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Your merging onto a highway ramp when the car in the next lane straddles the line so you, and others, cannot pass.
A peer at work stalls your initiative or project.
People that impede our forward movement or efforts with no perceived reason or gain are blockers.
Blockers lose their control when they are overcome by the larger flow of activity which allows you to move forward.
Once on the highway you can pass them effortlessly.
Look for the open road.
If puts things at risk.
“If you eat your vegetables then we’ll have desert. “
When puts things at stake.
“When you eat your vegetables then we’ll have desert.”
Individuals, kids and adults, are motivated by the opportunity to gain over the chance to lose.
As a leader I’m always was reminded of an acronym, one of many, I learned as a young army officer, BKD (Be, Know, Do). After all these years it still helps me ground myself and express to others what it means to be a leader.
“Be” – Character First!
Leadership begin with what a true leader must be. It starts with character or personality, consisting of drives, attitudes, talents, strengths, and values (loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage). These are the qualities that define the leader.
“Know” – What and How!
The second component focuses on competencies: what a leader needs to know (in the sense of both “know what” and “know how”), in four main areas:
“Do” – Take Action!
The final component of the BKD model focuses on the actions of a leader:
It is the combination of all three that sets us apart as leaders.
A leader is anyone who by virtue of assumed role or assigned responsibility inspires and influences people to accomplish organizational goals. Leaders motivate people both inside and outside the organization structure to pursue actions, focus thinking, and shape decisions for the greater good of the organization.
*This post contains some phrases from Chris Heuer’s presentation - Making the Case: Selling Social Media Into and Within the Enterprise
UPDATED: Photo security is handled separately. Details are added to the bottom of the post.
During two recent presentations about social media both groups expressed their desire to keep personal and professional activity separate. By the end of the session they all realized that those lines are quickly blurring as more and more organization setup Facebook pages and work associates request to be friends.
Although somewhat obscure there is a mechanism in Facebook that will allow you to have friends and ‘friends’. Here is how you can ‘friend’ someone without sharing photos of your recent antics with friends and family.
Select the Friends menu item across the top bar to show your Friends Lists. Initially there are two Friend Lists All Friends and Limited Profile. I’ve change the name of my Limited Profile to ‘friends’. You can do this by selecting Limited Profile and then using the edit link on the right.
To add people to your ‘friends’ list you can either start typing their name like below or use the Select Multiple Friends link on the right.
Once selected your friends are now members of your ‘friends’ list. ** CAUTION** At this point the list has the same access as your All Friends list. Don’t be fooled by the initial name of Limited Profile, they are not actually limited yet.
Next mouse over Settings in the top bar and select Privacy Settings > Profile and you will see the default settings for your profile.
Select the drop down for any item you want to limit access and choose customize. Here you can either select a Friend List or an individual person to add then to the list.
My ‘friends’ list is not allowed to see my Personal Info.
As you can see from my updated profile page I have limited access to Personal Information, Photos, and Videos. As an added precaution I have removed the right for any friend to post on my wall.
UPDATED: Photo security is handled separately.
To restrict photo access select Profile > Photos Tab > Album Privacy
As before limit access to each album by adding Friend Lists or individual names. As an added privacy measure I have unchecked the top boxes and removed access to Everyone on Facebook.
When done you can review the access permission to all your albums.
** CAUTION ** These credentials may not be honored by all Facebook Applications. IAW you might limit access to photos but through a photo application your ‘friends’ might have access.
Here is a great video to put this all in perspective - FaceBook In Reality
More and more people are beginning to venture into social media and twitter is a great place to start. Inevitably there is a need to figure out whom to follow. Here are the methods I’ve used to create my twitter network.
First you should follow me!
Get recommendations from whoshouldifollow.com
Use Twitter Search to find people talking about topics that interest you.
Let MrTweet help you easily build meaningful relationships by looking through your network and tweets.
For Seattlelites you can find local organizations on Who’s on Twitter in Seattle? The big (working) index.
The Social Brand Index tracks organizations by category.
Look at the followers of someone you already follow.
See you on Twitter.
Now that I’ve established myself on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter I set out to find an application that could create a visual interpretation of my social networks. To date I cannot find one single application capable of integrating connections across various social networks but I did find Nexus, Friend Wheel, and Twitter Browser.
Nexus is a Facebook application that creates a graph showing how you and your friends are connected. As with most Facebook applications the setup is easy and once complete the fun begins.
You can choose a radial or spring graph and either white or black background.
Mouse over a node and the individuals Facebook image and all shared contact are displayed. The graph really makes it easy to analyze your network and identify where separate clusters merge.
Friend Wheel is another Facebook application. It is not as dynamic but the colors are vibrant.
It creates a static image of your network relationships and a flash version that shows connection with a mouse over.
Twitter Browser is a web based application that uses your Twitter alias to create a very dynamic display that you can browse by selecting a node. Each time you select a node their connections are displayed. It only shows 16 connections which seem to be chosen at random since mine where not the newest or most active ones.
All good fun but I’m still looking for the application that can do it all.
I’ve been a member of LinkedIn since the service started in 2004 and have used it to maintain an active CV and stay in contact with friends and associates all over the world. Recently they’ve added a limited but powerful group of applications that allow you to aggregate your social media content from other services.
Here are the applications available at the time of this post.
By adding just three of these applications to my LinkedIn profile (Wordpress, Reading List, SlideShare) the definition of my personal brand became much clearer. Here is a quick look at my LinkedIn Profile.
Xobni is an amazing little Outlook plug-in that really adds value. Once installed it quickly indexes your emails and contacts to provide some great capabilities.
When installed Xobni adds another panel to your Outlook client. The panel is populated with data related to the sender of any email you select in Outlook.
(** N.B. Email addresses have been removed from the images resulting in white or black boxes **)
Working from the top down let’s walk through what you get.
The profile contains basic details and contact information if available. The ‘edit profile’ link allows you to select what data source to use for profile information. You can choose Xobni, Outlook, LinkedIn or Facebook. The four tabs in the profile area are described below.
Statistics shows the email activity between you and the sender. Since I select myself the graph is showing all my email activity.
Actions provides quick links to some basic tasks. The ‘Schedule time with xxx’ is especially useful creating an email with a quick view of your availability over the next few days. No more hunting through your calendar for open time slots.
The LinkedIn tab attempts to find the individual in the LinkedIn network. You can then view their LinkedIn profile right from Outlook. If they are not one of your LinkedIn connections an additional ‘Add +’ button displays.
As with the LinkedIn tab the Facebook tab provides the ability to find and add individuals to your Facebook Friends.
As expected the Hoover’s tab provides information on the organization. Here I selected an email from Mindjet.
As part of the indexing process Xobni looks to identify relationships based on your email traffic. In the ‘Network’ pane it ranks relationships between you and the selected sender. Using the magnifying glass you can search just this network for a specific contact.
All conversations (threaded) that have occurred with this specific individual are shown in a scrollable and searchable list.
Any files exchanged by email are shown in a scrollable and searchable list.
Data junkies can even review their own email activity. This data can be sent, copied, saved or printed.
Since installing Xobni finding and adding contact to LinkedIn and Facebook has become less of a chore.
