Isn’t technology great? It can make your life simpler in so many ways. But here’s an exception: business communication.

Time was that leaders merely had to pay attention to offline communications, in house and outward facing. And that was hardly a walk in the park.

But things communication has become even more complicated these days, as we now have to consider where and how online communications and personal brands need to be brought into the mix. And to make matters trickier still, marrying or combining online and offline messages or voices is far from plain sailing.

Of course, that’s not all…

…There’s another wrinkle.

Not everyone in a leadership position feels obliged, comfortable, or able to regularly add ‘online presence’ or ‘digital footprints’ into a sentence that describes how they share messages with others.

Meanwhile, no one can afford to ignore the elephant in the room.

Online communication is here to stay and it has become an essential means by which most everyone gathers information they use to make decisions, to share information or knowledge with others, and to shape their understanding of what’s going on the world.

That said; offline communication is absolutely not defunct. It’s still vitally important. In fact, it’s critical when it comes to winning hearts and minds on a one to one or one to many basis.

It’s the bringing together of these things for best results that can challenge the best of us.

And in today’s interview, Eamonn O’Brien speaks with Krishna De, an award winning digital communications and content marketing strategist and mentor to address this question and more – including modern communication challenges faced by leaders and potential solutions

On Honing New Communication Skills for Today’s Leaders

Listen in as we chat about:

• The importance of modern leaders’ voices being heard online as well as offline
• Guiding principles to create an online presence that can bolster, never compete with, the power of messages you want to share with others
• What it really takes to be seen as a thought leader today
• Should CEOs tweet?
• The rising importance of choices leaders must make when it comes to communication platforms, relationships, and transparency
• What you can learn from the life and times of a digital marketing strategist
• Vital communication investment decisions
• And more.

Over to You

Please share your ideas and observations.

What do you feel are the greatest communication challenges leaders have to face today?

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Interview Transcript

Eamonn O’Brien: I am delighted to be joined by Krishna De. Krishna, you are a digital communications on-line publicity content marketing strategist and mentor. So delighted to have you join us today.

Krishna De: Thrilled to be here, delighted to have our conversation.

Eamonn O’Brien: The purpose of having a chat today is to talk about what’s happening with leadership today when it comes to things communication, and why it is that leaders today need to expand their communication skills where it is just not about what you do offline but also what you do online. Krishna, this is a space you are very familiar with. Why is it so important for people to think both online and offline as a leader today?

Krishna De: There is so many different places we could jump into this conversation but just let’s think about the person who is joining us here, and is a key person in their organization, and perhaps they are meeting with suppliers or they’re speaking at a conference, or they are recruiting. One of the things that we know is that many people today will go online and they’ll do some research immediately to say, “How do I know this person? Who else can introduce me? How can I find out a little more about them” I find that is different by sector but I’m finding increasingly more people will do that research. So just think about yourself, perhaps you have done that in the last 30 days or 90 days when you’ve been looking to meet somebody. And that’ll happen before you join them for a meeting, or it might afterwards, or it might be before a conference you are going to and you want to find out more about them. That is partly about research and partly about building rapport. And that’s something I think people are doing more of.

Eamonn O’Brien: Certainly for almost any business, it doesn’t matter what business you happen to be in. If you realize that more than 9 out of 10 people will make decisions partially based on what they have seen online and, in fact, often times they will not talk with you until they have checked you out online. So if you don’t have that presence maybe you are behind the eight ball.

Krishna De: Well, I do find it different by sector.

Eamonn O’Brien: Sure.

Krishna De: So I always ask this questions when I’m speaking or I’m doing workshops in terms of what’s the experience of the people in the room. But increasingly more people are doing that. And you are right in terms of we are making decisions in terms of what we are going to do, what we are going to purchase by that. But people don’t just look for organizations, they don’t just look up, “Let’s find a YouTube video about somebody’s review of a product. Let’s not just do a Google search, not just go to the manufacturer’s site.” Increasingly they are looking for information about the people. So it could be that people are watching this and they are lecturers at a university. People want to know what are you like as a lecturer, let me find out a little more about them. Maybe they are coming to see you for a job interview.

So just starting with that, then we have to make sure that we are actively managing our digital footprint. I increasingly find people who are doing that but there are a lot of people who don’t. So that is one of the reasons but there are many reasons we need to do so. But as a starting point people don’t just search for your company, your product, or your service anymore. They are looking to find out more about you and they will go to a search in the search engines, they will search their social networks and they will also ask people offline, particularly in terms of in an Irish context, we are significantly above other markets in terms of importance of word-of-mouth. And just think about this, online piece be it about online word-of-mouth.

Eamonn O’Brien: Yes. Well, I like something you said earlier on. You said that people will check out online what you are like and so the word-of-mouth is terribly important. If you were to think about well what does it actually take for somebody to create a better online presence as well as offline presence what are the guiding principles do you think people ought to pay attention to?

Krishna De: Again that is going to depend on who it is that you are talking to. So in some situations, if you are talking to an executive, I know for example, Eamonn, that you have work with C-level and board executives. In those particular cases they are less likely to have an extensive digital footprint versus yourself. They might have a footprint that they are not managing themselves so they could have appeared on TV, and that is found in a YouTube video, they might have been referenced in lots of media events, and they might be in newspapers or press releases and so on, or on the corporate website. It is unlikely that those people are going to have a footprint that includes lots of different platforms including a blog under their own name or a website and so on. So on that level, again, it would depend on the country you are, in but if you are, for example, in the UK, Ireland, North America, Australia or some of those markets then you would be looking for what is their business social network and professional social network.

I use the work professional because it is not just business people today who are using it, but the platform is LinkedIn. One of the things I would say is make sure that you have a LinkedIn profile that actually shows your expertise, and you can decide what comes up in a search results, that is done through your privacy settings. I think today, as a professional, that is a minimum standard. However, remember, in different countries there might be a different platform that is more popular for the network you want to connect with than you didn’t for professional reasons.

Eamonn O’Brien: Sure. So if I capture you right. So choosing the right platforms is terribly important, making sure your audience is there, knowing in fact what your audience is doing there, and joining in on the conversations. For people who maybe don’t have much of an online presence but would like to develop that and would like to develop a cache as a thought leader, what does it take to be a thought leader online, and let’s deal with this really at kind of an executive or a professional level.

Krishna De: Okay. I would like to step back for a moment about something you said there about engaging online in terms of throughout whatever platform. I have to say, sometimes I find that very senior people do not have the time or perhaps just don’t want to interact online. So my point, you’re talking about LinkedIn, absolutely many people who are interacting in groups and interacting in terms of finding people they want to network with, I think as a minimum we need to actually have that platform there that actually shows off your expertise that you want to show off, and that you decide what comes up in the search results. There are some people who don’t actually want to interact, and we could go into a huge debate about that. There’s been articles to the nth degree written about should your CEO tweet? We are not going to go there today, I could make an argument for or against. Then to your question in terms of thought leadership. That is a really interesting term, Eamonn, that you are clearly comfortable with, I am clearly comfortable with but I have to start off by saying I know a lot of people aren’t.

When I was starting my business, when I left my corporate role, and I started to go into my own business, it was like having a calling card of a flipsie [SP] 100 company but then I go out on my own and nobody knows or even cares what my company is known for. Then you start to think, “Well, I’ve got to get my profile together,” it doesn’t matter if it’s on a website, or it’s on a profile that is physical, or its on LinkedIn. Sometimes I find we are a little nervous about saying what we have experience in, and I suddenly realized that if I didn’t do it, nobody else would. I started to read lots of other profiles from other people so sometimes a hurdle for some of us to overcome about being seen as being a thought leader. If you don’t like the word thought leader, you might want to use a term which some people would know differently, and here in Ireland we use SME for small and medium enterprise, but SME is subject matter expert. So if you don’t like the term expert or if you don’t like the term thought leader, you might want to see yourself as being somebody who knows a lot about your subject matter, and if you don’t like the word expertise then, well, let’s find something else that will work for you.

Eamonn O’Brien: You said something interesting there because it is about being seen and known as somebody who has a particular expertise in something, or reason why people, I suppose, should place greater trust in you and want to spend time knowing more about what it is that you do and can offer. Maybe that is an interesting segue into the whole question of leadership. Any leader whether online or offline, the importance of getting trust from your audience has become increasingly important, it has always been important. So developing and earning trust online versus offline, are there differences? are there similarities? What approaches work best in your view when trying to develop presence online and offline?

Krishna De: The issue with trust is so important and it seems to be increasingly more important, but as you said, it has always been there. I think we can do certain things offline, and that might be around our behaviors, it may be our body language, it might be the words that we speak can actually make us feel like we can trust somebody or not, and that is a very emotional piece. I remember working with somebody… this is probably around 2000, they were a member of my team, and I uncovered that, in fact, they found trusting people very, very hard in a work context, and I thought it was something in there. I was doing, or there are colleagues in the team who were doing, but actually in a conversation we uncovered, it was something that went back to how they have been treated in a previous organization. It wasn’t that they distrusted the organization we were both in together, or they distrusted me as a leader, or as a functional leader, at the end of the day it was about how they’ve been influenced in terms of earlier in their career.

So in terms of offline or online, trust is something I own, whether I trust our interactions, Eamonn, and if I trust the content that you share is going to be partly impacted by you, but it is also impacted by experiences I have had otherwise. When it comes in terms of online, then trust comes into a whole lot of other things in terms of in some countries, like we are here in Ireland, it doesn’t take too long for us to uncover if something is true or not, because we are networked and we can find that out. That’s why, in fact, online is very powerful because we can see some content, then we can do a little digging and research, and then can see if somebody is really what they say they are, or are they to be believed. I think today it’s about building up trust with people. It doesn’t matter what position you are in.

I direct your audience to go look at the Edelman Trust Barometer which is about 12 years in being now. You can find the research in many different markets. But increasingly, and in fact, really disappointingly here for Ireland and in other markets, trust in enterprises, in government organizations, in financial bodies, and also in non-profits has not also been on the rise in late. In fact, we took a dip in every single area in Ireland this year. But what we do is we do recognize and we trust experts, and those experts might be people in a particular area of knowledge, and we also trust people like ourselves. So that’s where tools like social medial platforms and digital communication can help us build a relationship with other people, and that is why I think it is becoming ever more important because we are no longer trusting bodies of organizations, and that call for radial transparency.

Eamonn O’Brien: No, I think you’re absolutely right. I think there is another element which is when you are online as opposed to offline you have far less time in which to get people’s attention and for people to decide what your motivations are and whether they’re going to be interested in what you have to say, which is actually why what we’re doing in terms of having a conversation online where people can see us and decide whether they like us or not, and hear the tone in our voice and the sincerity and what-have-you can make maybe a better value judgment. That can be quite a challenge also for folks in terms of the online content that they produce and the degree of trust that can be associated with it.

Krishna De: I think it can work really well for you as an organization though. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small or large organization. I find that if you can build rapport, let’s use that word rather than trust, but if you can build rapport with somebody through the content that you’re sharing and it might be the tone that you use in your articles, the web videos that you might create, the podcasts that you might do, then that actually can help people feel like they’ve got to know you. In some sectors, particularly in business-to-business, as you are, the lead time between getting to come across somebody and then making a purchasing decision might be quite a long period of time, and I find in all the work that I’ve done, and all the work I’ve researched, it actually can be shortened because of what we see. It almost feels like we know somebody even if we’ve never met them in real life. Obviously that depends on what we are sharing but it can be really helpful in terms of from a business context and that could be equally for those people who are looking for, as I described it, their next big gig, if they are looking for a career, it just doesn’t have to be just in terms of a business, in terms of products or services.

Eamonn O’Brien: We could talk about this all day, and I’ve really enjoyed our conversation, but maybe just close out with maybe a few closing thoughts. You’ve been involved now with being in the online space longer than most people I know in this space, and so you have seen a great deal. What, in your mind, are the greatest lessons that you, maybe, learned over the years that maybe you’d pass onto others as a method of making sure that you’re connecting more effectively with people with your online presence?

Krishna De: Oh, gosh. In terms of being able to be more effective, there would be a couple of things I’d recommend. Have an open mind and keep learning. I think there is nothing so fast as the change we are seeing. The one thing that is permanent is we’re going to see continual change. When I think about my journey, there are things that I’ve tried and things that I’ve moved onto, and I think that is important for all of us. It’s great in terms of being able to learn and adapt in that way, so I think that is one thing. I think that the other thing is, particularly for your career or your profession, manage that digital footprint, as I described it. A lot of people talk about personal branding, and I know you’ve had a session on personal branding. Your personal brand is also a reflection of what other people say about you, it’s not just what you decide to create. We all have a personal brand whether we’ve decided we’re going to work on it or not, and that is made up from all sorts of things including the perspectives of other people and your perspective, Eamonn, is your reality.

Eamonn O’Brien: Well, that is right, and I’m glad you mentioned that because the reality is, like the lines have blurred over recent years because the personal element as well as the corporate element have certainly become more joined at the hip than they ever were before. If you are not paying attention to what is happening at a personal level as well as a corporate level as well as a product level, you are probably missing a trick.

Krishna De: So, really, in terms of that perspective, look at that footprint you are leaving and look at it not just in terms of your perspective but actually other people’s perspective, and if that’s not tuned into what you want it to be, then there is an opportunity to course correct and those things. But, as I said, keep learning, keep being open and adaptive because that is what we need to do. But I’d also go back to something you mentioned before in terms of offline, for me, it is all about integration. There are clients I work, in fact, who got very successful businesses who are sitting in a warm part of the world and they actually don’t want to physically travel the world as you, or as I do, in terms of speaking, or presenting, or training people, and they are very happy to do it all online. That is not the majority of us, so again, it depends on what is right for the individual. I say invest in yourself, and that could be listening to podcasts, watching webinars, picking up books, going to courses. That idea that, certainly when I was growing up, it felt unreal at the time, you’ve got to be a lifelong learner. I said, “Ugh, what’s that?”

Eamonn O’Brien: What’s up with that? Exactly. Well, Krishna, you said something absolutely wonderful which maybe is a good note on which to close out on. In developing your online and offline presence that you do need to, first of all, think about it, and secondly, it’s critically important that you think about joining the dots so that what you’re doing is more integrated because that amplifies the effect that you have. It also, of course, breeds consistency, and so you’ll likely get a better result.

Well, look Krishna, I knew we were going to have a great chat today. Of course, we’ve only scratched the surface here a little bit today, so perhaps we can come back and have another chat down the line. Thank you all for watching and listening to us today.