Leadership by Walking, and Twittering, Around – Exhibit A, Cory Booker

Superhero with a Shovel

I’m delivering the diapers now. We will get her street soon RT @tmhester: @CoryBooker Highland Ave b/w My sis can’t get out to get diapers. 2:09 PM Dec 27th

“Just dug a car out on Springfield Ave and broke the cardinal rule: “Lift with your Knees!!” I think I left part of my back back there,” wrote @corybooker on Monday night.

Special thanks to: emergency workers, my chief of staff, sanitation workers & Dir of Neighborhood services 4 great work over the last 24+hrs

(Tweets from Cory Booker)

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It’s been over 40 years since my family survived Hurricane Beulah in South Texas.  And though I have seen snow in Dallas, I have never been through anything like the Snow Emergency of 2010 on the East Coast.  But out of this emergency comes one shining example of leadership.  Take a look at Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

Cory Booker heading out to work

He is demonstrating the characteristics of leadership in one massive moment of crisis.  He is out in front.  He is working with the people.  He is literally leading by walking around.  And he is using Twitter to describe what he is doing, what the workers for the city are doing, what neighbors are doing…  And he is responding to DMs (“Direct Messages”) on Twitter to send snow plows to specific streets, and hospitals – all while personally helping some of the people who ask for it, shoveling snow, and even delivering diapers.

Yes, the news reports are a PR dream for a mayor of a city in the midst of cutbacks.  But through it all, you get the distinct impression that Cory Booker actually wants to help real people in the midst of a very real crisis.

Leaders, most of all, show up to the people they lead in moments of need.  Leaderhip by walking around, now with the added tool of Leadership by Twittering around.  Not a bad model of a modern day leadership moment.

Here are just a few excerpts/descriptions:

On Wednesday, Mr. Booker ventured out in between meetings for another sweep of the streets, with a videographer from his political team and reporters in tow. He ordered his driver to pull over several times to help shovel out or push cars.
“Now that’s a mayor!” said David Roman, a mailman, as he watched Mr. Booker help Raffele Albanese, 80 years old, on Roseville Avenue.
(from the Wall Street Journal)

Newark mayor the ‘Hero of Snowpocalypse’
“I will dig you out. Where are you?” Those words were typed – Tweeted, rather – by Newark Mayor Cory Booker to a resident asking for help during the snow storm, one of the many examples of why Booker is being named the “Hero of Snowpocalypse” for his off-beat social media approach to handling the weather crisis.
(from MSNBC)

Sore-backed Newark Mayor Cory Booker uses Twitter to rescue citizens, dig out cars, deliver diapers
(from the New York Daily News)

And a couple of headlines — there are so many…

Social Media mayor becomes ‘superhero with a shovel’

Mayor Cory Booker: The Snow Storm Hero of Newark