Overcoming the Fear

Like many others, my eldest son has just finished his A’ levels. In the six months lead up to them we have seen him bounce between doubt and uncertainty, complete distraction, pure boredom and occasional joy. It was like the longest ever car journey of ‘Are we there yet?’, Or like being sat in a traffic jam thinking ‘When is this ever going to end?’

During this time, he has faced fear of failure, lack of confidence about his abilities, whether or not he can, or ever would, know what moments in pure maths really are (google it I still don’t!). He has questioned whether it is really worth taking A’ levels and going to college and even implied he can just stay at home and live with (and off) us forever. All feelings that no doubt many sitting important exams have had too.

It wasn’t lost on me, that actually these were the very things I wrote about last month around the challenges that senior stakeholders need to overcome to create robust employee advocacy campaigns. That entering into the unknown, something that you feel you are going to be judged on, that will be rated by your peers and others in your wider community, is pretty scary whatever part of the journey you are on in life.

And yet like exams, there are some simple ways to overcome these fears.

1.     Education

Learning about something takes the fear out of it. We once had a headmaster who advocated for the Joy of Not Knowing. Although we weren’t sure we wanted our children to come back from school joyful about not knowing, we did understand that the premise of his educational strategy was that the students needed to ask questions and have conversations to increase their knowledge. And this is so true when it comes to employee advocacy. The more senior stakeholders see and talk to peers about what they are doing and educate themselves on the why and how, the fear dissipates.

2.     Be open to learning

We know babies learn to talk and walk by watching their parents, siblings and other children around them, honing their mobility skills by observing and trial and error.  Practice makes perfect and potty training isn’t called training without a reason.  Even if you are born with an aptitude for something, training can make the difference between being good and being great. In many organisations those who want, or should have, a social profile, might often be those who are not digital natives, or who social media is not intuitive to them. They are also often the group that could feel that their training days are behind them. However, like all forward-thinking leaders, being open to learning and seeing it as an ongoing journey will help them adapt and move with the times.

3.     Handholding

Which is where handholding comes into its own. Sometimes a more one-to-one approach to learning or collaborative creation is a way of gentling easing in those who might fear, be under confident or who need some polishing of their content creation skills. This is where the Antelope Social Club can help by working with senior and middle management to guide, suggest and propose and often help craft and draft thoughts into copy.

4.     Showing the Benefits

The proof of the pudding is of course in the eating and in our experience once the post has gone live and generated some engagement and interaction, the ‘author’ will begin to see the benefits. Who doesn’t like the dopamine of watching the likes increase by the minute? But far more than ego posting, what is better than hearing feedback from colleagues, clients, and those in your industry to your opinions, possibly opening a door with a potential client that you haven’t been able to get hold of before or even reconnecting with a key influencer? Sure, these engagements often don’t come in the first post, but we have evidence that they happen.

Remember, employee advocacy or personalised social media content strategies for senior stakeholders in your organisation are just the digital version of having a conversation with a potential client at an event, sending an introductory email or going back even further, leaving your business card at the door. Without making that move, there is a chance people don’t know you are there, what you do and how you can help them solve their business challenges.

To chat to us about how the Antelope Social Club can help you with your employee advocacy programme through personalised social media campaigns tailored to individual stakeholders in your business, contact hayley.lee@antelopecomms.co.uk