Welcome to Leadership Worth Sharing, a podcast in which ACEVO chief executive Jane Ide chats with civil society leaders about their professional experiences, challenges, wellbeing, and their journeys in the sector.
In this episode, Jane speaks with not one but two sector leaders. Adeela Warley, chief executive of CharityComms, the membership body for over 12,000 communication professionals in civil society and Zoe Amar, a well known and highly respected thought leader and expert in all things digital in the sector. They talk about deciding to leave or stay on X, what’s next for social media platforms, and how engaging with stakeholders has been changing in most – if not all – digital channels.
Transcript
Jane Ide 00:00
Jane, Hi, I’m Jane Ide, I’m the chief exec of ACEVO, and you’re listening to leadership worth sharing. Join me while I chat to civil society leaders about their professional experiences, their challenges, their wellbeing, and their journeys in the sector. So this is an unusual episode of our leadership worth sharing podcast, because just for once, we are joined by not just one but two brilliant leaders in our sector. I’m delighted to welcome Adeela Warley, chief executive of CharityComms, the membership body for over 12,000 communication professionals in civil society and Zoe Amar, a hugely well known and very highly respected thought leader and expert in all things digital in our sector. And amongst other things, co author of the social CEO, which, back in 2019 looked at how leaders of charities could and should use social media to deliver impact. I have to see say, Zoe, 2019 seems like another lifetime now, and I’d love to see what a 2024 version of that publication might look like, but we might pick that up later on in our conversation, I suspect, and in a way that leads us directly into the conversation we’re having today. For many of us, the two primary social media channels that we’ve used, both as leaders and in terms of our organizations, have for the past seven or eight years, at least, been Twitter now, of course, rebranded as X and LinkedIn. Some charity brands have made good use of other platforms, Instagram, Facebook, even Tiktok. But until recently, I think Twitter and LinkedIn have been where the greatest level of activity and engagement have been from the majority of people in our sector, and now things have changed. Elon Musk took over Twitter in october 22 and in just those two years, we’ve seen a really different picture emerge. In that time, there have been higher levels of hate speech recorded. The mechanisms for moderating and reporting abuse have changed, and many would say, become much less effective, and some of the practicalities of the platform, such as how to access the metrics, how to promote content, how to maintain visibility, have become increasingly difficult for those who don’t have a budget to throw at their social media activities. And the use of x as a driver for the violent and racist racist riots over the summer, combined with Musk’s own behaviors and commentary have for some been the final straw, and we are seeing an increasing number of charities choosing to step away from that platform. When we at ACEVO announced very recently that we were closing our X account, we were contacted by a number of our members applauding that decision, and by some of the sector press asking us to talk more about it. So it seemed like an appropriate moment for us to bring the debate around X but also around social media, more generally, to life and specifically, to think about the ways in which individual leaders for whom social media provides profile and connection in so many ways and navigating these questions for themselves and for their organizations. So I wonder if we could start our conversation first of all by just stating our own positions. I’ve already mentioned that has ACEVO has announced that we’re closing our account fully in November, and we haven’t actually posted there for the last couple of months. And on a personal level, I closed my own account back in July, and I have to say, I felt a real pang of sadness in doing so, because it has in the past been such an important place for me in building some fantastic relationships, including getting to know both of you in my early years in the sector. But I had reached a point where not only was I not finding it useful anymore, that had been the case for probably well over 18 months, but I just wasn’t prepared to lend Elon Musk my credibility anymore to help him claim profile or influence. Adeela, can I ask you, where do you and charity com stand on this question at the moment?
Adeela Warley 03:50
Oh, yes, absolutely, and I’m delighted to join the conversation with you, Jane and Zoe today, I I’m still, I still have an account on X, and I’m going to very deliberately call it X not Twitter, because I don’t think it is Twitter anymore. I think since Elon Musk took it over, it’s become a shadow of it what it was, and a very different beast. But I am still there. And why am I still there? I’m not posting as much as I would have done in the past, but I’m there because it still feels to me like looking at the social media landscape. There isn’t a platform that does the job that it does, which is for me, it’s the place I go to to keep track of what the sector is saying, to hear what the political landscape looks like and for breaking news, it’s also a place where I find out news, I keep on top of trends, and many of my members and the wider sector are still using the platform, and I really need to know how they’re using it, what they’re doing. Doing what they’re saying and to be a champion for their work and for their campaigns. So that’s the reason that I’m still on it. But I do, I do do that with a great deal of unease, personally, for my values and wanting to be in a place that feels safe, and it doesn’t always feel safe, and certainly this summer, the spread of misinformation and online hate, which had but real world consequences, you know, really shook me. So I absolutely understand the ethical dilemmas that people are facing. Those events actually accelerated for CharityComms. Now I’m talking about my organization, the move to diversify and look outwards at the social media landscape and to think about what other other channels we could be using. So we our approach at the moment is to largely step back from x. We’re not leaving, but we’re and we will keep a watching brief for many of the reasons that I expressed on a personal level. We will be doing that on behalf of our members, but we will also be investigating other channels like threads and LinkedIn. And why would we want to do that because we need to take a really strategic approach to where we invest our time and our skills and understanding where our audiences are. Are they in those spaces? How are they using them? Are they useful to them? And every social media platform performs a different role. Some of them are very good for broadcast. Some of them are much better for for conversations. So we’ll be adopting a kind of insight driven, audience centered approach to our channel strategy. So that’s that’s kind of where we’re at at the moment, Jane
Jane Ide 06:56
Thank you. I think, I think, straight away, we’re already seeing that this is not a simple conversation of one size will fit all in terms of in terms of commodities. So thank you and Zoe, what about you? Where are you? Where are you in this discussion at the moment?
Zoe Amar 07:10
It’s really interesting hearing how adida described that, because it’s very similar to my own position, my organization’s position, to some extent. And it really does feel like the last throws of a really terrible, toxic relationship, doesn’t it, where you kind of know you need to go, but it’s quite hard to actually leave. Um, so I’ve been on reps for a very long time, probably since 2007 2008 and I know before we started recording, we talked about the enormous value, how brilliant that network, that community of people in the voluntary sector, was back in the day, and that network is still there, but it’s it’s much more diffuse now, and I know as we go through this conversation today, we’ll talk about how some of those digital behaviors and panel choices, as it Were, have have changed. My organization has never on on organizationally, we tend to focus on LinkedIn and various other platforms as well. But it’s it hasn’t been a platform where I have felt that safe historically for for quite some time, I had some quite bad trolling on there back in 2019 so I think a lot of the issues we’re seeing now have really been exacerbated since Musk took over.
Jane Ide 08:25
And I think that’s an interesting point, isn’t it? Because, and I love the fact that you said Adeela, you’re specifically referring it to Twitter’s X, and I think I’m going to hang on to that, because I think there has been this ambivalence. Is it Twitter? Is it we still talk about tweeting on x? Either it is a different platform is an important one. But at the same time, Zoe, you know, you’re talking about your experience back in 2019 long before Elon Musk came anywhere near the platform, certainly in the in the context that he’s there now, and there is a little bit of a long tail to this, isn’t there. This is not necessarily completely new. And one of the things that’s been striking me in all of this thinking and debating and discussion that’s been going on for so long now, about it is actually all of the social media platforms, one way or another, will have some sort of ethical question or challenge for all of us to think about. So maybe, maybe we can pick that up in a moment. But adida, first of all, can I just ask you, in terms of given the role that charity comes plays, and yes, you have, what are you seeing? I mean, I know that. You know, as I said, some of our members aren’t our members are all chief executives, and on that individual, personal level, we’ve not had any criticism that I’m aware of for our decision to step away from x, and we have had a lot of support, but I also know lots of different organizations are making different choices. So what are you seeing from your membership, and how are they, how are they thinking about this, and how are they talking this through?
Adeela Warley 09:50
It is really interesting to see the diversity of approaches emerging. I know the third sector press have covered it quite a bit. It. And we’ve seen charities that work, particularly in the race equality sector, feeling that X was no longer tenable for them, and I completely understand that. And then others, like the director of social change, taking a principal position, which is to say that that they will remain because they want to shine a light in a dark space to not allow the haters to own that platform. So again, another position, a really, really important position to take. We have a social media, a special interest group, and we were planning to address this topic with them recently, anyway, when all of this blew up, and we created a space where a safe space where where charities could come together, communicators could come together and actually talk about what they were doing, the challenges that they were facing, how they were feeling, what the you know, how difficult It was to navigate this really complex space, and they shared some of their approaches to the different platforms, why they were doing what they were doing, and whether it was working or not. And some key takeouts really was that they were using their mission as their starting point. So going back to the fundamentals of, what are we here for? What are we trying to achieve in the world? Who are we here for? So asking those really searching, strategic questions, also thinking about, What insight do we have, both audience insight and data insight. What are the analytics telling us? Are these channels actually good places for engagement? Are they achieving their aims? Another thing that came out really important was the need to actually make space internally for honest and open discussion about all of these, these things, with trustees, with senior teams, with staff, with volunteers, because all of these people are stakeholders in this decision, and they need to come with you on that journey and the and the other thing, which you’ve already said, Jane was one of the takeouts, was that there is no one size fits all, but every charity has to go on that journey for themselves, because your decision will not be the same as another charities decision. And the other thing that we heard is this is not one of those fix it and walk away issues, but actually, because it’s such a dynamic space, you need to be looking at it regularly. It needs to be part of your organizational culture and routine to be seeing what’s going on, how things are changing. We talked about LinkedIn earlier, and I’ve kind of noticed a difference, a change, in LinkedIn, the way that people are using it. I wonder if that’s a consequence of many people migrating away from X. People are kind of sharing more personal emotions and feelings and stories about their lives to forge connections in a way that I hadn’t seen LinkedIn being used for before. And the other thing I’d say is that comms professionals really they were talking about the support that they need for their well being. Because they’re out there on the front line, they’re kind of championing and developing messages for organizations internally, as well as managing all the external audience expectations, whether their feedback is good or bad, that they’re on the front line, managing that day in and day out. So one of the things that we’ve decided to do, and we’re working with a digital specialist, is to create a template which provides a structured approach for organizations to actually interrogate all those key questions, so that they can start to develop their channel strategy in an open and honest and considered unprincipled way.
Jane Ide 14:05
As I’m listening to you Adeela, I’m thinking back to 2009 when I joined Twitter. So I was a little bit after you, Zoe, but definitely still an earlier all those questions, all those conversations with people say, I don’t know why you’re wasting your time. What’s that all about? Why don’t you just get out and talk to people you know, and all of that thing. And at the same time, I was leading a communication because my background is communication. I was leading a communications team about 30 people, and I remember us starting our first corporate Twitter account, and all of those concerns about, what do we do if somebody has a go at us? How do we manage that? How do we navigate and that, that awareness, that the team needed support was really visible, I think even then, and has become even more so. And certainly, we’ve seen so many examples something over the years, of of the social media team being on on that Absolute Frontline, there’s some really quite difficult and painful and traumatic behavior. But I suppose the other thing I’m thinking about as you. Talking about this is, is we’re, at ACEVO, we’re always going to look at things from the leaders, you know, from the chief execs perspective. And I think one of the things I found interesting as we went through this process recently was I’d been hearing from my team that the metrics, insofar as we were still able to get them, were showing that the level of engagement on X Twitter, whichever were falling that it was becoming less impactful, it was becoming less effective, and that had been happening over a couple of years. So there was a strategic, practical comms reason to think about moving away, but I had to make sure that my personal decision and feeling about the platform was not the reason that a key vote made that choice. And Zoe, I’m just thinking you’ve done so much work with leaders, specifically leaders in their social media, leadership, well, leadership generally, in their space around this. Just what your thoughts are about, about that element of it.
Zoe Amar 16:00
Yeah, so I think it is important to keep both of those things separate and also to accept that there might be some divergence. So it might be very appropriate for you, once you’ve considered to stay as the CEO on and for your organizations leave or vice versa. And what you’ve both described brilliantly is, is that process of working it through and having a rationale for whatever that form you need to be on, in line with your audience and your mission, your objectives, and the way we always look at that stuff, whether it’s in terms of the organization or the leader, is you take a portfolio approach to managing those channels and where you really want to be spending your time as well. So I think it’s it’s fine if you and the organization end up doing something different, provided there’s a very clear reason for doing so.
Jane Ide 16:51
And that it’s communicated effectively, which, of course, is part of the challenge in all of this. One of the things I found really weird, I really stupid not to have thought about it, but I I actively closed my account quite quickly after I’d made my decision to do so, I then realized I can’t go back in and see what people are saying about that, or what they’re saying about other things. And you know, it becomes, well, actually, I’ve taken myself out of that, that space now, and therefore, what am I missing? And I guess one of the things, and I don’t want to characterize it in I’m definitely not trivializing it when I say this, but either you were talking at the beginning about your staying there and your reasons for staying there, yes, of your reasons for staying there being to stay in touch with your members and what’s what’s happening there. And I suppose my sense is I don’t, I’d already effectively stepped away from it. I had just reached a point, on a personal level, I think, where I just felt I haven’t got the time, I haven’t got the bandwidth to keep doing the scrolling through social media and the and that element of you know, even at weekends, even in evenings, you’re kind of always on. And I’d so I made a choice to step away from that, and didn’t really feel like I was missing very much. But of course, the reality is, you don’t know what you’re missing. I think clearly that one of the elements I am much more conscious of, and I’ve had this conversation with some of the journalists in our tracking press, is, I’ve said to them, you can’t rely on me talking to you on Twitter. Now, if you want to know what I think, you’re going to have to ask me. If I want to tell you what I think, I’m going to have to ring you up, or I’m going to have to send you an email, you know, old school press communication style. And I’m just wondering if that’s something as well, that that you’re kind of picking up from, from people generally, in terms of, there are still those, those core groups of people that seem to be staying there almost regardless of of you know, they will be there to the bitter end because they want to make sure they’re hearing from everybody.
Adeela Warley 18:53
Certainly one of the core concerns was the relationship with decision makers, politicians and with journalists, there was a concern that, because they’ve built those relationships over, over many years. So I think they are thinking about all, what will be the impact? Will we will we lose out? And, you know, yeah, as you say, Jane, going back to the traditional methods of building those relationships, it will always be a combination of ways of reaching out to those audiences, both, you know, in in person, in real life, as well as on digital platforms. I think it’s quite interesting looking at threads. There are quite a lot of media outlets on threads, so I’m seeing that, but certainly journalists are starting to use that space for conversations and broadcast as well. So, yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s a matter of wait and see and see how it evolves. I think you’re, you’re right about the time that we all spend scrolling through various platforms, and I’m very mindful of that. I always and. Monday morning, I always get that little report that comes up on my phone saying, You you’re 39% down on your screen time this week. And I’m very aware these are all choices that CEOs have to make about how they spend their time. And you know, as we evolve our channel strategy, I suspect my team will want me to spend more time away from x on on other platforms, actually, to start to support that that endeavor. So it is always about choices. But I thought another thing about x which really struck me was when we had the riots and the fallout from that over the summer, a lot of my members and the sector more broadly, used the very same platforms to counter those narratives and and to galvanize communities and to stand up and champion the people that were The the target of that hate, and I remember the office that got burnt wasn’t there, and there was actually a fundraising effort online to help repair it. I mean, that was heartwarming, I think, in the middle of darkness. So social media channels can be used powerfully for campaign, voice and champion those who are who are targeted in negative ways, and to raise vital funds. These are, these are the skills that charities have built up over many years, knowing how to, how to use social media platforms to achieve those aims.
Jane Ide 21:41
Zoe, I’m going to throw a question at you, which is a bit unfair, because I haven’t warned you about this one, and you may or may not know the answer. But one of the things that strikes me about social media, generally and X specifically, is we are all rather limited in our knowledge about what is true on those platforms. And I’m thinking specifically, and I’m thinking about your skills and expertise in data here, and part of this conversation is people staying staying there, and we all stayed there in the first place because we we built up our audiences, we had those connections, and so on, and yet at the same time, and I’m no expert on this, the more the more the algorithms have developed, the more the more those platforms have again, I go back to 2009 where you knew you were engaging with real people because you were having real conversations, and quite often with people that you would never have had a conversation with. I used, I used to have lovely chats with Nigel Slater about recipes. He was he was wonderful. But then as it got bigger and bigger and bigger, that question of, actually, how many of these people that I am technically engaging with or appear to be engaging with are actually real people, how much of it is algorithm, how much of it is bot, how much of it is AI, how much of it and there’s almost that question for me of, how do we know for those that are choosing to stay? How do you how do you know that you’re actually staying with people? Do you see where I’m going with that question? Sorry, I’m looking to you to finish the articulation of it, because I’m I’m kind of struggling to to even clarify. But do you see what? Do you see? What I mean?
Zoe Amar 23:18
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think Lex represents this in the court of one of the key challenges of our time, and also one of the, I think, foremost problems facing civil society, which is we are here to speak truth to power. And yet what truth is has become a very murky thing, and part of that is because of Lex and we will see an absolute epidemic of that in the run up to the US election. And I do think that CEOs need to have a working knowledge of what misinformation and disinformation is and the risk it represents to their organizations and how they would combat it, and where it sits in that landscape of of risk as well. So absolutely it’s, it feels like a real kind of hall of mirrors on there. Now, doesn’t it, when I hop into x and you think, Well, who am I speaking to? And I’m getting served all this horrible right wing content alongside really trusting content about what charities are are up to. And that’s where the platform is in downward spiral, in my view, because exactly as you were saying, Adeela, if the platform has now become it really has less useful people feel less safe there, and there’s less of an incentive to go on there.
Jane Ide 24:33
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Because one is a sort of, I won’t say virtuous, but an upward circle of, there’s more people there. I need to be there. I will engage more. Therefore there are more people, therefore there I need to engage more. And the other is, there are fewer people there, I will engage less there. There are fewer people there, we will engage less. And it’s my and you can almost see both things happening at the same time, can’t you? And I’m not sure that helps anybody in terms of making their decision. Decisions. But I’m struck as well by what you said, Adela about, about people keeping their mission at the heart, and keeping their values at the heart, the values, yes, exactly, yeah. And when I was talking to one of the sector press about this, I was making the point that, okay, this is about these decisions. Are about social media and a particular thing, and it is very visible, because, by definition, it’s about how we communicate, how we connect with people. But actually those sorts of ethical decisions are very familiar to anybody in our sector leadership, whoever has to anybody that deals with corporate donors, anybody that thinks about where their funding is coming from, anybody that has to think about how their values play out or don’t play out in the work they do. Are having to think about these sorts of ethical, ethical questions. And I guess this is, this is just part of the day job, isn’t it, in that respect, and holding those values very clear is a key way to help navigate that as well as the practicalities of it. The other, the other question I’ve got in my head is, you mentioned threads a dealer. I’ve joined blue sky, where I know several and I’m already much as I like being in a space that’s much nicer than Twitter has been, or Dex has been, and you know where other people are. I’m already thinking, Why have I, why have I gone and joined another social media platform, and the whole reason I stepped away in the first place was because I just didn’t have the time or the bandwidth for it. It’s not necessarily doing me any any good to be there, so I I’ve got to challenge myself on that. But I suppose there’s also this question is, Will Will we ever see another Twitter? Will we ever have that one place that everybody’s you’re both shaking your heads at me? Yeah, yeah. And how do we then navigate that? Because, again, from a comms point of view, a dealer, you know, go back to my experience in 2009 we had a small team focusing on one channel that then may have built into maybe another channel somewhere along the way, but now we’re talking about the same amount of comms resource. Nobody’s going to be able to invest in increasing their teams, I suspect, anytime soon, having to work across multiple different places to engage with smaller numbers of people in each of those spaces. Do you think? Do you think maybe this is the start of the end of social media as that core way of engaging with people, and that something else, whether it’s going back to old school relationship building or something else will come. Sorry, that’s a very big question.
Adeela Warley 27:29
I’d love to hear what Zoe he thinks about that question, particularly about have we is that history, that that kind of concentration around one one channel gone now, I’d love to hear Zoe’s views. I’ll mull on your question in the meantime.
Zoe Amar 27:49
Okay, so I think X or perhaps we should say Twitter, in this context, it belongs to the mono platform era of digital, you know. So if we think about when we all used to get up in the morning and look at our phones. First thing, I bet we all just straight on our Twitter apps, whereas now, when I look at my phone in the morning, I’ll look at WhatsApp, I’ll look at LinkedIn or look at Instagram, I’ll look at my podcast feed to see if any interesting new episodes have dropped. So the way in which we’re all interacting with all of these digital channels, it’s much more diffuse, it’s much more fragmented. It’s much more personally curated as well, because we’ve made choices about where we want to spend our time and and also some of that stuff is not visible. And that was always the thing about Twitter. You could see what was happening and who was talking to who, whereas now, obviously there’s been this massive growth of what we call dark social so things like Whatsapp and Facebook groups and those kinds of things. So I don’t think we will ever return to that mono platform era. What I wouldn’t want to happen is that it puts us off as a sector from being visible, because we have so many leaders and so many organizations in our sector who have a lot to say and really important things to say right now, as well with the state that the UK is in, and it’s really important we are out there and saying that we need to think differently about the channels we’re on in order to do that. And I’ve got some thoughts on that I can share later, but we need to make sure we do keep our profile up as a sector, and digital channels and social is still going to be really important for that.
Jane Ide 29:30
That’s, that’s, that’s very wise reminder of, as you say, there’s a danger that we think about it very much as talking to each other, but this is not what that’s necessarily about. It is about that engaging with those external audiences as well. So Adeela, you’ve had a little bit of time to mull. What’s your thoughts about the future…
29:52
I could just say I agree with Zoe. I do, of course. But I think for quite a long time now, we’ve seen channel proliferation. So I don’t think this is a new phenomena for many charities. I think they have been used to juggling and very often when we run our digital events, you know the questions will come about, which channel should we be on, or should I be on on Instagram? And I think that the answer to that question is always, why would you want to be Who are you trying to talk to at CharityComms, we have members who are tiny, tiny charities with one person at best, in comms to the huge High Street brands. So you have massive teams, but the principles are just the same, you should make really clear decisions about which channels you’re on and why, and then really test them. Test and learn is the flavor for all of us. Now, if a channel’s not working, move your move the center of gravity to the channel, channel that’s performing really well, and very often, if for smaller charities, we say, you know, really learn about the channel that makes makes most sense for you, and get really good at using it. Don’t try and spread yourself so thinly that actually none of them are really performing very well for you. So I think it is about prioritization and test and learn, and just keep, keeping, keeping on top of it. And it’s, it’s tough because it is such a broad ecosystem now that we’re all having to navigate.
Jane Ide 31:33
And I think this there’s and I want to bring this in, even though I’m not sure it actually moves the conversation forward necessarily, but I think in honor of our membership and the people listening to this, I need to mention it, because I think again, when we’re thinking about our corporate social media activity, by definition, that’s largely going to be aimed at external audiences, external stakeholders, that’s what that’s there for. But I think as individual leaders. And I’m thinking about my own experience when I was working in a much bigger organization, and something a member said to me not that long ago, which is about how, in the past, effective social media has helped us build relationships within our own organizations. And this particular member was talking about something we’ve heard a lot about from leaders in the sector over the last sort of 12-18, months, has been the challenges of, how do you hold your staff team together when there are so many pressures, everything from the events in Israel and Gaza and then beyond that, in the Middle East and other pressures as well. And this particular leader, remember, was saying to me that she had been experiencing really quite difficult behaviors, you know, some some quite personal attacks on her as a leader and so on and so forth, making difficult decisions and that creating a a response and so on. And one element that she had reflected on was that she had stopped being so visible on social media for quite some time over the year previously, and she just felt, instinctively as though somehow that had made her seem less or had not given her that humanity. With her staff, leading a much bigger organization than I lead, you know that therefore she became, without wanting to be too blunt about it, sort of dehumanized and therefore was an easier target for people. And I thought that was a really interesting take on an element of this that perhaps we don’t tend to think about so much in in the broader corporate comms discussions, but actually how as an individual, you are seen for good, bad or indifferent, as a human being by the people you’re engaging with. And I just, again, just wondered if you’ve got either of you in your own experiences, as well as in your sort of professional viewpoints, what your what your thinking is about that, or your reflections on that?
Zoe Amar 33:57
Yeah. So it’s really interesting, is it because you’re absolutely right back in the day, I did see Twitter/X being used very skillfully by a lot of CEOs, particularly for large organizations, is a very effective internal comms platform and a really nice way to recognize style. But again, the acid test now is, are those staff still on there? Because it’s likely that their behaviors around the platform will have changed as well, but I love your referencing there, Jane, of that core principle which we need to put at the center of all of our communications, whether it’s on or offline as leaders, which is about, what do we share of ourselves, and how can we demonstrate that we’re we’re human, and who’s the personality behind the key messages? And so what I would say about that is that, again, we need to think about where those opportunities are. And one of the things I’m getting asked by more CEOs at the moment is about class, and it feels a bit better to be on a podcast talking about podcasting. But I do think there’s a good opportunity for some. Amazing leaders we have in our sector to get out there and talk about what they’re doing. There’s There’s definitely lots of potential around long form content for leaders to build their profile and, in turn, the profile of their organization. So whether that’s blogging or podcasting, but does require a different still, sir. And what I would say about that is you do need to reveal something of yourself. So if you are a CEO and you get invited to go on a podcast, you can’t treat it like a five minute interview on The Today program. It’s not like I’ve got to land seven of my key messages. You have to share something of yourself. You’ve got to leave that behind on the table, as much as what your organization is working on. And you need to be more conversational, more informal, and just really engage and build a rapport with the interviewer. So we need to make sure that our leaders are developing and flexing their skill set so that, so that they can do that really effectively. Because I do think it’s a different set of skills.
36:07
I’m an examining myself now. I’m thinking, Oh, my goodness, do I have the skills and when, when Jane asked me to take part in this podcast, I was thinking, Oh, it’s actually been quite a while since I’ve done one. I feel a bit rusty and are nervous about it. And my my team, but my team, interestingly, the reaction from my team was very supportive, very excited. They felt like it was an important thing to be doing. And, you know, and they, they provided me with help and support in the run up. So I think, and I in a sense, you’re talking about being authentic and honest. And I think they could see my they could see that I was my anxiety, and they were rallying around me to say, there’s no need. You know, you’ve got important things to say, and it’s a great opportunity. So, yeah, I think, I think the podcasting, I’m doing another one later this week, so I’m putting myself through, through that medium, and I it is definitely a conversation, and it needs to feel like real people exchanging ideas and making connections.
Jane Ide 37:18
And I have to say, Adeela. I think you get multiple gold stars. You don’t need to worry about that at all. But, I mean, if you want to go meta Zoe, I’m going to talk about hosting podcasts on the podcast that I am currently hosting, because I think you’re right. I think there’s, there’s a great opportunity. And we use podcasts at akivo as another mechanism for sharing with our members and our audiences what we’re thinking about. That’s what today is about. You know, we’re having this conversation. We’ve arranged it very quickly because it seemed like a moment in time to talk about it. As the host of the podcast. I’m very conscious that it takes a whole skill set that I’m not sure I’ve developed yet, which is how to actually, how to lead that conversation in in in this particular environment. But the other, the other thought, though I was having as you were talking about, and I think, you know, and also as host of the podcast, I’ve got to keep an eye on the time we are going to run out of time fairly soon. And I want to come back to your point, Zoe, about actually, how we think about using social media going forward. Because the thing that strikes me about podcasts and blogs is it’s almost going back to the old school broadcast, isn’t it? It’s sort of I am going to share with you the content of what I’m thinking, what somebody I’m talking to is thinking, Yes, you might comment on it. You might add a comment some, but I’m probably not going to see that. That’s not the same conversation and testing of ideas that that we’ve had through x Twitter. To some degree, I agree with you a deal. I think LinkedIn has changed, but it still doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to be quite as conversational or relaxed as Twitter. But I’m, I’m, I guess the question at the heart of what I’m saying is, is if we are moving back towards that more broadcast way, which some of us were very familiar with for a very long time, the challenge in that was always, how do we hear other views? How do we hear other perspectives? And I know many people for many years, made a point on Twitter of making sure they were following people whose voices they didn’t agree with so they weren’t in that echo chamber. And that feels like something we are losing, and especially as leaders, it’s so important for us to hear constructively, not the sort of trolling that you were talking about Zoe or the abusive stuff that we’ve seen sometimes. But how do we, how do we make sure we hear those other voices if we’re being moved back into a space where we’re going to be in control of sharing our content and we don’t really know how it’s landing, other than, you know, possibly an email or possibly somebody saying something somewhere that we might overhear, so to speak.
Zoe Amar 39:59
So I’ve got some thoughts on that. I’m so firstly, I’m not sure we’re fully moving back to the broadcasts era. What I mean by that is you can use all of this content to start a discussion. So if I was a charity CEO and I was going on a podcast tomorrow, firstly, I think very carefully about how I go about the interview, based on what we’ve all advised today, but also I would put that out there on my social channels and say, and I’ve talked about this, and what do you think about this? And use it to really get a dialog going. So I don’t think it’s necessarily fully going back to old school. It’s about just using continent you create in a different way to start a conversation. And then I think your point about making sure we don’t slide further and further to ever narrowing echo chambers is a really important one, and you can apply that principle across all of your channels. So for example, with the podcast that I listen to, I try and make sure I’m listening to a diversity of different voices different types of podcasts. You can make sure that on your LinkedIn, for example, you’re doing your best to connect to different voices and reading around those different perspectives. So I don’t think it’s impossible. It’s harder because digital channels have got so much more fragmented now it’s it’s not impossible, and the number one thing we all need to do as leaders is just let out and talk to people with different perspectives and different types of lived experience to us. Tell me what it’s like to be you. What is it like as you to navigate the sector?
Jane Ide 41:33
I’m loving, I might start a podcast series title. Tell me what it’s like to be you. I think that would be a brilliant set of conversations. Adeela, what are your thoughts?
41:46
I think there are lots of ways to open avenues for conversation, rather than broadcast and and and social media does offer you that that still does offer you that opportunity I’m thinking about in our recent social media event, we had a presentation from the National Trust, and they talked to us a bit about how they were using Threads as a channel, and they were not, they were deliberately not using it for broadcast campaigning and calls to action. They were using it as a social space to exchange fun ideas and cultural references. And obviously they talk about scones a lot, but but it really it’s working for them. It’s drawing people to them. It’s giving people a light hearted but fun way of engaging with the National Trust and with each other. And so there’s a there’s a lively, dynamic feel to it. So, but they will keep, they’re keeping an eye on it really carefully. They’re looking at their analytics. They’re they’re monitoring the conversations that people are having. So I think there are ways to use social media channels to listen and to respond and to understand others, but it’s not the only way. We mustn’t forget, as charities, that we’ve got other communications tools and tactics for engaging with the world. And it’s not, you know, let’s not, it’s not all on the social media platforms that we exist and thrive. That’s important as well, I think,
41:47
Very, very wise words, and I suppose, because as podcast host, I am going to have to draw us to a close, but I’ve got to ask you both, you know, lost thoughts on it sounds to me, and it’s, it’s exciting and slightly daunting, not too much, because it’s new thinking, because that’s always exciting for a leader to think about, but again, probably about bandwidth and having the space to think. But it sounds as though we as leaders, it feels as though we’re on the cusp of the next chapter, the next phase, the next development, as we always will be, and that means we’ve got to think about how we personally choose to use these platforms in all their glory, or otherwise the choices we make about where we start and where we don’t listening to our colleagues as always, particularly those working in These spaces, to get their insight into what can be most useful but, but what are your closing thoughts for our the leaders of our sector right now, where we are right now? What would you like to say to them?
44:33
Look for the light and at the end of the tunnel. I just have hope, basically, and acknowledge that it’s not easy, but and don’t try and do it alone. Kiva is a great place for learning from your peers. So you know, have have seek out that network to exchange ideas and to get support, actually, because, as we’ve. Talked about today. We’re not alone in making this particular journey. We’re all having to do it. So the more that we keep learning and talking to each other, I think that will have enormous benefit. And I read your update popped into my my inbox first thing Jane, when it was a marvelous piece about leadership and values, and you acknowledge the how increasingly challenged leaders are, and that we’re having to negotiate with a complex, nuanced set of issues. And there are not there are no rights and wrongs. It’s quite hard to see the rights and wrongs, and that’s what we’re all trying to we’re all struggling with. So I’d say, don’t, don’t be alone. Connect with others and have hope.
Zoe Amar 45:45
My advice now is probably not that different to what I would have said back in the day of social CEOs, which is, you need to diversify. And I would love leaders and charities to think about, what do people find when they Google? You? What is your digital and I would really love CEOs and organizations to think more about long form content. So we’ve talked today about blogs and also podcasts as well. But it all comes back to this fundamental question that we’ve discussed today, which is, what do you want to say? What do you want to be known for? And who do you need to say those things to? And that’s how you should make your choices about where you spend your time.
Jane Ide 46:26
I’m going to go and google myself in a minute. I’m not sure I want to see what comes up, but I will. But I think I’m going to finish as well with that moss you just used the word there Zoe choices. And I think perhaps my final message to people listening to this is, is we each we each have to make choices, but also we each can make choices. And I think I would hope that as we move into whatever this new next chapter is with our engagement social media, that that we make active choices about what we think is useful, and also what we can set to one side that there is a you don’t have to be doing all of this stuff. No leader can do all of this stuff. And we know how pressured leaders in our sectors, in our sector are at the moment. So make some deliberate choices, some thoughts through choices about where you choose to, where you want to spend your time, where you want to build those relationships, what the value is for you, personally and for your organization. And don’t feel guilty if that means that you’re not posting content on Tiktok or going on to LinkedIn once in a blue moon, or whatever it is, because you have the right to make those choices for yourself and do so strategically and with, with thought and care. I guess that would be my that’s probably my message to myself, as much as but, but I think, I think it’s, it’s, it’s a there’s something about we’re stepping into a new maturity, perhaps, and one of the sides of maturity is you do make those, those active choices so brilliant and Zoe, I will look forward to a reprint rewrite of social CEOs in some point in the future. I suspect there’s an awful lot of potential material there, but maybe, maybe it’ll be delivered in the form of podcast. Thank you both so much. That’s been a really, really brilliant conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. Always appreciate your insight, both of you, you, you, you were both people I got to know very early on in my days in Twitter, and two of the relationships I’ve really valued that have come from it. So thank you for that, and I will honor Twitter for what it brought. And thank you so much indeed. Lovely talking to you.
