As I started the course, I decided that I would go for 100% completion of all exercises given that there was a leaderboard for completion and learner engagement. On the back of that decision, I decided to do the exercises using “wild mind writing”.
Overview
What is Social Capital? (Video)My response:
I am not part of the Social Age from a revenue-earning point of view - yet!
Definitely tooling myself up to be a participant in this space - no idea where or who with yet!
This view is emerging since starting a WOL circle 12 weeks ago.
I am increasingly aware of my social capital, reputation and so on.
I find this space liberating.
21 MOOCs done now with this one. This is my last unit on this course.
Confident at tweeting anyone on anything.
Just completed a 12 WOL Circle mooc across 5 timeszones/ countries with 4 complete strangers when we started.
Love giving and not taking.
Definitely a connector and a contributor.
It gives me energy.
I have the soft skills that this course talks about.
Definitely see myself as straddling the two worlds of formal and social with a strong preference for social getting sucked into the formal part of the organisation for the greater good. This is similar to me as my view that the Chief Digital Officer role will go shortly as "Digital" will be increasingly redundant. It is not Digital Business, it is just Business.
Social Capital in Social Leadership
Social Capital can be defined as our ability to survive and thrive in online social spaces, but it’s also about our responsibilities to safeguard others.Article
Social Capital can be described as your ability to survive and thrive in the Social Age: you need it yourself, and as Social Leaders, we should help others to grow it.
How can you best achieve that: how can you help someone build Social Capital?
My response:
I am getting free-er to express my views online on these subjects.
I have adopted Wild Mind Writing to answer the exercises on this MOOC. This has taken me to some interesting spaces.
I am more proactive online to offer help at length to those asking for help or those that I can see would benefit from help. This has led to interesting leisure time "work" whilst also helping me in my day job and wider.It has also led to some deeply satisfying relationships with fellow learners.
A shoutout at this point to John Stepper whose Working Out Loud Circle Guides are an amazing intro, in my view, to the new world of people connecting online in mutually beneficial ways.
I defo identify with the finding out knowledge and marshalling it for specific needs later and people increasingly comment about that to me.
It will be interesting to see if any social gurus emerge and lapse into the faults of the formal organisation.
Again, I believe the "evil" of the formal organisation is overplayed and refer fellow learners to John Maxwell's 5 Levels of Leadership to get climbing that ladder. I may need to do some analysis to compare the Social Age material with John M's.
Social Capital
Striking a balance between formal authority and social capital.
Podcast
Can you think of any challenges you might encounter as you build your Social Capital?
My response:
Being challenged to get on with "real" work
Not able to spend time on the social capital work
Justifying why I am doing social capital work
Knowing best way of developing social capital - what to do what not to do - I am personally great at being reactive but not proactive
Limited role models
Charting my own course with no map
Not messing about with trivia along the way
Challenge
Social Capital is the ability to survive in the new world in which we live and work, but what are the challenges to adapting to these changes?
Video
My response:
It sounds like Social Age competencies are also ones that would make formal leaders more effective in their formal roles so this is a win/win.
Reminding me of work on strengths where those should be developed further and not necessarily address weaknesses.
I assume that for organisations that are operating in many countries that cultural issues are "trained" to staff that work trans-nationally.
San Francisco: Social Justice?
Thoughts on social justice, and the responsibility we all have to be just.
Who is responsible for change? Who must make our society better?
My response:
So this is moving way beyond social capital in organisations.
The government of a nation is primarily responsible for making society better. Again, "better" would need defining. This is a classic prioritisation issue. A significant majority of the UK population says that they would be happy paying more tax to fund increased health spending and yet when we go to the ballot box we do not vote in the parties advocating that.
I do not believe it is commercial organisations' responsibiliy to make society better unless that is their specific remit. Rather they should adhere to the relevant laws etc in the countries in which they operate.
The Christian church globally does a huge amount of work in many countries addressing one-off crisis situations such as the current African famine as well as ongoing work in countries such as Haiti.
The local church that I am a member of and part of the church leadership team for tithes its revenue meaning 10% of that amount is given away to Christian charities local to Bradford, nationally in the UK and globally around the world. We also do a lot of volunteering work on the estate on which we are set and until last year when funding from Bradford Council, UK Government and the EU dried up completely after we had been delivering a comprehensive set of social services for some 30 years and had to make 20+ staff redundant. The need has not gone away.
What does Social Capital mean to you?
How does Social Capital relate to you and/or your organisation?
My response:
I am keen to explore and utilise my new found knowledge from being in a virtual WOL circle and my MOOC experience (this is my 21st) into doing something career-wise.
After the circle that ended 1 week ago, I have a set of actions that I have set myself to explore what it is I want and need to do next. I have started living for these activities more than my day job but even at 55
I still do not know what it is that I want to do.
Ideally, I want to see the Social Age competencies cross over to the more formal side of running organisations so there is no need to have a parallel track and a parallel universe.
As a person who straddles both worlds, I want to see what each side can bring to the other to make all organisations more effective and efficiently.
I see this being a huge challenge for the organisation I am currently with for a variety of reasons but the main one being that some have the view that “social” is not “real work”.
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