Tweeting Authentic Leadership: social Media in a Leadership Context

Twitter, as a specific social media platform, is a means of communication that is easy to track, requires simple language, short and clear messages, and is constantly occurring, thereby making it an excellent means to communicate leadership and track its effect. Authentic leadership in its most essential form requires communication of values, establishing connected relationships, and demonstrating purpose, all of which can be done through Twitter leading to a higher level of leadership performance. strates its potential. These followers are able to see the authentic style of these leaders, as they broadcast the values of themselves and their organizations to establish relational transparency. With hundreds of people having been surveyed, it is obvious that the reach of social networking is vast. By having a Twitter account or a Facebook, one can reach people in ways that create waves of influence. This influence allows a leader to do exactly what one aspect of authentic leadership aspires toknowing what they believe and being transparent about it to others. By tweeting an observation based on values, a leader is able to broadcast transparency in ways that weren’t even possible before the medium. Broadcasting inner thoughts and reflexivity in-person or through mail is not generally adopted, so the ability to do this, in commonplace, on social media opens up a whole new world of authenticity. There are both negative and positive views of social media’s impact on leadership and some negative views have merit. In general, the good outweighs the bad, but some negative perspectives are worth noting if one hopes to embark on a social media strategy of leadership. There are six main attitudes that a leader can take in terms of their approach to social media. These views are folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging, and fusing (Bradley, 2011). Folly users consider social media fun and entertaining, but don’t find organizational value in it. Users that are fearful view it as a distraction and believe that productivity suffers from its use. Those that are flippant provide access to followers, such as having a twitter account, but don’t have a strategy for their use. Formulating users take the perspective of being extremely strategic in use and are almost too strategic, as it removes personality. Fusing, the rarest attitude, treats social media as a platform for open communication and collaboration. Fusing is the most progressive take on social media, and allows for the greatest use of it in an authentic leadership strategy. The most common viewpoint is that of flippant. Many companies, CEOs, politicians, and business leaders have social networking accounts and update them once in a while, but they do not use them to their potential. This is actually the most dangerous position to have in the field because it gives weight to the folly and fearful arguments, providing more content on the networks with minimal substance presented. It also makes it more difficult to be forging or fusing as it makes these users seem excessive in their use and provides cause for pause when debating broadcasting something. Broadcasting is most authentic when it is organic and instinctual. By creating pause to instant, true communication, there is more of a reason to become a formulating userthe type of user that is generally the least effective in being authentic in their online leadership. Because they have regulated, edited, measured involvement, they come off as unapproachable and the potential for organizational growth disappears. Any of the more negative views need to become more self-reflexive and understand the importance of approachability in organizational dynamic. Being afraid of social media or considering it harmful to productivity is in itself dangerous. While some aspects of the argument may be valid, it does more harm to an organization than is perhaps visual on the surface to take this perspective. Because of the importance of an authentic leader to be approachable, transparent, and to have authentic behavior,, one must be self-reflexive enough to see the benefits of social media. By blocking social media, a leader becomes static, which can be very harmful when attempting to be authentic. In fact, it is better to make a mistake and be transparent about it, or to receive negative image and be authentic about it, then to not be present at all. The idea behind this is that followers of authentic leadership want to relate to them and see their values on their sleeves. This can happen in social media through personal narrative. Personal narrative is a powerful tool in the quest to be authentic as it allows a follower to see the leaders “true self” and to find inspiration in it. By finding similarities and being inspired by shared values, a follower is more passionate about goals and is driven to work harder. This social media is powerful tool in this area. This is because “narrative identity...is not simply the recounting of the temporal sequence of events in one’s life, one thing after another. Rather, it is to portray of the ‘whys’ of one’s life— if not by means of a ‘causal’ explanation, then through an accounting of how those events are related” (Sparrowe, 2005). The ‘whys’ behind the narrative display the values of a leader, and can clearly be observed in social media. This is because social media intends cause one to emote about events and to react to them rather than just report them. While many view Twitter as a tool to “find out at a friend had toast for breakfast,” it is much more and can be very informative into the inner mind of a user. Personal narratives and their power outweigh any negative in terms of productivity because a true authentic leader is invested in the self-reflection and transparency that it provides. The loss of productivity is worth it if one hopes to improve one’s communication and leadership style, and most likely does not view it as a loss of productivity at all. Authentic leadership requires more than just communication; it also requires growth, purposeful leadership, and self-awareness. Because of this, it is important to note that social media can also improve individuals as leaders in a holistic senseit makes people into smarter leaders. Social media has the potential to make a leader “sell” better, listen better, and move faster (Clark, 2012). Utilizing social media