Help, My Boss is Following My Tweets!
With all the excitement about the boom in social networking sites and the power not just to connect people, but have them engage in meaningful ways, some new problems (or challenges) have come about. How do you keep your professional work (i.e., 9–5 job) from your entrepreneurial (side gig/personal passion)? How do you keep your worlds from colliding?
As a new technology emerges, we can begin to see some of the challenges. For companies, the issue is how to protect themselves from potential repercussions of employees opinions and actions outside of the work environment. For employees, what do you do if, in pursuing your passion, hobby, or entrepreneurial dream, your manager becomes a part of your world? For example, what would you do if your company started following you on Twitter? What sort of etiquette do you follow. Quite frankly, my first instinct is to use the blocking feature. But that might be considered political suicide. Do you then adjust your behaviour, and actions in the social networking realm to conform with work notions of who you are and should be? Could this be an opportunity for you to show your manager talents and knowledge that might otherwise go unnoticed in the office environment?
This new phenomenon is reminiscent of a discussion I had with colleagues about Facebook. As an instructor, I never “friend” a student. If a student decides they want me to view and interact within their social realm by inviting me in, then I accept (college students egos being quite fragile and sensitive to rejection). By the same token, as a grad student, I rarely, if ever, “friend” a professor (okay, maybe two or three of the really cool ones with whom I’ve interacted outside of class). Sometimes I say things in the classroom and to junior professors that I might not express to a senior prof/administrator (the folks who pull the purse strings).
As someone on the cusp (employee/student and “boss”/teacher), I am particularly sensitive to the power issues inherent in social networking. I am sensitive to the enormous possibilities it presents to folks who sometimes feel trapped in a cubicle in a building in a city somewhere, as well as to students, who are exploring the freedom to express themselves in a new environment, free of scrutiny from bosses, managers, teachers.
So, how do we solve this problem? How do we engage without intimidating or invading? Can social networking sites ever or really be considered “safe” spaces? I would love to hear your thoughts…
Thought provoking post Sonya. I'm self-employed, but "my boss" are my clients… and those I'd like to make clients. My thing is whatever you put out on the web just expect it to be seen by anyone and everyone. So it's on us to live with whatever consequences come from the the what we put on the stage…aka the web. No blaming anyone else but me if I put something out there meant for friends that ended in view of customers and prospects. Just because we can put our thoughts out there doesn't mean we have to put them all out there.
So share whatever you want to with the world, just know that you're sharing it with the whole world – not just the folks you intended it for.