Jul
16
2010
True Leadership Lesson from Frito Lay VP, Angel Rodriguez
Author: Stuart R. CrawfordThis Calgary Consultant was schooled on the Art of Leadership. It is always wonderful when I have an opportunity to learn from others in our business community.
I first met Angel Rodriguez through my good friend Shawne Duperon and then through Daniel Gutierriez. Now, My good friend and trusted colleague from Frito Lay, Angel Rodriguez has taught me a thing or two about the art of leadership and how leadership skills for highly trained executives in business actually works.
During my short 45 minute call with Angel we discussed social media and it’s role in larger organizations. The conversation quickly woke me up a bit when Angel and I were chatting about how our colleagues in an organization such as Frito Lay where Angel served as an executive VP for a number of years use social media. They don’t use these services the way many small businesses use social media.
It is not uncommon for a company like Frito to obtain large followings on many different social media platforms and have groups where former employees, current employees and fans of their products gather to keep in touch with each other and to continuously network. Pepsi has over 800,000 followers and I believe Coke has something like 2 million. Coke’s story on social media is truly unique. It is actually run by fans of Coke from what I understand during my research on Facebook Fan Pages.
Angel shared with me, true leaders, inspire and provide a platform for others to excel. In the social media world, this translates to education and sharing. Social Media for any type of leader provides an easy to access and readily available platform for business leaders to excel. However, the business leader must be open to trying new things and be open to teaching others, just like Angel taught me.
I believe a number of small businesses can also use this philosophy and have success with it. Instead of the usual messaging we see on Twitter, Facebook and others where small business are always pushing. Maybe it is time to let the guard down and show our human side and offer to teach.
In my role as a social media consultant I have an opportunity every day to help business owners and marketing professionals around the world learn how to truly inspire those in their communities and markets. Angel taught me a couple of things today around leadership and some of his lessons from Frito Lay.
How can I take this leadership lessons and put them into practice in my social media consulting role. It is about leadership and making a difference.
