I guess you have already grasped that Luke has a higher weighting in the Social Media spectrum with me on the Emotional Intelligence side on the scale. Like many I'm relatively new to Microblogging and I really wanted to put something down about my experience with Twitter. My time online has been an interesting insight into building relationships and I’ve really noticed a difference in my business. Not that anyone believes me!! I have loads of conversations with people who are not yet part of the Twitterverse and they don’t see the point …until I tell draw them of my experiences. Then they visibly sit up, tilt their heads and take notice. I now totally love playing in the big Social Media sandpit and although I am still finding my way, I wanted to share my bucket and spade and hope you get some value from this too.

When I first started to Tweet I probably did the same as everyone else who’s new to this stuff. Jump in the deep end and get busy broadcasting about what I’m up to (what are you doing?). It became a bit of a daily thing on my list of things to do today. Then someone told me that to get maximum benefit I should be tweeting up to 15 times a day. So that became my mission. It then became my downfall. I remember one day logging on to a full morning of email, facebook and Twitter. Then it was after 1pm and I hadn’t done any ‘real’ work and was feeling rather anxious about it all. I wondered how on earth I was going to keep up the momentum and stay sane. So I set myself a few rules. I would give myself time in the morning and evening to check all my emails etc and during the day I would get busy and do what I needed to do. This worked well for me and although I catch myself peeking every now and then I feel much more at peace and calm with what I’m doing. I had a fantastic experience of the power of Twitter fairly recently. As well as being fortunate enough to be working with Luke Grange in the Social Media and Emotional Intelligence space I am also working with a friend and colleague to deliver a Leadership Mastery for Women program. I’m not going to go into the details of that here cos this is not what this blog is about but as part of this program we are interviewing some amazing women who continue to kick butt in their chosen professions. They raise thousands and millions of dollars for charity, they are mothers, wives and yet manage to stay true to their own identity. Anyway through Twitter I was introduced to someone who has done some pretty cool stuff and so I sent her a tweet to ask if she would be interested in being interviewed for our program. She was generous enough to say yes and so we organised the interview and hey presto it’s been completed and is ready to bring to the masses. All done over Twitter! This was the point when I started to get a real FEEL for how relationships are formed, strengthened and extended. I now have been lucky enough to be referred to other amazing women and am following them over Twitter as well. So my community is building and what a community it is. I FEEL so privileged to be part of it. You have probably noticed that I have put the word FEEL in caps. I wanted to highlight this because it really is about bringing emotion into a medium that can be a bit one dimensional – at first. For me, once I’d started to build these relationships it made me realise that just because I can’t see or touch or hear the person on the other side they are still there. And I love this because it makes it more fun! The Internet is becoming more human and its all about conversations.So enjoy the experience. I am!

I am forever fascinated by the medium of Online Social Media and the conversations that result because of the way we communicate Online.  I like to sit back and watch what happens over mediums such as Twitter and Facebook.  This may make me sound like a stalker or a perve but as I’m not the most technically minded person (thankfully we don’t have a video player so one less thing to program!) my motivation is simple.  I want to find out if there is a common thread emerging.  And yes, I think there is.

This common thread appears in the language we use.  It is interesting to note that words such as; authenticity, transparency, honesty, trust, genuineness, safety, respect, security, integrity, congruency, all seem to come up when speaking about Social Media. These are Values and I want to have a chat about Values and what that means when communicating Online.

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With the use of on-line Social Media on the rise focus continues to move towards effective communication on-line  But what does that mean?

Consider the following:
FIRST COMMUNICATION: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision

SECOND COMMUNICATION: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision

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So far we have looked at a broad definition of Emotional Intelligence.  I want to really break it down so we can all get a good feel for how it fits in whilst continuing to tie it’s relevance back to the workplace and Social Media.

Unfortunately, poor emotional intelligence in the workplace is rampant and widespread – and the consequences of having to work alongside authoritarian CEOs and toxic co-workers have been well-documented by books like Work Would Be Great If It Weren’t For The People and popular television shows like “The Office”.

With a challenging global economy where downsizing is more the norm than the exception and with the ever increasing use of Social Media in business improving emotional intelligence in the workplace is not just a luxury or a nice thing to do – it’s an important business strategy and a smart, cost-efficient way to stay healthy as an organization.

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Is it relevant? 

There are plenty of studies around which demonstrate that Emotional intelligence has been linked to better staff morale, increased productivity, higher job satisfaction and organisational commitment.  However as we move more and more to the use of on-line mechanisms of communication what does that mean for our ability to communicate … as people?

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These days there is a lot of talk around this thing we call “Emotional Intelligence’ but what is it really and what does that mean in the context of Social Media?

According to Mehrabian, the actual words we say only account for 7% of our communication, tone of voice is 38% and body language is 55%.  For effective and meaningful communication, these three parts of the message need to support each other – in other words they have to be congruent.

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