yes, fun.
Third, learn something just for the fun of it. It’s a quiet Sunday morning as I’m writing this. I made this morning a “Pajama Sunday” where I read for pleasure. I paged through some digital and print magazines, reading whatever I wanted, not what I thought I should read for professional purposes. And I started reading a new book: Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness by Ingrid Fetell Lee.
Maybe you learn by reading, or by watching, or by listening, or by doing. What do you want to know more about, just because it would be fun? What really intrigues you, even if it seemingly has no relevance to your professional or personal life?
Go delve into that. Share what you learned on social media. Maybe it will brighten someone else’s day or give some much-needed insights.
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Writing this post was (mostly) fun. It has to be, or I wouldn’t spend so much time doing it. In a happy coincidence, this is post #200 since I launched this blog more than four years ago. Clearly, this is a joyful activity for me.
In Vancouver this month to speak at a conference for communicators, I took a morning stroll through the scenic, seaside Stanley Park. I dipped into some “forest bathing” and felt refreshed by nature. I jumped on a swing for the sheer fun of it.
And now, because it’s a beautiful summer Sunday, I’m taking my bright red, beach-cruiser bicycle to a repair shop to get it in shape for the season. There are few things more fun than a leisurely bike ride at the beach.
What are you doing for fun today?
by Caroline Leach | May 31, 2019 | Social Media
Photo of Cynthia Dillard, Kathie Frasquillo and Mallika Siegel by Jessica Sterling
Social media is in the headlines a lot these days. And not always in a good way.
As I shared in my TEDx talk this spring about lifelong learning, social media gets a bad rap. It saps our attention. It makes us depressed. It polarizes our world.
Scrolling through our Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn feeds can be a trip down the rabbit hole of comparison hell. None of us can ever measure up to the carefully curated feeds of people and brands we see every day.
Unless …
… we remember that the only competition is with ourselves.
… we remember never to compare others’ outsides to our insides.
… and most importantly, we remember a great power of social media.
And that’s the power to lift others up. To rejoice in the accomplishments of others. And to use our voice on social media to amplify their good deeds.
On Administrative Professionals’ Day this spring, I was inspired by a post from Anne Chow, a senior leader at AT&T and someone who always inspired me when I worked there. She lauded her administrative assistant and how important she was to the her and the team.
That made me reflect. I had the good fortune to work personally with two exceptionally talented assistants, Kathie Frasquillo and Nancy Takahashi. And I worked peripherally with others, including Cynthia Dillard and Mallika Siegel.
And that made me remember I had some great pictures of them from my corporate farewell event (thank you, Jessica Sterling). It was the perfect confluence of factors to post a thank-you message on LinkedIn.
Seeing the community of comments and appreciation that sprung out of it was truly gratifying. What a boost for all involved. Suddenly, my day felt brighter, and hopefully others felt the same.
It was the putting into action one of the concepts in the book I published this spring, What Successful People Do in Social Media: A Short Guide to Boosting Your Career.
In my book, I talk about the social media trifecta. What’s that? It’s bucketing your social media content into thirds:
- The first one is sharing what you’re doing in the work world.
- The second one is amplifying the great things your team or your colleagues are doing.
- And the third one is being a brand ambassador for your organization.
In this way, you don’t over index on promoting yourself and potentially turning people off in the process. You build goodwill with your colleagues and your team by highlighting their good works. And where it makes sense you share the good work of your employer.
As spring soon gives way to summer, I reflected on some of the social media posts that made me rejoice in what colleagues and friends are doing ..
My former colleague and inclusion mentor L. Michelle Smith launched the popular The Culture Soup Podcast and embarked on an inspiring series of speaking events.
My friend Corii Berg boldly stepped into the president role of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors, following other inspirational leaders Michael Felix and Jaime Lee.
My former boss Fiona Carter is now leading the #SeeHer movement to bring equality to and eliminate bias in the way women and girls are portrayed in advertising and media.
My friends Tom Henkenius, Austin Maddox, Madeline Lindsay, Allegra Guitierrez, Briana Latter, Stephanie Corrigan, Danielle Harvey Stinson and others celebrated their graduations from USC.
My former colleagues Sarah Groves, John Stancliffe and others continue to inspire me with their social media innovation in the B2B space and beyond.
My students in the social media program at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising are all doing amazing things as they get ready to graduate in June.
My friend Tina Quinn published a fabulous book this spring called Invisible Things. Tina coached me through some difficult times a few years ago and she inspires me every day.
My former colleague TeNita Ballard is doing so much to make the world a more inclusive place, especially for veterans and people with disabilities.
My former colleague Charles Miller keeps me and others up to speed with beautiful scenes of New York on his Instagram grid.
And an amazing thing has happened just as I’ve reflected on all of these special people and what they’re doing in the world. I feel uplifted. I feel inspired. I feel happy for them.
And the way for me to share that feeling is by engaging with their social media content, by liking and commenting and sharing their good deeds.
This spring has been difficult in many ways. Yes, it was the thrill of a lifetime to give a TEDx talk and publish a book and help my husband Kevin with the launch of his new restaurant this summer (Pacific Standard Prime in Redondo Beach, for those in So Cal).
But it’s been challenging shepherding my son through his last few months, weeks and days of high school. Like seniors all over the country, he’s beyond ready to move on to the next thing.
In his case, it’s a bit of a different path. He’s been “scrimming” (practicing) with two esports teams in League of Legends. Now when he’s sitting on the couch with his headset on playing a video game, he’s actually doing a job and getting his first paychecks.
Our world is changing so quickly, it can be hard to keep up. But if the happiness I feel right now in thinking about friends and colleagues is any indication, one way for you to find happiness is to look for the good in others and amplify it in social media.
by Caroline Leach | Apr 17, 2019 | Social Media
Your Social Media Success Roadmap is a free companion workbook to my book What Successful People Do in Social Media: A Short Guide to Boosting Your Career.
In this workbook you’ll find 50 questions, actions and ideas to help you build your career through your social media presence. The workbook gives you space to jot down your answers and ideas to the prompts that appear in the book.
Social media is increasingly the way people get great new jobs, build vibrant professional networks, establish themselves as thought leaders, and become lifelong learners.
Successful people use social media to effectively boost their careers. They define their personal brand, pick where to play in social media, build a broad and diverse network, consistently share content about their professional interests, and give back to help their colleagues and companies succeed.
To download your free PDF workbook, sign up in the top left-hand column of this website.
Here’s to your success!
by Caroline Leach | Apr 14, 2019 | Social Media
The TEDxYouth@PVPHS Program | March 22, 2019
Is giving a TEDx talk on your bucket list?
It’s definitely on mine. TEDx talks are independently organized under a free license from TED. This global speaking platform gets its name from a 1984 conference where technology, entertainment and design converged.
So many great TED talks have inspired me that I was eager to try to do the same. I spoke often in the corporate world and in the community, always enjoying the opportunity to impact people’s lives in a positive way.
But where to begin on a TEDx talk?
For me, it started with listening to TED talks during drive time. Then I read TED Talks: The Official Guide to Public Speaking by TED curator Chris Anderson. And I went to TEDWomen and got to see speakers up close.
As this blog took shape as an exploration of how people boost their careers through social media, I started sketching out ideas for a talk. Here’s what I learned on the journey.
Landing your talk. Convinced that my talk, Why Everyone Needs a Social Media Strategy for Their Career, would be of interest to just about anyone (oh, the folly of my thoughts), I applied to speak at a local event. I watched previous talks at the event and linked the “idea worth spreading” in my talk to the proposed theme.
But there was no response. Not even a rejection email. Just … nothing.
Of course, I finally realized, it’s like applying for a job. It rarely works to apply online. Your application just goes into a black hole from which it never emerges.
It also reminded me of one of my life mantras: don’t apply for stuff. Instead, let people find you. They tend to be more interested that way, and you don’t have to do as much convincing (aka, selling).
What happened next? An acquaintance was kind enough to introduce me to the curator of another event. We jumped on a call. It did not go well. I hadn’t prepared in the right way. My idea fell flat.
For a while I let this simmer on the back burner.
One day I checked Messenger. There was an intriguing message from Sara Robinson, someone I knew from our local community. Her daughter’s service learning leadership class in high school was putting on a second annual TEDxYouth event. They were looking for inspiring speakers. Sara said she thought of me.
Was I interested?
Um, YES!
The official term for what happened might be called “inbound marketing.” It’s all about sharing content in different ways. Ultimately, that content may interest people in coming to you. Blog posts, YouTube videos, articles, speeches and more would fall into this category.
In addition to this blog, I was the inspiration chair in a group called National Charity League. At the beginning of each monthly meeting, I gave a short inspirational talk. I wanted that role because it was a difficult time in my life, and I thought I could inspire myself by inspiring others.
Of my various community roles, this was an all-time favorite. And I never dreamed it would lead to the chance to give a TEDx talk. Which just goes to show you never know where actions you take today might lead in the future.
You don’t have to know how you’re going to make a dream come true at the outset. You just have to declare to yourself that you will do it. Somehow. The “how” will make itself clear as you begin to take steps toward your goal.
Creating your talk. TED talks are about ideas worth spreading. Each talk is about a single idea. You have 18 minutes or less to tell the story of that idea.
My original talk was about why you need a social media strategy for your career. The feedback I got was that it sounded like a sales pitch. While that was not my intent – what I wanted to do was equip people with the tools to do it themselves – it was helpful to know that’s how it came across to one curator.
When the TEDxYouth opportunity came up, it seemed like the ideal audience to pivot the focus. Teens use social media to stay in touch and share who they are. What they may not consider is that social media can be a powerful – and fun – way to learn throughout their lives.
That became my idea worth spreading: how social media can make you a #lifelonglearner. Access to anything you want to know is no further away than the social media apps on your phone. You can learn about any topic you choose, learn about the social media platforms themselves, and help others learn about you. A transcript of the talk is in a previous blog post.
Getting feedback on your talk. The iterative nature of the TEDx process is something that’s ideal for all speaking engagements. I did an initial read for the students on the TEDx committee almost two months before the event. We were packed into a small office adjacent to the main classroom, with the students sitting on the floor and me presenting from the notes on my iPad.
The next session was an evening presentation over dinner with all the speakers. There were six student speakers and two adults – me and a well-known English teacher and softball coach. We created small groups after the presentations to give each other feedback. I was impressed by the caliber of the speakers and how much heart and soul they were putting into their talks.
After that, we each came to class two more times to deliver our talks. With every visit we got additional ideas and suggestions. It was an incredibly thorough way to do it. We all improved our talks with continuous feedback and iteration of our talks.
And we all benefited from the great leadership of Heather Myrick. She initiated the school’s service learning leadership class that raises awareness, promotes compassion, and takes action in local and global communities. She had incredibly insightful feedback for each speaker, along with much encouragement.
Memorizing your talk. Memorizing a 1,700-word talk is no easy feat. It surely would have been faster in my college days, when I was used to cramming large amounts of material into my brain right before finals week. But with the passage of time and the sheer volume of information we encounter on a typical day that takes up precious brain space, memorization proved difficult.
I tried recording my talk as a video and listening to it before I fell asleep. Research says this is a good way to make information stick. The various sleep cycles are supposed to solidify the learning. I also tried listening to the recording during drive time.
But what ultimately worked for me was repetition, repetition and more repetition. I’d memorize one paragraph by repeating it aloud multiple times as I paced across my office. Once I had one paragraph down, I’d add the next one. Eventually I worked up to a page. Then two pages. And three pages. Ultimately I got to all four pages.
I must have repeated that talk 200 times, and I still didn’t feel like I fully had it. I felt like if I paused during the delivery, I’d forget where I was and be unable to remember the next line.
What was it that made it fairly simple to deliver the talk while I was driving in my car, while taking the stage introduced a whole new level of challenge?
The difference really was the thought of being judged. Yet I had to remind myself of what I often coached others on in the corporate world – people in the audience are rooting for you. They want you to succeed.
Talking yourself off the ledge. Procrastination is a problem for me. My tendencies toward perfection make me put off tasks and the emotional pain of not feeling like I’m measuring up to the standards I set for myself. Of course, this just compounds the problem, because then there isn’t enough time to create something as good as I would like.
When I finally deemed my talk almost good enough to share with my family members, the actual event wasn’t that far off. I felt like they were underwhelmed with my delivery, to say the least. To their credit, they had some great ideas and suggestions.
The problem for me was that it was difficult to memorize my talk in the first place. Now I was going to need to rewrite areas and re-memorize it. But then I remembered a great conversation between two TED speakers on a podcast called The Tim Ferriss Show.
In an episode on overcoming fear and embracing creativity, Susan Cain and Tim Ferriss talked about their experiences preparing for the TED stage. In each case, some late-breaking feedback caused them to make last-minute changes to their talks. The pressure was intense. Yet the end results made their talks all the better.
Having insight into others’ experiences helped me talk myself off the ledge, along with some much-needed encouragement from my husband, Kevin.
Enjoying the experience. The day of the event I must have run through the whole talk about 50 times. Or at least it felt that way. Yet when I would think though specific sections, my mind would often draw a blank. I started to freak out a bit, wondering if I’d be able to remember and deliver the whole talk.
I call these moments the speeding train syndrome. That’s when you’ve done a tremendous amount of preparation and the deadline is looming, but you never feel fully prepared. At that point, there isn’t that much more you can do, because the train will continue speeding along toward its destination.
This was when I decided I had to surrender to the timeline, do my best, and try to enjoy the experience. If not for me, then for the sake of the audience. As a TEDxYouth event, the size of the audience was limited. But I was thrilled that my husband, our two children, our daughter’s friend (both serendipitously home for spring break from college), and one of my friends were able to attend.
We were going to have some fun together. That’s what I told myself as I walked onto the stage and took my place in the middle of the TEDx red circular carpet. And I think we did! The parts where my family members had given feedback and suggestions were the moments that inspired some laughter from the audience.
Amplifying the experience. One moment I was waiting in the wings, ready to go onstage, with butterflies in my stomach. Then I stepped onto the stage, into the light. And I began.
Before I knew it, I was done. I remembered my talk as I’d practiced it time and time again.
What next? The first thing was to offer encouragement to the speakers in the green room who would follow me. It was a sight to see a group of people individually pacing the room, practicing their talks.
The next day I shared my talk transcript in a blog post. I wanted to reach a larger audience after the weeks, days and hours of effort in fine tuning it into an idea worth spreading.
And I wanted to share the experience with you, if this is a dream of yours too. If you have an idea worth sharing, there are TEDx events all over the world. I encourage you to seek one out and share your idea. The world needs you!
by Caroline Leach | Mar 23, 2019 | Learning, Social Media
Giving a TEDx talk has long been on my bucket list. This week, I’m over the moon that I got to give my talk. It was a riveting road, full of twists and turns as well as ups and downs.
The down part was two nights before my talk. I was practicing on my captive family members, not loving how it was coming together, and bargaining with myself about how to get out of doing it.
The up part was being on stage. I delivered the 1,767 words I wrote and painstakingly memorized, and I fully enjoyed the experience of sharing a message that’s near and dear to my heart.
In my next post, I’ll give some insight into the process of being part of a TEDx event. And I’ll thank many of the amazing people who helped make it happen: Sara Robinson, Abby Robinson, Heather Myrick, and my family and friends.
For now, here’s the transcript from my talk at TEDxYouth@PVPHS. With the theme of Impressions and Successions, the event was held at my alma mater, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School.
The school’s Service Learning Leadership class organized and hosted the second annual event. The class raises awareness, promotes compassion and takes action in local and global communities. My daughter loved it so much she took it for two years.
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Social Media Can Make You a #LifelongLearner | March 22, 2019
The last time I was on this stage, there was no Spotify, no Instagram, no Internet.
As a sophomore in high school, I was not an aspiring actor, but a school play needed French can-can dancers doing a kick line. My dance group, Choreo, was invited to join the cast.
At the time, I never dreamed I’d return to this stage, on a completely different mission. Instead, I was consumed by questions you may have about your own lives as teens.
Where will I go to college? Will I enjoy it? What kind of work will I do? How about a family? If the term “bucket list” existed then, I would have wondered about that, too.
Imagine being in high school before smartphones and social media existed. It’s impossible, right?
But because I didn’t grow up with social media, learning to use it was like getting through a locked door without a key.
My job in the corporate world was VP of communications. One of my projects was bringing a form of social media to the workplace. Everyone creates a profile, forms teams, and works together in a social space.
This was my first real introduction to social media. Sure, I joined Facebook … kicking and screaming because a “friend” made me do it.
But the new project scared me. People on the tech team were throwing around words like “hybrid cloud,” and “on prem.” I had no idea what they meant. And I was the project leader.
At the time, Mindy Kaling, the entertainer, was on the cover of Fast Company magazine.
I felt like it was silently mocking me for everything I was not. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide until the project went away.
But that didn’t happen. As you do when there’s something you don’t want to work on, I had to kick my fear to the ground and move forward through that hybrid cloud.
Launch day was looming. One morning I woke up and decided to start a blog.
If I needed to teach others how to do it, including our CEO, it might be helpful if I knew how to do it for myself.
I wrote about what I knew, the workplace, in posts like “Writing Irresistible Emails,” and “Failure is the Secret to Success.”
And I loved it – conversing in comments and connecting people across time zones.
When I didn’t know how to do something – like hyperlinking to an article – I just asked my readers. And they responded.
By experimenting and being willing to make mistakes in a public way, I learned valuable new skills.
Later, I launched a blog outside the company, writing about how people build their careers by using social media to tell their stories.
In part, I was intrigued by colleagues I’d never met in real life, but I felt like I knew them and their work through our social interactions.
One of the them was Sandra, who worked in another state. During our project, she shared content, posted comments, and encouraged others to use the platform. Although we never met in person, I saw her leadership in social media.
A few months later, Sandra’s name came up in a talent review. This is where team leaders discuss everyone’s performance. It’s similar to a teacher giving a grade in school. When we talked about Sandra, I had good things to say about her, all because of her social presence.
A study by Dell and the Institute for the Future estimates that 85% of the jobs that today’s young people will do in 2030 … have not yet been invented.
If this is even partly correct, in just over a decade, many of today’s jobs will be replaced by new and different ones. That’s a lot of learning!
A favorite of mine, Thomas Friedman, says that today’s American dream is more of a journey than a fixed destination. He describes the feeling as walking UP a DOWN escalator.
The only way to master it is to become a lifelong learner.
How do you do this? I believe the answer lies with two questions.
Who has a smartphone in their pocket?
And who used it today on social media?
Think about the impressions you saw. What you shared. How it made you feel.
Social media gets a bad rap. It saps our attention. It makes us depressed. It polarizes our world. And don’t get me started on the YouTube comments section.
The Pew Research Center says that teens especially can feel overwhelmed by social media drama. You can feel pressured to post content that gets a lot of likes and comments.
I didn’t know I was supposed to delete Instagram posts that didn’t get 50 likes in the first hour, until my daughter told me. My early grams got about 4 likes. Good thing I didn’t know the rule.
But there’s an upside that doesn’t get this kind of attention.
Social media helps us learn. In new and different and fun ways.
Because learning isn’t over until you’re over. It’s forever a work in progress, no matter how many academic degrees you earn.
Access to anything you want to know is on the apps on your phone … for Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube. There’s also Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn … the network for professionals sometimes known as the spinach of social media. More on that in a minute.
By applying some strategy to the content you consume, you can get a degree in life – every day.
The impressions in social media – the stories, the tweets, the snaps – can be a powerful learning system. Social media can make you a lifelong learner in three different ways.
First, you can learn about any topic you choose.
Maybe you want to know more about technology. What’s the latest on artificial intelligence? Augmented reality? Robotics? How are they being applied to business or the arts or social good?
Maybe you want to learn about which media outlets you should trust to report the facts. Or about data science and how it helps companies decide what products to offer and which people to hire.
To start, you can find the leading experts through Twitter – or Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube. You can follow their feeds and view what they post.
You can connect with almost anyone on social media. Commenting on someone’s content or asking a question can often start a conversation. Sometimes I do this with authors and podcasters.
You could try this with your professors when you get to college. You could do this with leaders at a company where you work, especially if it’s hard to meet them in person.
You never know if they’ll reply. People who seem really accomplished are often accessible on social media.
Second, you can learn about the social media platforms themselves.
You can learn about the algorithms that determine who sees what posts. You can study the psychology of online behavior. You can get to know how advertising works and influences you.
You can then use this to your advantage. For example, as my son told me, to make an unwanted ad go away, say for lava lamps, just search on “I hate lava lamps” a few times. No more ads.
Why else is this important? Because social media is a topic you can perpetually study but never master. Two writers, Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick, say the term “social media guru” is an oxymoron, because nobody really knows how social media works.
“No matter how smart you are,” they say, “best practices always change, because the platforms change how their sites work. Everyone needs to keep experimenting.”
I took that advice to heart. In one of my experiments, I posted to LinkedIn every weekday for a month to see what would happen. I was curious to test the data point that it takes 20 LinkedIn posts to reach 60 percent of your audience.
I put my data into a spreadsheet to analyze patterns. I wrote about it, and people wanted to know more. They started asking questions and inviting me to speak.
Third, you can help others learn about you.
A top skill of the future is making yourself known. It’s communicating who you are and what you do in a world where you’re often changing jobs.
In every impression you post in social media, you’re telling your story – like Peninsula High School Service Learning Leadership does here. You’re building your reputation, also known as your personal brand. You’re sharing what you’re doing to make the world a better place.
What’s not recommended is the humblebrag – a boast wrapped in fake humility that makes people want to facepalm when they see it. No one wants to hear just how hard it is to choose among multiple Ivy League acceptances.
What is required is getting on LinkedIn, the network for professionals. This is where you share what you do and what you want to do in the work world. It’s your always-on, 24/7 resume. It’s the way you tell your professional story.
A college admissions officer might look at your profile – especially if you put a link in your application. It’s also a way for people to find you. A job recruiter might contact you, possibly because your dream job wants to slide into your DMs.
People will come to know and trust you. Posting positive impressions lets you manage transitions and successions in life more easily. If social media had existed throughout my own life, my transitions would have been easier. I could have learned faster and shared more about me.
When I got to college, I quickly realized I was in the wrong place. So I transferred to a new school. I got a degree in economics because it seemed practical. I worked in early jobs I didn’t like very much.
Then I got a master’s in communications and found work I loved. I married a great guy and started a family. I worked at a dozen different jobs so far, from a fast-food cashier to a corporate vice president to a business owner today.
Were there ups and downs? Yes. Doubts if it would all happen? Absolutely.
But remember that scary social media project? It turned out to be one of the foundations of my business.
What made this happen? Learning. Growing. Experimenting. Every day.
This is why we all need to be social seekers – of new knowledge, perspectives and experiences.
Social media is the key that opens the door.
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