David Zinger: The Number 6 Online Leadership Influencer

Number 6.

I was honored to be in the Top Ten as the sixth place Top 25 Online Leadership Influencers by HR Examiner. This assessment is done based on reach, resonance, and relevance. It was an honor to finish just 3 places behind Tom Peters.

Here is the summary of the ranking:

Here is the  outline of HR Examiner’s method and conclusion:

Dr. Todd Dewett, a professor at Wright State University agreed to partner with us on this project. Dr. Dewett specializes in leadership and organizational effectiveness. We asked him to help tailor the algorithm we used to crawl the web to figure out who matters on the topic of leadership.

If you’ve followed the previous Top 25 lists, you might remember the Traackr process. First, we build a set of keywords thst describe the area under investigsation. Traackr then scavenges the web with spiders and scrapers to capture all of the results of searches featuring those terms.

That body of data is then mined to determine the names that reoccur most often. Those names are further evaluated to determine a score on each of three variables:

Together, the three measures are combined into a single score which is the foundation of ranking.

Finding 1: The list appears to have missed virtually everyone with a name in the leadesrship business.There are plenty of ways to generate a list that matches predetermined expectations. For instance, Jurgen Appelo has used an algorithm to compile a list of the Top 150 Blogs on Leadership. He combines Google Page Rank, Bing hit count, Alexa Ranking, Technorati Authority, Twitter Grader, PostRank and FeedBurner count into a single measure. (The method is described here). Jurgen’s approach begins with a list of the blogs you want to rank. The Traackr algorithm is more oriented to discovery. Implication: Established authors and thinkers are losing ground to newer voices.

Finding 2: No One Group Owns Leadership Thought There are several groups of people who believe they have a clear franchise on the ‘leadershipbusiness’. Motivational consultants and authors, the academics who specialize in Leadership and Organizational Development,leadership trainers, sports organizations and the military are just a few of the groups who think they ‘own’ the franchise. In fact, what seems to be happening is that amatuers, bloggers and social media enthusiasts are developing first mover advantage on the social web. Leadership (and other academic specialties) appear to be in the process of being disrupted. Implication: Older and more established voices need to learn new communications channels in order to stay relevant.

Finding 3: There is a Shift in The Importance of Breadth versus Depth Another way of digesting this point is to notice that speed and volume trump ‘quality’ in the current web content environment. As long as search engines reward based on the volume of work, thoughtful and better researched material will fall to the bottom of search results. In a prior time, influence couldn’t be measured in any particular way. These early experiments involve measuring based on output and content. An inherent bias towards quantity will be hard to overcome without sematic search.Implication: Communicating in the new media is critical to being heard.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., works with organizations and individuals foster engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 2700 member Employee Engagement Network. David’s website offers you  1100 free posts/articles on the engagement. David is committed to fostering a movement to increase employee engagement 20% by 2020.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  –  Phone 204 254 2130  –  Website: www.davidzinger.com