I met Leona Hobbs at Toronto Girl Geek Dinners. In her interview, you'll find that her passion for life jumps off the page and infects you. Are you passionate about your work and your life? After you've read Leona's interview, what are five takeaways?
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I live in Toronto with my wonderful husband and adorable dog. My paying gig is Vice President at Social Media Group (SMG). I'm a volunteer organizer for Toronto Girl Geek Dinners and PodCamp Toronto. During downtime, I like to game, cook for family and friends and read.
What’s a typical day like for you?
I'm lucky to have such a great job and team. Most days see me splitting my time between client projects, business development and management responsibilities. I like to work early mornings before I head to the office. I find I’m most productive in the mornings. Next I head to the office. I usually stop working in the late afternoon and head home for dinner. Frequently, I do a couple of hours of work in the evening.
How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
I am fortunate that my work is my passion. My passion is communication – how people use technology to find, share, connect and create. Each and every day I am challenged to consider how to best counsel my clients, create strategies and make the most of the opportunities presented by this dynamic environment.
We all have setbacks, failures, make mistakes and get burned out. When I find my motivation is lacking, I like to retreat a bit to refocus and get perspective. I get outdoors or take a road trip with an iPod loaded with my favourite playlists.
If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
I think I'd learn to code. I know enough basic HTML to mark up a blog post, or do some basic customization on a template. I don't understand the “under-the-hood” part of web development. I also would have worked to keep my French up.
What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
I started working with a professional coach last year. What I have learned about myself and gained from the coaching process has been one of the most profound things in my career to date.
What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?
Cloud computing. We are at the tip of the iceberg for cloud-based services and applications. Cloud computing is also going to make relevant all kinds of devices that will allow us to be free from our desktops and servers.
What are the threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
If you look at the technology adoption model, social media is cresting into the majority stage. As such, there are many entrants to the services market. We are taking a couple of approaches to handle this – first, our services are sufficiently differentiated and market-tested. Second, because of our track record of providing applied social media services since 2006, we are in a position to continuously innovate to develop new approaches so that we continue to lead the market.
The retention and acquisition of talent is another potential threat for our business. In this knowledge economy, we are only as strong as our people. So recruiting and retaining talented people is crucial. I work every day to create a great work environment and believe my number one job is to create the conditions where every single member of my team has the opportunity to be successful.
What’s unique about the service that you provide?
Social Media Group offers a hybrid approach that sees us provide management consulting to support organization change and readiness coupled with soup-to-nuts social media execution. We are uniquely supported by a proprietary software platform that allows us to provide an unprecedented level of conversation measurement and monitoring for our clients.
What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?
I think lots of people have a “shiny object” fixation with social media. Twitter is the next big thing, or Gowalla, or whatever. At SMG, we have a market-tested approach to helping our clients uncover the “right” idea vs. the “big” idea and developing pragmatic social media plans and roadmaps to achieve meaningful business results. Lots of folks these days are charging in with the razzle dazzle of The Next Big Thing to the detriment of what the audience actually wants, and the client really needs.
Tell me about your big break and who gave it to you.
I trained to be a journalist and in my second year at Loyalist College, I was appointed student representative to our advisory committee. After an advisory committee meeting, Karen Davidson, who was Vice President in the Agribusiness Group at Fleishman-Hillard Canada, approached me. She spoke about Fleishman-Hillard's internship program and encouraged me to apply. After I finished my journalism program and was staring down a fairly bleak reality of having to do a lot of freelancing to build my portfolio before I would even get an interview with a paper who could pay me a living wage, I remembered Karen's offer and dropped her a line. I came to Toronto, camped out on my friend's futon and interviewed with Karen and Linda Smith. I was given the internship and was hired full-time with the agency in under a month.
What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
I am most proud of my marriage. I believe marriage is a partnership and that a happy marriage requires work. I've been married for eleven years this October to my soul mate and best friend.
How did mentors influence your life?
My earliest mentors were my parents and grandparents. They set an incredible example of positive values, community service and the importance of doing my best.
From a leadership standpoint, I was mentored by a number of women involved with Girl Guides of Canada. I had a tremendous experience as a youth and adult member with that organization and learned a lot about leadership from some phenomenal women.
Once I started my career, mentorship took on a number of different facets. Certainly, I received informal mentorship from my supervisors and a number of executives at Fleishman-Hillard. The agency also had a formal mentorship program where junior staff members were matched with executives from another practice group. As I progressed through the ranks at the agency, I became a formal and informal mentor to others. The lessons learned and shared during this process ranged from operational insights about how the agency worked, to strategic advice for clients and ideas for personal and professional development.
Over the past few years, I've focused my mentorship efforts on my own team. I believe in the potential of the people on my team and work to help them achieve their goals. In addition to reverse mentorship (what you can learn by listening to the perspectives and ideas of people at different stages in their careers), I have informal mentors who are seasoned communications professionals with different areas of expertise.
As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?
Follow your heart and be true to yourself. Life is far too short to work at a job you hate. I think it is important to define what is most important in your life, and honour that through your career. No job is worth sacrificing your own happiness and satisfaction.
How do you integrate your personal and professional life?
My personal and professional life blends, certainly as it relates to the time I spend in front of a screen. I believe you make choices about your priorities. Those priorities change periodically throughout the day. If delivering a proposal for your client is the most important thing, you're going to put that first. On the other hand, if making a dinner date with your sister is your number one priority, you'll be sure to be at the restaurant. You can work all the time if you choose. You can also work on what's most important and leave the rest so you can have personal time. I try to blend my personal and professional life while achieving my goals and meeting my obligations.
What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?
I am a huge fan of music, so choosing one CD is next to impossible. This is the sort of question that I can debate for hours. In the interests of this exercise, I'll say OK Computer by Radiohead. Why? I love Radiohead and that album would remind me of happy times with family and friends.
For the movie, I'll say Pride and Prejudice (1996). I love the works of Jane Austin and this is my favourite adaptation.
What excites you about life?
Discovery – travel, new food, ideas, technologies, authors, artists… I'm excited by what's new and what's next.
What ideas can you glean from this interview?
Let's keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
About Leona Hobbs
Leona Hobbs is Vice President at Social Media Group. With over a decade of experience in public relations and marketing, Leona leads the Community and Measurement & Monitoring groups and provides social media and digital communications counsel to Social Media Group clients.
After completing her journalism training, Leona got her start at Fleishman-Hillard. During her seven-year tenure with the agency, she worked on a wide variety of clients in industries as diverse as Internet services, telecom, health care, consumer electronics, agribusiness, and food and nutrition. Most recently, Leona worked as Director of Marketing and Communications for Tucows, an Internet services company. She has also consulted with Yahoo!. A specialist in digital communications, Leona frequently speaks about Internet-powered communications to students and at conferences. She is an advisor to the Public Relations Program at Loyalist College and a volunteer organizer of Toronto Girl Geek Dinners and PodCamp Toronto.
Photo Credit: Rannie Turingan