Social Media Leadership: Effectiveness and Adaptability

Introduction

This study is designed to understand the evolution of leaders' behavior and approach to leadership as a result of social media's pervasive influence on employees and followers. The study also investigates the effectiveness of leadership by analyzing flexible and adaptable authority styles and designating leadership methods based on circumstances encountered in organizations. The study attempts to demonstrate how leadership adaptability and effectiveness can be achieved simultaneously through the use of social media.

The research ascertains leaders' standpoints on social media for their leadership practice and the benefits their organizations accrue. The manner in which leaders steer their organizations — and the manner in which they choose to communicate, collaborate, build relationships, make decisions, and create new business opportunities — is predicated on creating an environment of trust. Leadership effectiveness within the social media context is based on the leaders' abilities to make real-time decisions necessary to effectively influence others' activities both within and outside their organizations.

This study promotes awareness of the benefits of social media for leaders and their organizations. Most research studies on contemporary, effective leadership have focused on studying leadership behaviors from the standpoint of conventional environments, while only a few studies have focused on studying leadership behaviors commensurate with nontraditional, evolving environments. Therefore, this research study contributes additional value and insights to the body of literature and the leadership model by presenting ideas and results derived from applying social media leadership to examine leadership behavior within the social media context. This research seeks to project leadership models and practices to a new level by examining leadership behaviors both within and outside organizations, including the relationship between leaders and external stakeholders such as current clients and new customers.

The capability of the leader to adapt to an organizational environment, and the way the leader deals with employees, customers, or followers, will reflect his or her behavior — whether positive or negative. It is difficult for followers to develop and improve their knowledge and skills under an incapable leader — one who lacks self-confidence or domain knowledge — especially when that leader is inadequate in leadership experience. As a result, the transfer of knowledge and ideas becomes difficult.

Leaders must have strong social skills and demonstrate belief in the outcomes predicted through their job duties, especially when building relationships with people through social media. Softening one's leadership style does not necessarily weaken a leader's effectiveness; instead, it can make the leader more genuine, humane, and responsive — someone who is able to understand and acknowledge others' feelings and emotions. There is therefore a need for leaders to promote social media concepts within their organizations to determine how doing so encourages and inspires individuals to adopt social media practices, and to assess leaders' willingness to participate actively in online communities. There is also a need to examine whether social media increases positive contributions that facilitate relationships and opportunities to influence outcomes from which both leaders and organizations can gain insights, without jeopardizing private information.

In the social media world, information flows from all directions. The effectiveness of leadership within this environment is dependent on leaders' willingness to participate in the process, enhance followers' engagement within open and dynamic social media environments, adapt behavior to rapid environmental changes, and thereby develop the ability to respond swiftly to varied demands.

Leadership in the Social Media Era

The development of leadership theories has taken place over centuries, and leadership models have been debated since ancient times. Leadership is a process based on modeling the highest standards of behavior and capability to positively influence, inspire, and collaborate — sharing knowledge, adapting to change while maintaining flexibility, motivating, and coaching followers to work collaboratively toward a common goal. Leaders can visualize, crystallize, and induce change, and influence their followers. The core professional values of leadership are honesty, competency, and wisdom. Leaders inspire entire groups of followers to be more effective and to seek benefits for the group's collective interest above individual concerns.

The advancement of social media has changed the way individuals and leaders connect and interact within and outside organizations. Social media enables people to connect and interact with others easily, at will, and independent of geographical barriers. It enables and empowers leaders and individuals with resources and capacities that exceed those offered in traditional settings. It also allows individuals and leaders to engage in processes, make choices, and adapt to change while sustaining flexibility. It is therefore reasonable to postulate that the ever-expanding role of social media as a leadership tool may impact leadership effectiveness and practices as leaders adapt their styles to accommodate leading in a socially networked work world.

Understanding leadership behavior and approach is evolving as a result of social media's pervasive influence on employees and organizations. The manner in which leaders steer their organizations — and the manner in which they choose to communicate, collaborate, build relationships, make decisions, and create new business opportunities — is predicated on creating an environment of trust. E-leadership effectiveness within the social media context is based on the leaders' abilities to make real-time decisions necessary to effectively influence others' activities within and outside their organizations.

E-leaders face special leadership issues created by the prevalence of social media, including bridging physical distance with people who may never even see them, conveying enthusiasm and inspiring people implementing goals and plans, and building trust remotely. At the same time, the virtual environment presents unique communication, trust, relationship, motivation, and technology challenges that may impede primary leadership functions (Arnold, 2008; Bergiel et al., 2008; Lee, 2010). Successful leadership in the virtual environment requires complex e-leadership techniques such as effective communication, relationship building, collaboration, and flexibility (Carte et al., 2006). Obolensky (2010) emphasized the importance of communication tools that enable real-time networking, while noting that increases in communication technology have greatly enhanced the complexity of the world in recent times. Samuel (2012) states that social networking websites have brought new opportunities for communication, knowledge sharing, and relationship building. Additionally, effective collaborations frequently require offering new services, expanding staff roles, or reaching out to new client groups — not merely co-locating services or combining standard services in new locations (Sviridoff & Ryan, 1997). These approaches require new relationships to be built on trust through mundane interactions — personal introductions, meetings, sharing newsletters, reintroducing oneself to staff when there is high turnover, and helping each other solve problems (Campbell & Glunt, 2004).

Social media has influenced how organizations function, transforming the role of leaders in order to address this new and emerging technology. Leaders must address both internal and external considerations that result from business activities. According to Balkundi and Kilduff (2006), the relationship between leaders and followers is based "on the acuity of their social perceptions and the structure of their social ties" (p. 421). Social relationships among leaders and followers within organizations, and with followers outside organizations, are of vital significance. An efficient and successful leader is able to gauge, appreciate, and exploit social network relationships among organization members, as well as between members and other stakeholders beyond the organization's boundaries, and is able to leverage individual personal networks for the benefit of the organization (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006).

Nature of the Issue and Challenges

The essential objectives of leadership remain the same and deal with the same fundamental issues. Accordingly, e-leaders contend with the same issues and contexts as traditional leaders, while making use of and adapting to the spaces and issues created by the prevalence of social media. Communication media are now computers, smartphones, and tablet devices, and leaders' styles and approaches must bridge physical distance. Leaders must convey enthusiasm and inspire people electronically, implement goals and plans electronically, and build trust with peers and superiors remotely. On the other hand, social media provides leaders with the ability to communicate individually or en masse via networks instantly.

Many businesses feel that social media is problematic when used by employees. Companies are apprehensive about losing control of information flows, and some organizational leaders are unwilling to embark on personalized communications programs that may raise employee expectations. They tend to worry about the confidentiality and safety of sensitive internal communications. They fear that such information could be leaked and spread across the Internet. Leader-Chivee, Hamilton, and Cowan (2008) indicated that many companies remain skeptical that there is value in spending time online, and they worry about the risks associated with these technologies. Currently, 65% of U.S. employers block certain websites from access behind the corporate firewall, and half of those specifically block access to social networking sites. This resistance is partially intended to keep employees from wasting time, but the underlying reason is also risk aversion (Leader-Chivee et al., p. 44).

It is therefore clear that for social media to be used effectively in an organization, a degree of trust must exist between management and the workforce. Guidelines need to be established to govern behaviors and decorum on networking websites, as these sites are an extension of the work environment. By prohibiting access to these websites, management could discourage people from using them to communicate and collaborate (Awolusi, 2010, p. 3). On the other hand, there is a risk of workers wasting valuable production time if some employees use social networking sites excessively for activities unrelated to work (Caloisi, 2008).

The business gains and benefits of social media in the workplace remain largely underappreciated. Although some companies around the world have begun to implement facets of social media technology and realize business benefits, fear, resistance, and risk still dominate many organizations' thinking (Bennett, 2010).

Many corporations resist losing control of information flows and fear that the personal use of social networks could compromise sensitive corporate information or raise concerns about confidentiality. Some companies block access to social media entirely to keep employees from wasting time. Another concern for management is the protection of intellectual property, trade secrets, and company procedures that could be exposed to the public or to competitors via consumer social networking websites (Sarrel, 2010). Despite these risks, many companies generally avoid outright banning access to consumer social networks on company time (Caloisi, 2008). Research from Network Box concluded that streams from Facebook and YouTube accounted for more corporate web activity and consumed more bandwidth than any other websites — a real problem for businesses, since streaming video occupies a disproportionately large share of corporate bandwidth (M2PressWire, 2010).

It has also been noted that an organization's reputation could be negatively impacted by current or former employees posting inappropriate photo links, rumors, or unauthorized business strategy updates on the company's online systems (Awolusi, 2010). According to one internet security analyst, the sheer volume of traffic from corporate networks to social networking sites demonstrates that employees use these platforms for personal, rather than strictly business, purposes (M2PressWire, 2010). Privacy concerns also arise when organizations allow their employees access to social networking sites. To sufficiently address these problems, organizations may require additional labor resources — expenses that, taken together, could negate the positive benefits of participating in a consumer social networking environment (Awolusi, 2010).