The Connected Leader - Paul Frampton
Michelle Carvill: Hello and welcome to the Get Social Connected Leader podcast where I, Michelle Carvill, interview business leaders around the practicalities of how in this hyper connected, digital age they are embracing digital technologies to tune in and connect and communicate. You can find all episodes of the podcast together with show notes via our website, Carvillcreative.co.uk/podcasts.
On this episode of the Get Social Connected Leader podcast, I'm delighted to interview Paul Frampton. Paul is the EMEA CEO for travel tech startup, hi inc, and also leads B2C strategy globally including for Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan. Previously, Paul was CEO of Havas Media Group where he oversaw a $100 million pound business with 900 staff and 10 operating companies. He's an active supporter of the startup community, and [inaudible 00:00:59] mentor to some of the leading lights at the entrepreneurial space and over the years, he's received a number of accolades. Recently voted disruptive tech leader of the year by Media Tele MAGFest. Named one of Europe's top 100 B2B marketing leaders by Hot Topics, listed in the Evening Standard's Progress 1000 brand builders, voted the fifth most influential person in UK digital in the Drums Digerati League, and gifted the lifetime achievement award by Twitter.
Paul is also a passionate ambassador for diversity and inclusion, and was one of just 30 men recognized in Management Today's Male Agents of Change Awards in 2018, and last but not least, he's an active voice for youth as chair of Big Youth Group, an organization designed to improve the odds for young people globally.
Paul Frampton: Hello, Michelle.
Michelle Carvill: Hello, Paul. How are you doing? Can you hear me?
Paul Frampton: I can indeed. Can you hear me?
Michelle Carvill: I can hear you very nicely and rather clearly. Good. Wonderful. The tech is working.
Paul Frampton: Good start.
Michelle Carvill: Good start, always a good start. So, thank you firstly for coming on the podcast. Brilliant to have you here.
Paul Frampton: No problem at all.
Michelle Carvill: Good.
Paul Frampton: [inaudible 00:02:12].
Michelle Carvill: So, I'm not recording ... well I am recording at the moment, so good morning, Paul, and thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Paul Frampton: Good morning, Michelle. Delighted to be here.
Michelle Carvill: So, the spirit of this podcast is all about talking to leaders that are active on social media, and that's very much where I came across you actually. We were often tagged in a number of conversations around hashtag social CEO-
Paul Frampton: Yes.
Michelle Carvill: -and of course ... yeah, and then I started watching what you were doing, and you have been particularly active in the social space, haven't you? Do you want to just talk to me a little bit about why you started using social media and how you got into it.
Paul Frampton: Yeah, for sure. I think ... my first love affair with social media was Twitter because I'm a deeply curious person and I found that I could access knowledge and people and people's knowledge that I wouldn't normally come across, so people in different geographies around the world who had an interesting spec you'd say. I started to play with around with Twitter and follow different people, and then I started to use it as a way to express, I guess, the way that I thought about the world, this working out loud concept, and I started to build up quite a following, and then I realized that not only was it a channel where I almost could learn and almost saw it as an education platform. It became a channel where I realized that I could connect with my own talent that works for me-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -in a way where they could choose how they wanted to communicate rather than having to be formalized in a work environment. I could also connect to talent that might want to work for the organization, and equally connect with customers and other influencers that actually could see you talk out loud about your opinion, and I found that when I went into the real world and had conversations with people, quite a lot of people talked about what I was doing in the social space.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: I thought this is quite an interesting thing here. It is digital, but yet it reverberates into the real world, and people seem to think it's a positive thing, so maybe I should carry on with it, and then I moved onto LinkedIn and tried to crack that, and then lastly moved into Instagram to try and work out, so I did platform by platform because I realized they were all very different. Twitter's probably still my comfort zone, I would say.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, and I have to say I'm a fellow Twitter lover. It was where I started, and for all the same reasons, and I think what's really interesting, Paul, that comes out of both your journey, and I've heard this quite a lot on the podcast from others I've interviewed, is that it's that real sense of networking, isn't it? It's done digitally-
Paul Frampton: Yes.
Michelle Carvill: -but you're connecting with people in just the same way you would want to connect with people in an offline networking scenario, building out your networks out of interests and shared interests, differences of opinion-
Paul Frampton: Yeah, absolutely, and you build up these ... it's quite a Twitter term, I think, but these tribes-
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: -of different people that you share opinion with, who sometimes you've never met, although I have found, I'm sure you have too, that a lot of people I interact with on Twitter, I later on end up meeting in the flesh, and then finds that actually we're quite similar type of people, and have similar opinions about one thing. You're right ... I mean I think everyone looks at LinkedIn as the obvious professional network, but before LinkedIn developed its publishing status feed piece, it was literally just a way to try and connect to someone, whereas Twitter, I guess you put out there your views on the world you shared in brevity what you were thinking at that point in time, and so it had this quite interesting hook that would pull you into someone and then you would start to engage with them, and as you started to engage, you realize that actually there was something much deeper there, and then you start to connect to another three or four people that were very similar and before you know it, you had another [inaudible 00:06:22] of folk that we thought in a similar way to you and could bring different ways of thinking about the world and different perspectives to you, and I think Twitter because it feels to me like the most organic, most democratic platform and sometimes it also gets challenged by the press for that-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -but it's not straight jackets. You're not forced and you don't have to be [inaudible 00:06:48] to accept you, whereas obviously LinkedIn is a slightly different thing there. It's an open platform, but it's just closed enough so that if somebody doesn't want you to connect with them, then they can stop you, whereas Twitter has this ... I think Twitter was created as a true social network-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -which was open, democratic, anyone can connect to anyone, and anyone can create a narrative or a movement from it. I think I've probably seen the most impactful movements, whether they be professional or social or economic, movements have been created on Twitter and gone quite wild on Twitter, whereas that doesn't tend to happen quite so much with the other networks.
Michelle Carvill: No. Yeah, I agree and it's interesting, so you're on, so you started off using Twitter. Obviously, I mean everybody tends to be on LinkedIn in one way or another. You've moved over to Instagram. Tell me a little bit about that. What are you doing on that platform?
Paul Frampton: Yeah, so I've always found ... I've spent a long time in the marketing services industry, so I used to sit on the Facebook Council. I saw the Instagram acquisition while I was sitting on that council, and I saw it slowly be pushed into the center by Facebook, which I think was partly to make sure that they retained that young audience, but obviously it was always around talking through image and talking through pictures. I mean that's now evolved again into stories and more Snapchat type way of communicating.
Michelle Carvill: Really?
Paul Frampton: To begin with, I had it as a personal platform, and I wanted to keep it quite personal. I was thinking well it's pictures of me and my friends and my family, and I didn't necessarily want loads of other people to see that, so I had a private profile, and then I saw other people using Instagram quite cleverly as a way to express and share more about their personal life, but do it in a, I guess, slightly more professional way-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -so I actually ended up, and this was on the back of starting a blog, so I started a blog on YouTube in between two jobs. I did, about 18 to 24 months ago, I always fascinated about blogging, so I start a blog, which was called Frampton Unplugged because I had just left a job-
Michelle Carvill: Nice.
Paul Frampton: -so it was quite amusing because everyone often confuses my name with Peter Frampton, and he did have a acoustic show, which was called Frampton Unplugged. It was a bit of a play on words, but I then created a Frampton Unplugged Instagram and I now use that as my, I guess, my open Instagram channel where I do a similar thing, but, I guess, talk through images and pictures, and sometimes quotes on Instagram. It's a very different audience. I find Instagram sometimes a bit too trolley and a bit too like everybody just wants to engage with you in a quiet superficial-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -let's follow my friend. Oh, you're doing amazing stuff, a little bit [inaudible 00:09:48] way-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -so I still struggle a little bit with it, but I have worked out the, if you use it in a certain way, it does work, particularly for younger audiences who don't necessarily want to spend that much time on Twitter, or maybe they found on Twitter they didn't really comment or engage on Twitter. They just read. I found when younger members of my team surf, Instagram is actually the thing that they notices more, and they comment on things-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -like, "Oh, I saw you're interested in this, and you do this at the weekend," and I feel like actually I have more of an understanding of who you are as a person than maybe I get from Twitter, which is quite curated and quite almost intellectual, if you like.
Michelle Carvill: I was going to say, it's a bit more intellectual, isn't it, the conversations that happen on Twitter?
Paul Frampton: Yes.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, so tell me a little bit then about ... you mentioned that you have this connection with, and I hear this again, it's a thing that's come through from the podcast, around being visible to your team, and having conversations with your team in a way that you may not ordinarily either through geography or location-
Paul Frampton: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: -have the opportunity to connect with them, so you're clearly out there being, leading by example, a very clear social CEO. What about driving social and how you embrace it within the organization?
Paul Frampton: Yeah, so maybe I'll give two examples. One from when I was in Havas, which is a big advertising group, and I learned this from doing it in my own social channels, but then I started to realize that there was an opportunity almost to get advocacy from people that work for me, and I think it's probably got a term in the social stratus space like social advocates or social employees or something like that, but I didn't know that. I didn't look at it like that at that point in time. I just thought would it be great if I could try and harness other people to get involved in social, and then we could use social as a way to shout louder about what we're doing in Havas, so Havas is, out of the five advertising groups, it's the smallest, and therefore by default would shout more quietly than some of the others-
Michelle Carvill: True.
Paul Frampton: -and I started this channel where there weren't many of our competitors in it, so I started to encourage other people to share stories, thoughts, moments that they felt expressed two values that were quite important in Havas, collaboration and generosity, and I created this hashtag called Havastogether, very simply Havas obviously it was from, and together was an expression of collaboration and generosity-
Michelle Carvill: Nice.
Paul Frampton: -and put it out there at a couple of events where we got all of people together twice a year and encouraged people to start to use it from my marketing social team, and then it didn't take very long for it to pick up and people would just use it as almost their own pallet of paints, and they would tag onto something that maybe was just them having lunch together one day, or sometimes it was they were doing a run for charity-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -another one might be that they'd just done a pitch together, and before you knew it, it started to take off around the world, so it started in London and then different people started to use it in Latin America, in the States, in Spain, in France, so I learned through that that actually you need a little bit of structure around it, but if you almost give permission and give a very simple way of your people engaging on social, then they will pick it out. You can't force it because some people never wanted to get involved in it, but these all staff days, we just host them in the Odeon Cinema in Lester Square, so we had 800-900 odd people together in the cinema and used the big screen for effect, but the other thing was I always made sure we had a social newsroom there, so two ordinary people who were there to amplify what was going in, and people started to share through the tag, and almost every time we did it, we trended in London-
Michelle Carvill: You trended. Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -and it cost me nothing, right? I mean all I needed to do was to get a couple of my people that were good at social to just take what people were talking about, create some micro content, amplify it a little bit, and it created campaigns around what I wanted people in the market to see Havas-
Michelle Carvill: It's interesting because, like you say, it's that old gimmick optimization, isn't it? People just take it with very mild structure. It's not, "Oh here's your 28 page social media rule book." It's-
Paul Frampton: Yeah. No, and I've seen that working. When I've seen people try to do that, that's when you, I think that's when you kill.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: You kill it because the great thing about social is it's not like having to go up and stand on stage and talk in front of people-
Michelle Carvill: No.
Paul Frampton: -or put your hand up even in a room. Anybody can jump onto their phone and express what's in their head no matter what, anxiety they have, or around whether they're going to say something sensible or whether they're going to make themselves look stupid. It's truly open to everyone, and I think I definitely saw some people flourish by trying that and then putting their foot forward a little bit more when they were encouraged to go, "Well, why don't you write something? Why don't you write a regular blog-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -and then you can turn it into something better," or, "Why don't you do a podcast with a couple of your colleagues, and then we'll help you turn it into something interesting," so I try to take it from engage, work out who are the ones in the pyramid that really would most engage with it, and then try to give them some support to turn into thought leaders themselves because at the end of the day, a CEO can do it, but a CEO should only do it to show others how to do it because otherwise, it's constantly from top down and I think-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -that [inaudible 00:15:35], it gets you as far as people going, "Oh, this organization is slightly more authentic and real, but if it doesn't go deeper than that, if it only goes to two or three of your leadership team and then it never touches the day-to-day floor, I don't think you're really doing social in the way it should be done.
Michelle Carvill: Fantastic, and I love that, and I gave a talk recently, Paul, around many leaders are often very disconnected from the very people that they lead, and some people came back on LinkedIn and said, "Oh well, it can't just all be top down from the leader, and some people are really fed up they're constantly hearing from their boss," and it was kind of like that's not really the flavor. It's like that commission to play almost with these technologies, to encourage people to get involved. I aligned it to all the values of leadership around ... we've all heard about the importance of walking the floor-
Paul Frampton: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michelle Carvill: -really getting down with your people and knowing them and understanding them and listening, but doing that at scale through-
Paul Frampton: Yes, exactly, and to be able ... so the second example I was going to visit is more that is within [inaudible 00:16:49], where I work now. I have teams across Europe in 20 different countries, and so physically I can't see or speak to them as regularly, and I mean we use things like Zing video calls on Monday mornings and on Fridays to get people together, but more importantly actually that always on, what I call, working out loud-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -through social channels, it allows people across Europe, sometimes in very small teams because it's an early stage business-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -might only have two people in a market, but it feels like they then feel like they belong to something-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -so it's actually even more important when you're an early stage business, and you don't have lots of people around you, or people are remote working, which I think is becoming increasingly popular-
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: -it becomes ever more important that there is a social fabric of almost like symbols of what it means to be a part of the business, and signals that make you feel like you're part of something-
Michelle Carvill: Exactly.
Paul Frampton: -even if you're working in a co-working space 200 miles or 3000 kilometers away from where most of the team are. Then, actually the concept of bringing people together and connecting them through technology, frankly whether it's a video call or whether it's social media or whether it's messaging platforms becomes phenomenally important, and I think in the future of work, when not everyone will be sitting right next to you and you can go, "Right, everyone downstairs and stand around the stairwells and I'm going to talk to you," which is the ... even though that's still fairly modern [inaudible 00:18:22].
Michelle Carvill: Yes. Yep.
Paul Frampton: -classic all hands is a all hands with everybody coming, everyone coming to me because I'm the leader. You leave your desk. You come to me, whereas actually there has to be a place for, "Well, I'm going to create something and then you guys can choose when you want to tune in," right, so it's either a blog or-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -a call where people can log into ... and there's something quite democratic about Zoom where actually people can sit there and listen or they can jump in. To begin with, when I did some of the video call meetings in our business, it was quite quiet and it feels like, "Oh, there's nobody out there. I'm speaking [inaudible 00:18:58] in London." People in the room in London were a lot more present, and then I actually, the first one I did from Milan, where we have quite a lot of people, and I hosted it from there, and because the London team were quite used to it, we then had quite an interesting dynamic. When people felt comfortable in Milan, because they were brought into the conversation, the folks in London were communicating, but it was all done through video and just people up on screens as opposed to people all being together, and then people from Africa jumped in and then people from Eastern Europe jumped in. There is something quite interesting about this permission-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -and safe place that people need to be allowed to jump in and feel like [inaudible 00:19:41] perform.
Michelle Carvill: Exactly. It's a very human thing, isn't it really?
Paul Frampton: Yes.
Michelle Carvill: It's communication at its very-
Paul Frampton: Absolutely.
Michelle Carvill: -at its-
Paul Frampton: Simplest level. It is. You're right.
Michelle Carvill: It is. It's simplest and it's democratic, yes, but also empowering as well, isn't it, for those individuals to have that voice and participate.
Paul Frampton: Absolutely. Yeah. You're right. I mean they are some very simple things that people want from business, and we've, I'm sure you've touched on this subject with other folks, but we seem to have in the last few decades created this real separation between-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -real life, what are people's lives, personal lives, and work-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -and with the amount people are expected to work, it's much more a blend-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -I think these days, and actually when people come to work, they want very similar things that they want from their personal life. They want to feel like they belong.
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: They want to feel like they have some flexibility around doing this the way that they do them, and they feel, as you say, want to feel like they're doing some great work, that they're enabled to be creative, or learn things that they wouldn't otherwise learn, and all of those things are deeply human, and I saw, I think it was ADP, which is a big talent house out in the States, did a report last week on engagement levels, and they showed that only 13% of people around the world are truly, truly completely engaged at work-
Michelle Carvill: Frightening, isn't it? I mean that is frightening.
Paul Frampton: Really scary, isn't it, when you think about it, and I know people dismiss it and go, "Yeah, but how many people are engaged," and then they take it away from very engaged to engaged and the number increases, and they go, "Well, that's all right. It's a third of people. Not that many people are really going to love work anywhere," and I was like, "Why can't-
Michelle Carvill: Why not? Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -why can't they enjoy it and love what they do," because surely they're going to be better versions of themselves and be better versions of what you want them to be, if they love what they do, rather than just trek into work from their commute and do what you want them to do.
Michelle Carvill: There's a huge commercial aspect to that as well. I saw a report out of Ernst & Young, and it was a report they'd done on employee engagement and digital transformation, which is clearly critical in this digital age for organizations-
Paul Frampton: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: -aligned with their strategy. It was looking at why digital transformation fails, and 80% of, this study that they did, 80% of digital transformation was failing due to lack of employee engagement.
Paul Frampton: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: -[inaudible 00:22:22] be engaged-
Paul Frampton: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: -and the cost to that of $10,000 in profit per employee-
Paul Frampton: Wow.
Michelle Carvill: -per year-
Paul Frampton: Wow.
Michelle Carvill: -so you scale that and you've got a hundred employees, a hundred thousand employees, you can see that it's a significant cost.
Paul Frampton: Yeah, it is. It's really interesting that point because I don't think businesses think enough about the anxieties or the readiness that is required when you suddenly through a lot of new technology or tools-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -or structure. I know what it's like. I mean I sit around the Board table and we discuss things and you go, "Oh, okay. [inaudible 00:23:01]. Let's restructure the business this way," and I've always felt that, and this isn't something I came up with, but I've always felt that you need to have two empty chairs in the room. One is [inaudible 00:23:13]rely on the voice of the customer, and so, "Well, what would the customer say to this point." The other ... I always make the team, I go, "Imagine if we had one of our junior guys from-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -the team, what would they be saying right now? How do you think they would react to what we're saying, which is we're going to cut a load of staff from this part of the business and we're going to rename this because that's going to help us drive more profit." I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but lets just think-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -about the [inaudible 00:23:38]. We've got to put our end talent and our customers and key stakeholders in that conversation, and I think the problem is a lot of businesses struggle with that because when you do bring the voice of the customer or the voice of your staff into the ring, sometimes it creates difficult conversations that people-
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: -don't ... "Oh, so you're saying don't do it?" No, no, no. No. I'm not saying that. I'm just making sure you have all of the information-
Michelle Carvill: Stakeholders. Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -that you need in order to make the right decision. It doesn't mean that you won't have to make the same decisions at the end of the day, but people struggle. I think people struggle with this, like be deeply commercial or be human.
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: It's like, "[inaudible 00:24:14]. Why can't you be a bit of both-
Michelle Carvill: Exactly.
Paul Frampton: -or why can't you be empathetic."
Michelle Carvill: Exactly.
Paul Frampton: Not all ... it's not either or. I think in business, we're taught to be conservative or liberal. You're taught to be black or white, and people just tend to, if one person argues one thing, there's someone who seems to argue the other thing.
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: The concept of balance.
Michelle Carvill: It is, and it's balance and of course when you know that there are different ... it's almost like ... with my marketing hat on, it's kind of like you've got different audiences and the way you communicate to different audiences, you need a different strategy. You can be still driving the same message-
Paul Frampton: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: -but you might have to communicate it differently to the team, to the customer, to the investors. It's about mastering and understanding your audience, isn't it?
Paul Frampton: Absolutely.
Michelle Carvill: -How you can communicate-
Paul Frampton: Absolutely.
Michelle Carvill: -to each one of those audiences, so that's interesting. So, you've talked quite a bit about the future of work, the working out loud, the changing landscape, which we are within. I mean there is this movement. So many more people work from home.
Paul Frampton: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michelle Carvill: Social technologies definitely enables a kind of, I refer to them like a kind of glue that can keep people together even when they are far apart-
Paul Frampton: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: -and what would you say to another leader who's struggling with social technologies and getting started with social and maybe still sitting back and thinking, "Well, I just don't want to be part of it." I can kind of understand that some people don't want to be external facing because they're just really uncomfortable with that. They can still be an absolutely brilliant leader. You do not need to be the PR man. If it doesn't feel ... or woman ... and if it doesn't feel comfortable, then fine, but what about communicating internally and externally? What's your view on all of that, Paul?
Paul Frampton: I mean, as I was listening to you then, I have to say my instinct was to say that actually if you're a leader, then you have to be capable of communicating internally actually.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: You have to be, in today's world, a strong story teller, and you have to be able to communicate whether you're a [inaudible 00:26:40] 100 CEO and throw into a press conference, or responding to some challenge or issue that has come through customers on social media. You have to be able to manage that. You don't necessarily need to be a, it doesn't need to necessarily come naturally, and I know they'll be some people listening and go, "Well, I came through the finance track, or I came through operational track, and I was never the person hanging outside of the building, doing-
Michelle Carvill: Exactly.
Paul Frampton: -[inaudible 00:27:10]. I do understand that, but I think any leader has to learn and adapt to the changing directs around them, and I think you constantly need to be listening to what your customers are saying-
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: -what's changing in the marketplace, how people are buying or transacting, and I think a lot of leaders would go, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that," and social media is just one of those things to my mind. It's the way the people expect to be communicated to, the way they expect to be able to connect with a business to solve a problem. Just because you've got call centers and whatever else doesn't mean that one of your customers doesn't want to communicate to you via social media, so you have to be more omnipresent today. For those that find it challenging, my two suggestions would be to jump in and just play around with it and to do some ... if you're going to share on LinkedIn or social media, do something that's really true to yourself. Don't try and be someone else.-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: I think a lot of people think, "Well, I must express a thought about artificial intelligence, or something around the future of work." It doesn't have to be that. In fact, some of the things that I see that get most engagement on things like LinkedIn are the ones that are truly human and people-
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: -just think, "I screwed up. My first startup failed, or I tried to approach a problem like this and it didn't work," and let me share with you what I learned.
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: I think that is ... I sometimes think it's a little bit, it's a bit too much. It's almost like reality TV where people are [inaudible 00:28:45], and it's like, "Oh," and people have found the way to win the LinkedIn algorithm, which is to go, "Oh, I nearly got fired," and then they carry on with it. Let's start with this much tabloid headline-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -which then pulls people in, but I think what I'm trying to say is talk about something that's important to you. Talk about, if mental health is important to you, or you've had your own challenges, if you're brave enough to talk about that, or you didn't have the best breaks in your career at one point and you found a way around it." People want stories.
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: They want to understand how other people have achieved what ... and I think if you take yourself down from the pedestal of being a leader and just share with other people things that you've gone through in the hope it will help other people, I think that works, so it doesn't have to be a 1500 word blog or thought leadership piece. It can just be a few sentences and I would also just put out and go, "I'm a bit, I'm a bit anxious about whether this is the right thing to do."
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: What do you think? Ask people and like any conversation, people will tend to jump in and go, "Ah, I love what you're doing, but this topic is a little bit close to the bone," or whatever it might be, and then the other one I would say is every organization, every leader, has got lots of younger talent who are very deeply connected with social media. Chat to some of them and almost think about it as reverse mentoring. If I were to start to step into this space, and I'm doing quite late, how do you think I should turn up? What types of things would it be interesting for me to share in social media? What platforms should I use? I think that's an equally good place to start and then to actually share with ... I chatted to some of my own staff to get a view of where I should start and this is what I'm doing-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, exactly. Good starting point.
Paul Frampton: -and [crosstalk 00:30:37] quite a sensible, quite a human, but not particularly taxing place to start.
Michelle Carvill: No. I agree, and that is, I mean there are programs around that, aren't they, within organizations, this reverse mentoring? I know at a couple of the organizations, that's exact what they do. They come together and they've learned so much by doing that about the very people that they're getting insights from, so, but it works both ways. So, with regards to your experience, what would you say then has been your biggest learning so far?
Paul Frampton: From social media or just in general?
Michelle Carvill: Well, from social media, from your social media activity. Is there anything you wish you'd known at the outset that would have made life easier to get started or, it feels to me like you've gone from, it's evolved, hasn't it?
Paul Frampton: Yeah. No, it has. You're right. So, I would say probably my most important learning is how to deal those people that just want to have a bit of a scrap on social media. For whatever reason, they go hiding behind the profile even without a picture or you're not there in the room looking to someone's eyes. Some people are always going to have a disagreement with you, particularly if you share views about things that are quite, going to pull people from, polarize people-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -was the word, so I think to begin with, if someone challenged me, I would jump in and then I realize after a while, it was just a tirade of he said she said he said.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: It wasn't very purposeful, so the way I deal with that now is if I don't agree with someone, I just acknowledge someone and I say, "I appreciate your opinion," not these exact words, but the sentiment, "I appreciate your opinion. I do have a slightly different one and this is why I think the platform is so great is because people can have different perspectives," and that tends to not weighs, but it tends to diffuse the situation a little bit.
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: In the early days, I've always been quite a strong vocal feminist, and four or five years ago, when I used to express a lot of things around gender equality, before thankfully some of the improvements in the last couple of years, I would get a lot of middle aged white men just jumping, particularly on LinkedIn actually, jump in and going, "What on Earth are you talking about? This isn't equal because actually men like me are just out [inaudible 00:33:17] because all the [inaudible 00:33:18] being considered are just for women and everything." I found those situations quite challenging. I wrote piece on diversity-
Michelle Carvill: I saw that. Yep. Very good.
Paul Frampton: -and I had quite a lot, a lot of people, both publicly and privately, challenge why I was writing it and challenging some of the opinions in it, and I think that's ... you have to be comfortable in your own skin to be able to deal with that, and I think, I mean we all know that social media can have some detrimental impacts and like most things in life, there are where the world devolves, there will always be good that's done through social media, so great movements there created-
Michelle Carvill: Exactly.
Paul Frampton: -or opportunities, platforms created for new entrepreneurs, but then will equally also be people that just want to use it for their own gain or to spread messaging that we might not be comfortable with, and we all know what happened with Cambridge Analytics-
Michelle Carvill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paul Frampton: -and we've seen the recent challenges around Jeremy Kyle's show and Love Island contestants, and stuff like that, so it is a place where you have to be conscious-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -that if you're stepping into something that someone might throw a punch at you and what they say might hurt because let's face it, we're all human, and if we have to almost distance yourself sometimes from those instances, so, for me, in summary, it's a long winded answer, but it's how to deal with the trolls, and I don't have trolls, but how to deal with the negative energy that you'll often get on social.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah, and like you say, there's always going to be that balance, isn't there? There's always a bit of light. There's always a bit of shade, but thinking about how you do that digitally with grace-
Paul Frampton: Grace is a good word.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah. It's that. It is because we've all seen the [inaudible 00:35:18]. I used to pull them out and say, "Look, this is not what to do," or just try to move it off the platform, but wonderful, so I'd like to end, Paul, with a few quick fire questions.
Paul Frampton: Yeah.
Michelle Carvill: They aren't around social or digital. It's just a little bit learn about the leader. They're pretty big questions, but it's very much focused on top of head thinking, so I'm going to ask you these questions. You okay with that?
Paul Frampton: Sure.
Michelle Carvill: Fine, so we'll start. If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
Paul Frampton: So, it probably won't surprise you, given what I just, it would be creating more gender equal words. I have three daughters and I just think there is so much more to do. In a hundred years, we'd probably cut 5% of the way, and there's this, I find this whole backlash of middle aged men saying, "[inaudible 00:36:14] future," really bizarre. Whilst I can subscribe to the fact that equal means equal and therefore you shouldn't positively discriminate against. Come on. I mean there is so much.
Michelle Carvill: I know.
Paul Frampton: There's so much that still needs to be done and so much bad behavior that needs to be changed, so it would be to find a magic way of pressing a button and actually getting a level playing field for everybody actually, not just women-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -but everybody so that it didn't need to be talked about at every single moment in every conference. It's still the biggest problem in business.
Michelle Carvill: So, I'm right behind you on that one, and which book have you read recently that's inspired you?
Paul Frampton: So, I read a book. It's not actually a leadership book. It's business, more around scaling up a business-
Michelle Carvill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paul Frampton: -called, Upscale, which is a bunch of European, predominantly British entrepreneurs who tell their story about how they have led an organization from early stage to success, so it comes out of Tech Nation. I think it's James Silver is the overall author, but it essentially is chapters from different entrepreneurs and I think it's phenomenal actually for two reasons. One it's real world and they talk about a lot of the stuff we've talked about here today actually-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -but it's real world and it's when things went wrong, this is what we did. It's tangible things you can do to run a business, and secondly, it's not, and this isn't meant in a derogatory role, but it's not that classic American how you build a business and fail faster. It's actually grounded in British European culture and some of the challenges we have here because we all know that people don't accept failure in quite the same way as they do-
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: -in the west.
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: I would strongly recommend that. It's called, Upscale, and it's the Tech Nation, but I'm pretty sure it's James Silver who's the editor.
Michelle Carvill: Fantastic. Well, I'll make sure that that link is in the show notes, but that's one on my list. I gave up TV five years ago, Paul, to read books, so I just keep absorbing them and absorbing them.
Paul Frampton: Yeah. Yeah. I don't read enough. I've got a five month old-
Michelle Carvill: Oh.
Paul Frampton: -and I've got a 17 year old, turning 17 this year, and a five month old, so I don't find quite enough time to read. That's why I tend to find my knowledge through Twitter where I've got that 10 minutes-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -to go dive in-
Michelle Carvill: Yeah.
Paul Frampton: -and learn.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah. Gosh, that's quite a space, isn't it?
Paul Frampton: Yes.
Michelle Carvill: I've got the 17 year old. I certainly wouldn't want the five month old right now.
Paul Frampton: She's delightful. She's delightful-
Michelle Carvill: I'm sure she is.
Paul Frampton: -but by all accounts, it's exhausting.
Michelle Carvill: Yeah. That's quite a bit. So and last but certainly not least, what's the best piece of advice you've been given to date, so this is out of social media, just the best piece of advice?
Paul Frampton: Yeah, so it's a recent one. I actually belong to a male support group, which is an interesting concept, set up by a guy who does a lot of work in leadership, and it's designed for a bunch of men who have got to a certain stage in their careers, got families, and then have lots of challenges, whether it's relationships, professional, and I found it hugely useful. It's not something that I think happens enough. Men don't, our place isn't to talk, and he shared a quote, which I'll send to you if you want to put it in the notes-
Michelle Carvill: Yes, please.
Paul Frampton: -because I probably won't read the whole thing. It's a Dalai Lama quote basically, which says that, "Man pretty much sacrifices his health to make money. Then, he uses the money he makes to actually get back his health-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -and he's so anxious about what's going to happen in the future, he doesn't enjoy the present, and then he dies worrying about everything and doesn't really live a full life," so-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -it's a, I guess it's just a profound comment on live life to the full and don't take anything to seriously, and it's, I think when you get to a certain stage in business and leadership, you can be so full on and so immersed in your business that maybe you don't pay enough attention to some of the other things around in terms of your own development, in terms of looking after yourself, mental health, family, et cetera, et cetera-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -so, for me, it's about a great life lesson. Just make sure that you recognize how wonderful things are around you-
Michelle Carvill: Exactly.
Paul Frampton: -and look up [inaudible 00:40:27].
Michelle Carvill: Exactly, and connect with yourself. We're often so concerned, aren't we, about connecting and doing and doing and doing it-
Paul Frampton: This is true.
Michelle Carvill: -we forget [crosstalk 00:40:38].
Paul Frampton: That is one, another watch out for social media, is when you're, I'm sure you feel it, when you're so addicted to Twitter, it pulls you in [inaudible 00:40:47]. Sometimes, I deliberately give myself a little bit of a digital detox because-
Michelle Carvill: Yep.
Paul Frampton: -those constant notifications, when you are deeply engaged, you sometimes feel, "Oh, I have to respond. I have to respond,"-
Michelle Carvill: Yes.
Paul Frampton: -and that then starts to pull on your own mental health, and so again, all things in the right measure.
Michelle Carvill: It is. Absolutely brilliant. So, Paul, it's been an absolute delight. There's been so many insights and thank you so much for sharing your very real world experience. You've been in this space for a long time. You've been very active in this space, so I'm sure there's so much there for people to listen in to, and learn from, so me sincerely, thank you.
Paul Frampton: Absolute pleasure. Well, thank you for having me.
Michelle Carvill: You've been listening to the Get Social Connected Leader podcast. Thank you to my guest and indeed thank you to you for tuning in. Please do feel free to share the podcast with colleagues and friends who you think will enjoy it, and indeed subscribe to tune in for more episodes. You'll find the podcast on all the usual platforms, and all episodes are also on our website, Carvillcreative.co.uk/podcasts. You'll also find some really useful digital and social resources on that site too, so be sure to check those out.
So for now from me, Michelle Carvill, your host on the podcast, thank you so much for tuning in and goodbye.
Oh, P.S. ... if you're a business leader with something to share around digital and social technologies and you're keen to be a guest on the podcast, then I'd love to hear from you. You can email me michelle@Carvillcreative.co.uk.
Paul Frampton:
Michelle Carvill: