Paul Henry

I am proud to announce that I will be taking part in SparkDigital’s (@SparkDigitalNZ) FWD_Live 2015 (#FWDLive) event on Wednesday, July 29. I will be joining Charlene Li (@charleneli), Founder of CEO of Altimeter Group, who will be delivering the keynote address, for what it sure to be an exciting and informative event. You can either attend in person or register for the webcast. Follow the link for more details on registration.

When I was visiting Australia for the 2015 Amplify Festival in June, I had a can’t-miss opportunity to jump over and visit the friendly shores of New Zealand as a guest on “The Paul Henry Show” (@PaulHenryShow), a morning news show similar to “The Today Show” here in the United States. During our nearly five-minute talk, I had the chance to discuss our book, The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, 2013)the changing landscape for business leaders and why social involvement at every level of an organization—but especially the C-Suite—is becoming so important in the digital bazaar. Click on the video below for the full discussion:

As Paul said to open the interview, for him and for many of his generation, the idea of social media becoming a compulsory aspect of business leadership is “slightly alarming.” This is completely understandable, but as I explained, he’s not in the minority in his opinion. We are all in a learning process. It can be easy for established professionals like Paul and myself to resist new technologies, new processes, even new mindsets. But as the saying goes, the best way to learn something new is to try teaching it. As more baby boomers reach retirement age and more gen-Xers and millennials enter leadership positions, we can help ease this transition by embracing a learning mindset and sharing the hard-earned lessons we’ve learned through natural course of our careers.

Even in the face of near-constant change in business, experience matters. Why? Because, as Paul was so keen to point out, there’s always a chance that things can go wrong when embracing social strategies for the first time—either at the individual or the corporate level. While it’s true that the incoming millennial workforce appears to be increasingly adaptive, real-world experience still matters, and established professionals have the practical experience to apply these newer models of social communication and outreach to an organization in a way that produces lasting change and employee buy-in. And without buy-in, without your employees supporting your cause 100 percent, your organization is putting itself in needless risk.

Thanks again to Paul Henry and all the hard-working staff on “The Paul Henry Show” for the excellent interview. I can only hope to stop back by his show the next time I’m visiting New Zealand!

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