The core skills of the social leader: Explaining the NET Model

Having spent some time exploring the three Dimensions of social leadership, today, for the first time, I wanted to present the three Dimensions and nine components in full, as well as look at the conceptual design [it turns out circles are hard to draw freehand, please excuse the slightly asymmetrical presentation…]

The NET Model of Social Leadership in full, showing the three Dimensions and nine Components

Narrative is about ‘curation‘, ‘storytelling‘ and ‘sharing‘. Engagement is about ‘community‘, ‘reputation‘ and ‘authority‘. Technology is about ‘collaboration‘, ‘social capital‘ and ‘co-creation‘. Broadly, Narrative is about Social Age skills and communication. Engagement is around the interaction with others and Technology is about how this is facilitated and how we ensure nobody is left behind. Social leaders need to master all three dimensions.

There are common themes: narrative runs through everything, through three levels. There is personal narrative, our individual learning, there’s the co-created narrative, forged in social spaces and communities, and there’s organisational narrative, the story of change that the organisation narrates. The three are interlinked.

Reputation and authority are also deeply embedded throughout: reputation is founded upon curatorial skills, forged in communities and facilitated by technology.

I’m now working on a third, outer layer, which consists of specific diagnostics and developmental models around each of the nine components. Hopefully this will give a narrative from the centre circle (which is about a conceptual view, defining the three dimensions), through to the nine components, which define specific skills, and then out to the actual diagnostics and tools to use in the workplace.

NET is arranged in three layers: the central concepts, the key skills and the diagnostics/tools

I’ve already put in place a first draft for the diagnostics and tools around curation, but i’m planning to pilot this before finalising it or working on the others.

In fact i’m piloting various of these ideas in different workshops and with different clients to try to finalise the structure: i’m keen to keep the outer layers very practical, very applied, but keep space in the centre for the wider discussion around leadership in the Social Age. We have to start by exploring the ecosystem before we get down to specific skills and solutions for developing or identifying social leaders.