Skip to main content

Be Socially Connected

Be socially connected

People congregate together, whether it is in a city, church, rock concert or on Facebook! FB is based on the need for people to connect. And love it or hate it, it took less than 8 years for Facebook to become integrated into the global language.

So why do we do feel this need to connect? Primarily, it stems from basic survival instincts. An individual does not have all of the skills to survive alone in nature.

How does being socially connected make us more resilient to change?

It makes us recognise that other people are required to bring the appropriate skills and values to successfully complete a project.  Have you ever spent a couple of days creating a project plan, only to find that Mandla has already created a fantastic template? What takes me a whole day and plenty of yelling at my computer takes Mandla 5 minutes. If I had connected with Mandla, we would have worked together as a team, eliminating any duplication and leveraging each other’s skills to produce the plan.

Being socially connected gives us access to knowledge. Sharing is caring in an environment where things are constantly changing. Knowing ‘what, when who, how and where’ goes a long way to building resilience to upcoming changes. Take the current migrations to AccessAccounts. When I heard Chris Nel speaking about the solid escalation measures in place to address any issues I felt a lot more confident that the migrations would be successful.

Getting socially connected

The good news? If you are a member of a team, a family or golf club you are already socially connected.
The bad news? There is none! Just use existing connections to begin building or extending your networks.

  • Use professional engagementslike team meetings, Indabas, Connect Sessions to get introduced
  • Your dance, book, scuba or golf clubs can all be used to connect with others in a different way
  • Use social media networks for the same thing – LinkedIn is a useful professional network
  • Having a quick chat over coffee is a great way to find out about something
  • Keeping it simple. Get up from your desk and ask your colleague the question. You’ll see that there are very few that actually bite
Give back

When you help other people and are generous with your knowledge then they will be more inclined to help you. For example if a colleague recommends you on LinkedIn return the favour. Or in another situation you could take 5 minutes to explain an Excel formula etc.

At the end of the day being socially connected means you need to get out there. Introduce yourself, take an interest and be involved. The result is that you will find that like you, colleagues are more than willing to share knowledge and skills to get the job done faster.

Elevator Speech

Having a clear 2 – 3 sentence of who you are and what you do will make a better impression when you first meet someone. You can practice on your friends first if you are shy. Try this exercise:

Imagine being in an elevator and you have 30 seconds to tell Hannah Sadiki who you are, what you do and what your skills are. For example

“I am Sibongele Nkosi. I work in Internal Communications for Channel. We produce all the ‘Blue Matter’ scripts and ‘Heart-to-Heart’. I can turn a 100 page presentation into 1 page”

Want to know more?


Online material
Ted Talks - The Hidden Influence of Social Networks 
Ted Talks - The Tribes We Lead  

Blog - Happiness Is Being Socially Connected 
Blog - Allowing For Social Media in The Workplace

Share your experience about being socially connected in the workplace or you can even create and post your Elevator Speech below – make it as fun and outrageous as you like!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Have People Skills

Have people skills There are lots of examples across the ages of people who ooze charm and charisma – Madiba, Princess Diana and Barrack Obama to name but a few. But are some people just naturally charismatic or can you work on it? I think you absolutely can develop your people skills and this will help strengthen your resilience to change! It’s also an essential part of building an engaging culture of leadership. I think the movie ‘Invictus’ has great examples of how to build your people skills in ‘The Madiba Way’. What simple things did Nelson Mandela do to uplift his team and an entire nation? My first thought is that he took time to understand  what is important to people . From small every day niceties like asking how his guard’s children were doing at school, to recognising that rugby is not just a sport but a way of life for many people. Madiba embraced the culture of his enemy and won peace for a nation. How does that translate to our reality? We all get in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Have A Personal Vision

Have a Personal Vision There is nothing worse than being faced with changing landscapes and not knowing what lies ahead. It's like walking along an unknown path in a forest, having to constantly look left and right to check that you are not heading toward danger. As a core characteristic of building resilience to change, knowing where you are heading automatically provides confidence that you can move forward in this changing landscape without the world falling apart. One of the first actions towards having a personal vision is to get clarity as to what that vision looks like. Here is an opportunity to align your personal vision, with your team’s and ultimately with that of your company, as you prepare for the Future of Work and the role you play in ensuring that, you are the number one worldwide industry leaders in digital entertainment. Clearly knowing where you fit within your team and what you need to be doing for the day, week or month ahead, enables you ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Be Proactive

Be Proactive One of the things that we often fear is the fear of the unknown. We spend a lot of energy worrying about outcomes that never actually happen, because we are trying to avoid disruption to our daily routines. When we know what lies ahead, we can plan and make provision for the things we think we will need and also prepare for the unexpected. When we are proactive, we plan ahead as much as possible by thinking about solutions to potential issues that may arise. For example, when I know that I am going on a scuba trip, there are number of things I need to plan for if I want to ensure that I have the best time possible. There are things that I know I will have to always take with me, so I have a checklist of those things readily available. In fact a number of things need to be planned at least 3 to 6 weeks before hand; Is it oversea’s  – is my passport up to date, do I need a visa? Weather  - Is the temperature warmer or colder? Food & Bev...
Post a Comment
Read more