In this episode, we’re exploring one of those social media elephant in the room topics that many leaders and advisors grapple with: Is listening and engaging online worth your time? There’s a perception that social media is all about talking – a place for people who love the sound of their own voice.
But what if you flip things around? What if rather than treating social media as a way to broadcast, you went online to listen and participate? Instead, what leaders stand to gain when they invest their time learning and contributing to conversations rather than thinking their posts are a prized asset.
Deborah Jenkins, COO & Deputy Secretary @ the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) is a living, breathing case study of this approach. She was one of the earlier adopters of social media as a senior bureaucrat in her role at the ATO at the time, and as COO at DEWR. Tune in, join the conversation on LinkedIn, take a read below and be sure to subscribe to the newsletter too so you don’t miss a beat.
Roger Christie: Deb, you’re a busy bureaucrat. You’ve obviously just changed roles – you joined DEWR earlier this year – so I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do. Why do you bother investing some of your very limited time on social media?
Deborah Jenkins: There are so many reasons. For me it’s around wanting to hear what’s going on in the community. It’s a really important way of plugging into what’s the vibe on the ground? You’re sitting in your office, you’re sitting in your ivory tower, but [on social media] you get to hear what are the pain points. If I think about being the Small Business Commissioner at the ATO, you actually heard the voices of small business and their advisors – they would tell you what they thought on social media. So for me, definitely it’s a place where I can have my finger on the pulse.
The other thing is you actually get to tell people what you are doing in your organisation. This might be top secret information, but for example, not many people speak really, really nicely about the ATO. So it was a really great opportunity for me to actually be able to tell my staff members and other people about all the awesome things that were happening.
And maybe if I add a third thing, if I’m allowed to – you can actually keep track of your networks. [Social media] is just this amazing place where instead of having to email and have coffees with everyone, I can keep track of people and then understand where they’re going, what they’re doing, what interests them. And I feel like I have this connection with them.
Roger Christie: Whether this was intentional or not, you started that list of three with listening as the first thing. And I think that’s interesting. I do think people go into social media with this broadcast mindset, but as you said there, it’s a way to listen. It’s a way to learn. It’s a way to keep your finger on the pulse. And that last point, around network and relationships. It’s a way to maintain context and understand what people are up to and what matters to them. So why stay the course? And why keep looking for that value?
Deborah Jenkins: When I was first at the ATO, there were some pretty awesome posts and so it was actually really easy to share some really good content which is actually useful for people to know about and I can then also hear what other people are saying about my organisation. And so that’s where I was like, ‘actually, this is not a hard thing to do’.
Probably the harder thing to do is when you have to think about, ‘What do I really want to post? What’s my brand on social media?’ And I am quite selective. When you have people behind you and they say, ‘Oh, post this, post that’, if I don’t feel it, I don’t post it. So there’s a thing for me around actually staying the course and only posting or engaging with things that I genuinely am passionate about and care about. I think that for me is one of my golden rules.
Roger Christie: I love that and it very much aligns with our Purpose Pyramid. If you are very clear on what your ambitions and your goals are, if you’re clear on who your stakeholders are and their needs, and then if you’re clear on your own personal story – what is unique about your own experience and journey, it’s a very, useful, practical, valuable filter to know what to talk about and what not to talk about when you participate and when you actually extract yourself or avoid a conversation altogether. There is actually a skill in knowing this isn’t a topic that I’m passionate about. I shouldn’t actually be having a voice on this particular issue because it’s not authentic. And people will see that. I think some leaders and regardless of sector, forget the fact that every single post they make leaves a digital footprint. And there’s a track record of all your history on certain issues. So if all of a sudden you come out of the woodwork to talk about something in a very, what seems to be kind of measured and an understanding way, but there’s no context of that whatsoever, that community who you’ve built relationships with is suddenly going, ‘Where did that come from?’
Deborah Jenkins: It jars doesn’t it! It’s interesting because a lot of people say, “Deb, do you do your own work? Surely people do this for you?” And the truth is, it’s a bit of both. But for me when I was fed things that just did not gel with what I was interested in, or there wasn’t a call to action because I do like to have a bit of a call to action in a lot of my posts. Whether it’s a new grad position, whether it’s actually click on this link, find out more about us, there’s always got to be a something in it for the person reading it.
Roger Christie: You’ve got to bring a bit of personality to it. And I think what you’re touching on there is the interesting tension around the needs of the organisation and the views and the values of the individual and getting that balance right as you are describing it. And again, as with our Purpose Pyramid, getting that balance right is crucially important. …Those things need to marry up because if they don’t, that’s where there’s either a conflict of interest or a disenchantment with whatever it is that you’re talking about and that’s obvious to people listening.
Roger Christie: If you reflect on your own leadership style and your own personal attributes, are you a natural listener? I’m trying to get an understanding of is it something that people take into the online environment or is it something that the online environment teaches them to listen and observe and learn?
Deborah Jenkins: I’m probably an active listener. I do really love listening and just thinking about what’s the body language telling me. … I have this love of always learning and that’s probably something I get out of social media too.
Roger Christie: For me, that’s an indicator around good leadership in terms of having that thirst for learning, that curiosity – I just think that’s a no-brainer. I spoke to Dr Kirstin Ferguson AM on the podcast before and she talked about that as a real key attribute for modern leaders. Curiosity for me is an attribute that personifies what social media is about.
That willingness to learn, to explore, to discuss, and to, to listen, to tune in and build a, a more informed perspective on things. Leaders have to listen then. And if they have to listen, this is an incredibly effective way for them to do that in terms of scale, but also in terms of niche listening. You can get very specific about the topics you are passionate about, the people, the communities you want to listen to, and you can also throw that brush incredibly broadly and learn from a wide range of diverse views that you previously weren’t getting access to. So from your point of view, do leaders have to listen?
Deborah Jenkins: Absolutely. Leaders have to listen. We don’t know everything. We are always learning from other’s perspectives and what people have got to say… But for people to actually give you information, you do need to give a little bit of yourself too. If you are not authentic online, people are not going to listen to you. And they are certainly not going to really buy into what you’ve got to say.
Roger Christie: I had a chat not too long ago with Mike Kaiser on this podcast and one of the examples he was talking to was he often shares online about his music interests – it breaks down those barriers in terms of the hierarchy of leadership. So people will walk up to him in the coffee line and say, “I love The Chats, or I hate The Chats”, and it starts a dialogue. But what you are touching on there about authenticity is really important. What Mike wasn’t saying is – don’t say you’re an avid music fan and share this online, and then not be approachable in the coffee line. Because what that will do is it’ll erode that credibility. It’ll actually break down trust and people start to become skeptical of what you’re saying online. So you’ve got to have that symmetry.
So how do you maintain that balance between how you would act in the physical world, and how that translates online? How have you worked out how to get that balance right for Deb?
Deborah Jenkins: What you see is what you get. You want to be the same. And for me, if you are sounding like you’re very approachable on social media, but actually you don’t smile at people, you don’t engage with your team members, you don’t spend time with them, then to me there’s a real jarring there – that’s not authentic.
Roger Christie: Social media is it gives you the opportunity to amplify that impact. So the example of having a chat to someone on the coffee line, running into them in the airport, that one-to-one exchange is valuable and powerful. Take that and put rocket fuel under it and send it out through the internet to a much wider range of people to increase your positive impact and legacy as a leader.
Now, I want to go back to a comment you made before about that idea of it jarring when someone is slightly different. And I think for me, you know, We hear a whole range of stories about how people approach social media, particularly leaders, what they’re comfortable doing, what they’re not comfortable doing.
We’ve talked about the concept of time and how people would probably prefer to invest their time in broadcast and talking rather than listening if they think that’s where they’re going to get most value. I was in a workshop the other day and they were talking about the challenge – I can convince my leader to get on LinkedIn just as an example of any platform, but I am certain that if I do that and if they say yes, I know who’s going to be writing content? I know who’s going to be posting. I know who’s gonna be doing all the work behind the scene. You talked about the fact that people ask you this question about where you get the time. Where does that attitude come from? And what is the risk for leaders when they actually do outsource that?
Deborah Jenkins: It’s really interesting. I always think it’s good to get some support when you are going onto social media. There are some things you do and there’s some things you don’t do. For me, it was always good to have a framework around me and some trusted people who would help me start to feel comfortable. And the number of times people say, “Oh, who does your stuff for you? And can they just do my posts well?” You could probably get someone to do it if they could speak in your voice and be in your brain. Now over my time, I’ve had advisors who really are in my brain and they can say, ‘Deb would say, Deb thinks that, this is how Deb would sound.’
But for me, it’s always been a bit of a team effort. For some of my channels that I use, we’d sit together at the beginning of every week and think about what was going on and what might be interesting – we’d brainstorm together. But often the final wording was mine. In fact, in most cases, the final wording was mine.
And in particular, especially when I was sharing or re-sharing something, I always wanted the top and tailing to be really, really authentic. The ones that my eyes roll and I’m like, “Oh God, here we go again,” those ones you can clearly see that someone in the marketing area has given them a standard template. It has the same really standard picture with a bit of words. And they’ve all been told to put this on LinkedIn. That does not work for me and turns me off. For me that’s a jarring moment and I immediately don’t bother reading the post. …But if you wanted to do a halfway house, start working as a team on it and then when you’re ready, maybe you could try a few of your own.
Roger Christie: Start with support around and gradually take the trainer wheels off and you will ride on your own. There’s a parallel with the listening too; posting while using listening as a way to get familiar with the community. Naturally you will be drawn into conversations. Don’t push people out there when they’re not ready. Listen, learn, absorb and then when you feel comfortable, participate. That’s my advice to leaders if they’re not ready to feel that they can post on their own. Start by listening. Build a profile, sure. But start by listening to key people and get familiar and comfortable with how this environment works.
Roger Christie: I’m keen to explore as a sort of extension of this – you are as you are, online is how you are offline. It’s authentic. It’s consistent across the board. Your Secretary at DEWR, Natalie James is also quite active and authentic online. What impact do you think it has on staff and also your sector, peers and partners, staff to see both of you at that senior leadership level, participating, having a laugh, having fun, supporting one another’s comments online?
Deborah Jenkins: The feedback I’ve got from my team is that they love the fact that people are people, their leaders are actually talking about the organisation first, and they get to learn a little bit about us – we’re actually really, really human! And if I think about why I originally started doing a lot of my work at the ATO, it was to put a human face on a government bureaucratic organisation.
Natalie and I have both independently been doing this stuff and just recently come together in the same department. For me, it’s the chance to be humans in the public sector. It’s an awesome place to work and I hope people actually get the sense that we have fun. They love the fact that someone’s saying something really positive about their organisation and what they are doing online. It’s something in the public sector people don’t often talk about. They don’t always say great things about the public sector or maybe historically anyway.
And so having someone who’s actually willing to say, ‘you’re doing an awesome job and we really love what you are doing’, their friends can see them online. Their friends can see their boss online. And I think there’s kind of this contagion effect.
The team at DEWR want to be the department of best jobs. We are serious about getting really good people in there and we know that people do look on our social media profiles. They look and they say, ‘Is this an organisation that I want to work for? What’s their thinking around diversity and inclusion? Do they actually live those values?’ And I hope that people can see from our social media profiles that we are genuinely serious about those things in our organisation and in our lives as well. I think that really helps.
Roger Christie: Whether in or outside the organisation, it empowers you and reaffirms this is a place that I am proud to be at and obviously my leaders are proud of as well. [And for future talent], it’s a place that I could see myself because I would feel supported and I would feel that these things can be talked about as much internally as they are externally.
Roger Christie: I remember a recent post you did around the internal event and you were talking about Harmony Day and I got the sense of, the reflections that you made in that post. And shout out to Rebecca Boon in Queensland government who, shared this phrase ‘working out loud‘. You were talking about praise and recognition, which are good thing, and when done well and authentically, absolutely come across the right way. But it’s not all that.
What I liked about that were the comments that you were getting from people in your network and, and who work at DEWR sharing ideas and Natalie James jumping on and saying, ‘It’s a great idea. Why don’t we do that?’ She wasn’t afraid to admit that we hadn’t thought about it before, but instead celebrating the fact that staff were suggesting this was a good idea. This is an opportunity to listen to what people are saying and what they need and what they want. Then to be active in participating, to role model, be the example for people to follow, to share their opinions so that you can learn from them and you can actually create the department of best jobs.
Deborah Jenkins: That’s a really important point, isn’t it? Because the other thing that we really want to get across to our people is that we make mistakes or we don’t have all of the answers. And you’re right, Natalie James jumped in on that one and did say, ‘Hey, what that, that’s a great idea. Why don’t we do it?’ And it really does show we live that every day. We don’t have all the answers and we are always really interested in what other people have got to say because we can’t do all the thinking. We’d love to hear what the ideas are, whether that’s on LinkedIn, in our internal social media pages or people dropping me an email because that happens too.
Roger Christie: Everyone has a great idea. Right? [Social media] just give them the platform, the space to be able to do it. Looking at this through the professional lens, in terms of the impact it’s had on places like the ATO and DEWR, what are the real key benefits that you’ve experienced by being an active participant in the social media space as a leader in the public service?
Deborah Jenkins: If I think back to COVID times when I was involved in things like cashflow boost and JobKeeper and things that were happening really, really fast – the benefit for me was that I was able to very quickly communicate information and correct misinformation online to the audience that mattered. And in that particular case, the audience happened to be mainly advisors.
Having that speed to market so you didn’t have to go through lots of advertising campaigns and instead, you could actually connect immediately with the people. Some of the other things were just the ability to really control the narrative. So if you think about our grad program, you can share that information and you can share it with people using the hashtags. And you can also see other people re-sharing that content. So it’s around the shareability of pieces of information.
And it can’t go past, the business connection. If I think about my old school friend, we probably wouldn’t have stayed connected and I wouldn’t know the amazing stuff that she’s doing in New Zealand if we hadn’t been on LinkedIn together. Don’t underestimate the value of that.
One of the things I would say though, in terms of the benefit is don’t connect with people that you don’t know. I know different people have different perspectives on that, but I will never accept an invitation if I have not met the person or had a phone call with them or had some kind of engagement. That’s what the follow button is for. And so for me it’s around using it as a true business network – that has really been a benefit for me.
But let’s go back to the other one, which is listening. So I often used to find out about the latest tax cases; what people were thinking about it, had we stuffed up on something, was there a real vibe coming through? And so for me it’s that instant ability to get feedback on something that’s happening – to me is a massive benefit of this instant social media.
Roger Christie: Social media affords instant and direct access to people who matter to you on ideas that matter to them. Which leader doesn’t want that. Why wouldn’t you?
Join the conversation: Thank you Deb for kindly giving of your time, answering a host of questions on LinkedIn after this episode went live for our listeners and community online. The response to Deb’s leadership online (see a snapshot below) is not only testament to her leadership style but also the power of digital reputation to amplify that impact to so many, well beyond one’s physical constraints. Click to check it out and join the conversation.
