The Social Leadership Handbook: launching today!

Forgive me for writing a post that’s neither reflective nor necessarily relevant to anyone else, but today sees the publication of “The Social Leadership Handbook” and it’s a proud day. The culmination of over a year’s writing, this is my first ‘proper‘ hardback book (‘proper‘ meaning it feels more real than a digital one. I still hang onto the old ways apparently…).

I spend my time charting the evolution of the Social Age: a time when change is constant, facilitated by technology and survived in communities. The nature of work is changing and organisations or individuals have to be agile to survive and thrive. My work takes me from the ways we learn (both social and mobile learning) through to culture (how it’s formed and adapts to change) and even into creativity and innovation (the ways we co-create meaning and discover agility). In each of these areas i’m developing frameworks and writing and trying to tie it all together, to give a holistic approach to development.

I love maps: the simple ways we try to make sense of the world around us. Whilst today maps are derived from satellite data and computers, in the old days it was a matter of sketches and walking boots, tramping up hills, down dales and squinting through theodolites on rainy days.

We are explorers, pioneers of the Social Age. The technology is taking us into new spaces, new ways of relating to each other, new ways of ‘sense making‘, new ways of working and playing. Everything is changing and it’s down to us to draw the map, not from on high but as we tramp through the mud.

The curriculum for Social Leadership has emerged from the iterations through the social spaces. It wasn’t the starting point: it’s the output

The Social Leadership Handbook is really my first attempt to capture one element of this: the type of leadership we need that is fit for the times.

Social Leadership is about curation, storytelling and sharing, it’s about reputation forged within communities and the authority that this brings. It’s about co-creation of meaning, about building social capital and, ultimately, collaborating widely and wisely. Social Leaders are more effective because they has both formal and social authority.

It’s about equality and humility: preventing anyone being disenfranchised through circumstance or belief, about being fair, about being effective.

Behind the book is a full curriculum for development: i didn’t just want to spectate, but to create a framework for learning, exploring the nine skills of the Social Leader and the ways we can develop and hone them (and, in the Social Age, do this through a combination of social learning approaches, community work and performance support).

This is my first pillar in being fit for the Social Age.

The Social Leadership Handbook is available in Hardback copy from here.