Build Open Leadership Skills
Four qualities to develop

Groundswell author Charlene Li’s new book came out yesterday. It’s called Open Leadership, and it’s awesome! We’ve been thinking about how the lessons in her book relate to you, our SocialFish Food readers. Here are some tips for building your Open Leadership skill set.

• Be Curious.
  We know you’re curious about social media—the tools, the techniques, the relationships. To build your Open Leadership skills, apply your curiosity to your internal organizational structure and processes. Break out of your silo and find out about all the cool stuff your organization is doing.
• Have patience.
  You can’t just turn on the “social†switch overnight. Building the capacity for openness within an organization can take years. For social media lovers, that’s a long, tedious wait. To build your Open Leadership skills, you have to accept that the transformation will take time, and you have to be willing to work through all the baby steps along the way.
• Work through conflict.
  Healthy organizations hire people who do not always agree. That means it’s fine for you to disagree with someone in your organization, so long as you present an alternative viewpoint that can be validated. At the same time, you need to be willing to accept the viewpoints of people who disagree with you.
• Build trust.
  You know how important it is to build trust with your stakeholders online. It may be even more important to build trust with your colleagues internally. Being curious, having patience, and working through conflict all have the net effect of building trust. Be the model for the kind of openness you hope to instill in your organization.
  

Hear Charlene Li in person at Buzz2010 on June 16. She’ll talk about her new book and lead a discussion on openness in organizations.

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