How To: Grow As A Thought Leader
In the world of corporate buzzword bingo, thought leadership reigns supreme. From inter-office banter to introducing keynote speakers, it’s used in abundance to describe anybody who has a remotely alternative topical perspective. But what does being a true thought leader really mean – and how do you work at improving as one?
Forbes ran an insightful article at the end of last month explaining just that. Perhaps the most interesting point it’s author raised, however, was not in dropping another wiki-definition of thought leadership, but in his opinion that “…thought leadership is simply about becoming an authority on relevant topics by delivering the answers to the biggest questions on the minds of your target audience.”
Of. Your. Target. Audience. As he went on to explain, “…the key [for him] is that the agenda is set by your audience…so your level of authority is really determined by how well you answer those most important questions.”
This is what we focus on explicitly within our MeetTheBoss Roundtables – allowing thought-leaders to set their own priorities before balancing them out with the needs of the larger roundtable group – in turn, shaping a reciprocal agenda for 90-minutes of thought-leading conversation. And why does it work? Because it adheres to the fundamental principles of growing yourself as a thought leader.
As Michael Brenner, author of the Forbes article, highlighted – audience is key if thought leadership is your game. But your audience can only find you if you have a platform to be seen and heard. Let’s not forget here that your audience could be other thought-leaders (as is the case with our roundtables) as easily as they could be the aspirational masses.
Knowing what type of audience you’re trying to attract will make identifying the right platform(s) easier. MeetTheBoss Roundtables work for our attendees because they know that post-roundtable, they have the opportunity to enter into the TV channel as interviewees and begin to engage with both thought-leading and aspirational audiences alike.
The end goal here is to grow out audience pools and increase the number of eyes and ears focused on your content. And it’s your content that’ll get you noticed.
There’s a difference between content that stands out and outstanding content. You can market pretty much anything and give it a finite shelf life to stand out (with enough money and time on your hands), but outstanding content does so much more. It answers questions. It resonates. It excites. More than anything – dependent on its context – it stands the test of time and works extremely well for you as evergreen content.
But in order to produce outstanding content, you have to first identify what makes content valuable enough for your audience to consider it outstanding. Combining insight and experience with astute answers to the most relevant questions is always a strong starting point. It’s a basic recipe, but it’s one that’s proven to work.
Another ‘must have’ in producing outstanding content is research – and not just academic research. A big part of growing as a thought leader involves being able to map out the intersection of where the right questions and the best possible audience meet your strongest areas of expertise.
Naturally, academic and topical research will play its part, but there’s no substitute for deliberate positioning. To coin a Roman philosopher’s phrase, “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
This is a mistake too many thought leaders make at conferences offline; I’ve seen it myself and it’s extremely annoying. Picture the scene: An opening keynote with an unknown, supposed thought leader. Intros and applause out of the way and what happens ten minutes in – a pitch about how good his company is and how disruptive the services they sell are.
Don’t do it. If you’ve been given the opportunity to parade your worth as a thought leader – be it online or off – remember that your presence is the pitch. The audience sees you as a potential service to buy in to, so show them value and give them a reason to do so. If they wanted to know the history of your company, they’d read it on your website.
Of course, slipping in a line or three about your new book or training sessions won’t hurt – especially if you’re looking to use monetise yourself as a thought leader – but remember that answers and insight are what people are after.
What would you add? Drop your stories in the comment section below and we’ll put together a best practices blog in the near future.
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Adam has interviewed over 450 chief executives from Adidas to Zappos. He has spoken on communication, leadership, and innovation at several major conferences, for organisations as diverse as CA and CeBIT, and is Master of Ceremonies for a number of brilliant business events.