“What will it take for me to claim my own freedom and create an organization of my own choosing?” Peter Block, Stewardship. What will it take?

It will take commitment to do the work, every day, delivering on commitments and fulfilling promises.

“I can be of real service only when I take responsibility for all my actions, which is the only safety I have, and when the choices I make are mine.” Peter Block, Stewardship.

It will take the support of a team.

“We need each other for a thousand reasons, both emotional and practical.” Peter Block, Stewardship.

It will take a community of people who are committed to each other.

“The intent of community is to have all of us committed to each other’s success. We come together to support each other in living out our values.”  Peter Block, Stewardship.

It will require an attitude of service, which is an act of faith.

“Stewardship thrives on the question ‘Who are we here to serve?’ The choice for service begins with an act of faith.” Peter Block, Stewardship.

It will require that we share the load.

“Carrying the weight of an organization is not something unique to those at the top. People at the middle and the bottom also carry their load.” Peter Block, Stewardship.

It will require that we are motivated by a value deeper than financial compensation.

“Anyone who says they work just for the money has given up the hope that anything more is possible.” Peter Block, Stewardship.

It will take a belief in others and their best intentions.

“Stewardship trusts that each one of us wants to know, and by and large does know, how we are doing. And that each of us wants to get better.”  Peter Block, Stewardship.

I’m inspired today, by these quotes from Peter Block’s book, and motivated to serve where I am, with the organization I am creating with the incredible people who have joined me in the work.

I hope you’ll check out the book this week and sign up to learn from Peter Block, Steve Piersanti, and Meg Wheatley at our upcoming webinar.

We love our staff. Seriously. Love them. That means that we empower them to take risks, catch them when they are falling, cover them when family needs to come first, push them to overcome their own inhibitions, and celebrate with them when they create greatness.  Corey Michael Blake, in Forbes

What motivates leaders to open doors for others?

In an earlier post this week, I stated that we don’t do it out of chivalry — because creating opportunities for others is nice, or polite, or heroic. I said that we do it in service of the mission of our companies, for the growth and well-being of others, or in service of our clients.

But we also do it for love.

The purest motivation for opening a door of opportunity for someone else is love. Pure concern for another’s well being above our own. A focus on helping others achieve more. A genuine desire to make a difference.

If we operate from a place of loving others, we will want the best for them, which will motivate us to find and open doors of opportunity: for growth, learning, development, and success.

Without love, all our efforts will fall short.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:2-3.

 Let it be love that compels us to open doors for others.

Let it be love that compels us to take a risk, give someone a second chance, to find a place in our organization for someone, or to connect more deeply with our teams.

For more inspiration related to leadership and open doors, check out Bill Treasurer’s new book, Leaders Open Doors, now available on Amazon (buy now!). Learn more at leadersopendoors.com or follow Bill on Twitter, @btreasurer or connect on Facebook. All proceeds benefit people with special needs.

Even so, with the registration deadline to the 2013 Berrett-Koehler Book Marketing event fast approaching, I wanted to film and share a quick book promo tip via video and an invitation through video. You’ll sign up, right?

Bonus: in this video, I also reveal my new haircut. (Not sure I love it, but…)

Here goes…

Tell me something! Are you comfortable filming/posting video? What advice do you have for me about how to get more comfortable on camera?

It’s a standard some women use to judge the success of a date: did he open doors?

I spoke to a friend recently as she recounted a first date. He was wonderful, she said. Did everything right: brought roses, opened doors. 

When a man opens doors on a date, we call it chivalrous, polite, or perhaps old-fashioned. We love it!

As leaders, we may get an idea that opening doors for others — creating opportunities for them — is similar: optional, recommended, nice.

But as leaders who open doors for others, we are not being chivalrous or kind, although some people might perceive our actions that way. Instead, we are doing what leaders are meant to do, what is required of us. We are engaging in the very behavior that defines us as leaders.

Leaders Open Doors.

We don’t open doors to be nice. We open doors of opportunities to deserving people in the service of a bigger goal— the mission of the company, the well being and growth of the people who work with us, the support the clients we serve.

Leaders open doors for the mission of the company. There is work to be done, so we do it. And it is our privilege to invite others to join the work. I am doing this as my company grows. The natural result of seeing work load grow is that in order to do the work, we need people. As we need people, we can open doors for them.

Leaders open doors for the sake of others, doors for their growth, development, and success.

Leaders open doors in service clients. In order to serve clients, we must entrust people with ever increasing responsibility and ownership of the work. When we open doors to people, we can fully engage them in creatively contributing to make a bigger difference for our clients.

Opening doors for others is a critical task, one that needs to be repeated daily.

Let this be the new measure we use to evaluate our leadership effectiveness. How many doors did we open? To whom? For what purpose?

For more inspiration related to leadership and open doors, check out Bill Treasurer’s new book, Leaders Open Doors, now available on Amazon (buy now!). Learn more at leadersopendoors.com or follow Bill on Twitter, @btreasurer or connect on Facebook. 

If you’re a regular reader of Weaving Influence, and if you’re visiting the site for the first time since the weekend, you might be noticing that we’ve made some big changes around here.

Exciting, isn’t it?

I’m especially excited that our redesigned site is live in time for our first spring book launch, Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer. (Big thanks to the Weaving Influence team, especially John Marcello and Rachel Royer, who worked hard to complete the design and development of the site.)

Launching the new site opens doors of opportunity for us as a team; we’re more clearly displaying our work and outlining our services than ever before, making it easier for potential clients to know how we can serve them. More clients = more opportunities for our team to expand and make a difference for more authors and thought leaders.

The site is still under construction, but we hope to clear up all the last minute refinements this week.

I’ll be back this week with posts about leadership and opening doors of opportunity for others, inspired by Bill’s wonderful book.

Tell me something! What doors are you opening to new opportunity this week, for yourself or others?

This week, my team and I have been lamenting some recent changes to Twitter. As a result of these changes, we need to find new solutions to serve our clients.

Here’s an example: we’ve been experimenting with Twitter chats, using an app called Tweetchat. Tweetchat uses Twitter’s API to pull in tweets from a hashtag in real time. It’s possible to participate in a tweetchat without tweetchat.com but not very fun or efficient.

If using tweetchat were the center of our social strategy on behalf of clients, we’d be in trouble!

As it is, we are new to using tweetchats on our clients’ behalf and can experiment with a different way to add buzz when changes take effect on June 11th and tweetchat.com is obsolete.

This story illustrates a simple fact that I have said before (and will likely repeat):

Every social media strategy needs a center. The center must be a place you own, your website or blog, because it is the only place you control.

Building a social strategy for your book or business with a social media platform as the center is like building a home on the edge of a sandy beach — you’re likely to drown when your house slips into the ocean.

There are no guarantees that social media channels will be constant, no guarantees that the functionality you’re depending on today will work the way you want it to tomorrow. So when you invest most of your time, energy, and resources building your presence on community out there (on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc), when the landscape changes, you may be scrambling to find new ways of connecting.

Instead, it’s best to invest your time/energy/resources into drawing people to your online home — your website — the place you own and control, so that your connection to them remains no matter what happens elsewhere online. Create content that is so compelling that people will come to you to find it. Create conversations that are so inviting that people come to you to participate in them. Reciprocate by meeting people at their websites, as well. And use social media channels to help you in building those relationships, but don’t become so dependent on any one channel or function that you’ll be sunk if it changes.

Know your center. Own your domain. Give your best energy to building a community and content on your own website. Stay centered.

Tell me something! What frustration have you encountered when social media channels changed functionality? How are you building community on your website?

How often do I blog? This afternoon, a new PR connection asked me how often I blog. Well, judging from the last post I published (nearly two weeks ago) — not that often.

Two or three times a week, typically, I told her. I didn’t tell her about the month of February, when I challenged myself to blog every day for 28 days and almost made it. I’ve had to let go of blogging lately. We are working to complete a redesign of weavinginfluence.com — so exciting. And, also — so much work!

My attempts to get more help in the business haven’t worked out as well as I’d hoped: one new crew member suffered a terrible tragedy, two team members missed work due to family losses, and I’ve been scrambling to get everything done. (If you haven’t noticed me scrambling… whew! Maybe I’m doing better than I thought.)

Blogging just doesn’t fit right now, but it is something I enjoy and something I hope to be back to on a regular basis. Soon.

How often do I run? 

I run sporadically. In a perfect routine, I’d run more often than I blog, 4 times a week would be ideal.

But for many weeks running seemed like something that wasn’t fitting either.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I ran 5 miles as part of a relay team. And then, one of my team members challenged me to run every day for the month of May, even if only a mile. So it’s May 7th, and I’ve run every day this month so far. Yes, several days it’s only been a mile.

I am neither a consistent runner or blogger, apparently. But give me a challenge, and I’ll find a way to gut it out.

Tell me something! How often do you blog? How often do you run? What is your secret to maintaining a consistent schedule?

From time to time, I work with a client who is uncomfortable with self-promotion. If you want to write, publish, and market a book, you will need to get used to the idea of promotion, but not of yourself. You need to be committed enough to your message to promote it. I’ve quoted Jill Friedlander before: Are you ready to marry your message?.

If you don’t believe in your message, why are you publishing a book? I would venture to say that unless you deeply care about the message, you should not write and publish the book. So, let’s work from the assumption that you believe in your message. And if you believe in your message, then you’ll want to spread it.

You may think that people will get your message from reading your book, those words you’ve slaved over and edited, written and rewritten. But the truth is that even if your book sells tens of thousands of copies, most people will not consume the entire message of your book. If they do, they may not remember it.

Because we all buy books and never read them, or buy books and never finish them. We have short attention spans and shorter memories. We consume content in sound-bites, text messages, video clips, tweets, and (short) emails. And the only messages we remember are the ones that are most repeated.

So it is critical, now more than ever, to repackage the content from your book into other consumable forms: tweets, graphics, short videos, blog posts, and articles.

Sharing your message in small bursts is a service to your community, fans, and followers. You are promoting your message: because you believe in it, because it matters to you, because you think it will make a difference for others.

To hold back on sharing your message because you think sharing your message is too self promotional is to deprive people of your message, because the vast majority of people in the world won’t crack the spine of your book to read the message.

If you splash your message across social media channels and websites in easily consumable bits and pieces, people will, at least, get an introduction to your message, a part of it.

And if it interests them, they may look for more. When they do, they may be compelled enough to buy your book, because your message will start to matter to them.

And if you’re really fortunate, once they “get” your message, they’ll believe in it enough to share it, too. Book promotion is message promotion, not self-promotion.

Growing Weaving Influence feels, at times, like life on hyper-drive. We’ve got a lot going on: adding new subcontractors, training new subcontractors, starting new projects, continuing projects, gathering content for our soon-to-be-unveiled web redesign of weavinginfluence.com.

It’s a rush.

As the business has developed, I’ve been undergoing a transition from doing the work to selling, planning, and managing the work. What I do on a daily basis now is completely different from what I did ten months ago. What I think about now is completely different.

And I need to get even better at flexing my delegating muscle so that I can focus on my key priorities as a business owner.

While I’m working to get better at delegating, there are a few areas I won’t (can’t) delegate:

I won’t delegate the role of creating culture on our team. As a leader, my attitude is contagious. If I gripe and complain, so will others. If I seek to celebrate wins, encourage progress, and bring enthusiasm to our work, so will the team. While every team member contributes to building the culture, I am responsible for creating a positive environment in which we can all do great work.

I won’t delegate the role of opening doors of opportunity for others. One of the best, the BEST, parts of being a business owner is the opportunity I have to continually look for, train, and provide opportunities for talented people. If we are going to continue to grow, we need trustworthy, creative, energetic people to serve our clients with us. As a leader, it’s my job to build relationships with and find those talented people and to open up the door and invite them in to the work we are doing.

I won’t delegate the job of selling our company’s services. For now, I am the one most equipped to be the face of our company and to connect with potential customers. I’m the  Chief Marketing Officer and the Chief Sales Officer.

I won’t delegate the job of creating content for (and about) our company. Although other team members create lots of content, this is a task that will never be something I delegate completely — for several reasons. First, I love to write. Creating content is fun for me and establishes me as a thought leader in our field.

I won’t delegate the job of planning strategic growth for our company. How can we scale our company to serve more clients and become more profitable? How can we serve our current clients most effectively? What new products can we create to serve our clients? What new services can we offer? As a leader, it’s my job to decide when and how we grow.

When I am not sure if I should be doing something, I consider the task against the list above. Unless it’s one of the task above (or a few select others including consulting and training clients), I probably need to delegate it.

Tell me something! What are you delegating? What can you never delegate? (I’ll be back next week with a list of tasks at home that I won’t delegate — and tasks I will delegate!)

We’d been talking about Tom’s extreme commitment to bring attention to this worthy cause, how he wears blood-stained combat boots — and the blood is from his own toes rubbing against the boots as he runs, year after year. Tom is a veteran, a hero, and he runs because he can, to honor others heroes and veterans, those who cannot.

I thought of Tom, and I texted my husband to see if he’d heard any news from him.

I scanned Twitter and #prayforboston (trending.) I watched some video footage taken at the scene and read a few news reports online.

I prayed. I sent a tweet to two Boston friends and remembered that one of our newest clients is in Boston. I prayed for him, too.

A couple of hours later, I received an email from a client asking that we remove his scheduled tweets for the remainder of the day. Honestly, his note prompted my first thoughts about how we, as a social media company, could/should respond during times of tragedy, during this tragedy.

After Newtown, my team discussed the issue. Several team members responded quickly to that tragedy, sending notes to clients and encouraging silence or respectful responses on Twitter/Facebook in place of regularly scheduled content.

In retrospect, that event could have prompted me, as a leader, to communicate with our clients about a recommended practice during tragedies.

Chris Brogan, who I trust as it relates to online presence, got into a few scuffles on Twitter yesterday by pushing back on the idea that when tragedy happens in America, companies should stop marketing.

His tweet brought a poignant reminder that tragedy happens every day around the world. Social media channels are powerful because they allow us to connect instantly with people everywhere. And every day, around the world, people’s hearts are breaking. But we continue our lives online with business as usual until tragedy happens close by.

The news from Boston is heartbreaking and devastating and we respond because it is personal to us, close to home. In fact, Chris’ argument only solidifies my perspective and choices during times of tragedy in our country.

When events affect us, we respond. My hope is that when we see our international friends and connections suffering in response to tragedies in their countries, we could respond personally to them in solidarity and support.

Events are not more tragic because they happen in America but they are more personal.

So the question is this: What is a proper response online during times of tragedy? Should a corporate response be different from an individual response? How can we best serve our clients during times like these?

The reality is that many of our clients would not have heard the news about Boston (or any other breaking news) until several hours after the fact. The reality is that we schedule/automate some content to help our clients maintain a consistent online presence in the midst of busy travel and work schedules.

The reality is that when tragedy strikes, response must be personal and heartfelt — as team members contracted to support our clients’ online content sharing and influence building, we cannot possibly craft responses to represent each client accurately. To attempt to post on clients’ behalf in response to tragedy, in my opinion, would be disingenuous. We can’t know how they are personally responding to breaking news, nor should we try to do so.

In the absence of knowing how each client could or would respond,  we can choose silence on social media channels to be respectful and considerate. Clients can, as they see fit, send out tweets or Facebook updates acknowledging the tragedy with a personal note. Or, we can give our best advice (pause automated content during times of tragedy) and let our clients choose a course of action.

As my friend Lisa Gates so eloquently stated: Turn it off. Be silent for a bit.