How Thought Leaders Can Thrive in a Digital World| Robert Hargrove | 567

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Robert Hargrove. He's the founder and CEO of Masterful Coaching and the co-director of the Harvard Leadership Research Project. He's the author of 10 books, including, uh, one of the world's most definitive books on coaching, which is Masterful Coaching. His clients include the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, Fortune 500 CEOs, European CEOs of the Year. He's been awarded the Medal for Distinguished Public Service, and he has led leadership weekends with over 30,000 people around the globe. So before we dive into the rest of his illustrious bio, I'd rather just talk to him because he's sitting right here.

Sounds very good. Who is that guy?

Yeah, I'm gonna introduce you to that guy later, Robert. But so, Short place I'd like to start is you're not new to this world of thought leadership, coaching, CEO work, etc., etc. You're not new to the world of writing books, right? Sense of the changes that you've seen, let's say, from when you wrote your first or second book to where the market is today. Let's stick on the publishing side for a little bit. What's the same and what's different?

Well, I went into— my wife had to go to the Apple Store last week. Which was a really great experience. And I ran over— there was, there was actually a bookstore, uh, across the way, one of these open space malls. And it was a Barnes Noble bookstore, and it was really, it was really great to go into, was really beautiful, except there was only one store, one chair in the entire store, and I, I was the only person sitting into it. I guess they don't want people using it as a library anymore. So, but what I noticed about all the books on the bookshelf for the— I, I looked at the sections that I like, business, politics, politics, history, was that the people that wrote those books, the ones I saw, were thought leaders. Uh, there was a book by David Petraeus, the general, on conflict since 1945. There was a book, uh, by Dr. Phil about how to retrieve our soul and stability in America, 10 principles. There were, there were, you know, quite a few books like that. It was really inspiring to look to. Then I go I get home and as I always do, I check my LinkedIn. Do you check LinkedIn on a regular basis? Yeah. And I see all this— God, I hate to say it— garbage in the goddess. Yeah. A lot of people who are taking stuff that I saw in Fortune and Forbes and Businessweek 30 years ago and putting it into a cheat sheet and presenting it as something new or interesting. Uh, you know, absolutely no thought leadership whatsoever. Just a regurgitation.

Stay there for a minute. There's a bunch there that I wanna push on. So one is maybe there's nothing new under the sun. I don't know if I agree with that, but you, you made the comment that every, you know, sort of book you saw was by a thought leader. So there's a chicken and an egg issue there, right?

Yeah.

Like, is it because they write the great book, they're a thought leader, or 'cause they write, you know, they're a thought leader, they write the great book, right? Because I would argue, or I would actually agree with you that the folks doing the cheat sheet of, you know, Tom Peters' Search of Excellence, you probably wouldn't hold in the same regard. Maybe there is some value in the curation they're doing, but it's not—

One thing is most of the people writing the cheat sheet have never heard of Tom Peters. You know, he's like from another generation. But I think what I was trying to say was, in order— 30 years ago, if you had to write a book, you had to— a business book, you had to be a thought leader. Here was— I just happened to have this here. My book, the first edition that came out, Masterful Coaching. I was a thought leader.

By the way, note to everybody else out there that's an author, always just happen to have your book handy.

Just happen to have it handy. There's 3 things I'm usually missing, my book, a pen, and a business card. Exactly. But anyway, so—

And those of you under 40, Google business card. That's a whole—

So you had to kind of be a thought leader. The Maximum Coaching book was designed to take coaching from the world of sports to the great game of business. Because first of all, there were no executive coaches out there, and most of them were— if they were out there, were just focused on psychology. So I said, right, how can we use coaching to help people realize an impossible future that's equivalent to the Super Bowl or the NBA Finals? So I'm just using that as an example. So now when I go on LinkedIn, I see these cheat sheets with warmed-over refried information. That's sort of like 30% of the content. And another 30% of the content is people who are trying to market, who are marketing services to grow your LinkedIn, grow your brand. And they're getting more response than anybody else. And usually what they tell you to do is boil Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Schopenhauer down to 10 bullet points. If you can't boil it down to 10 bullet points and get 15 comments and 36 likes, you're a failure. So I think, I think I, what I really see is a decided movement away from thought leadership to, to mass marketing.

Well, let me, let me, let me push on a couple of things.

Go ahead. Go ahead.

So one is there may be, well, there is a trend from long form to short form. So you and I probably grew up in an age where if you, sort of tripped over someone in your travels, read a little nugget somewhere, an article, you'd actually buy their book and read the entire book, right? And then you would get a sense of who they are, how they think, do I agree with them? Do I not? What can I take away from them? Now, for many folks, the equivalent of how do I get a quick hit of information is I'm standing online on Starbucks and I have 17 seconds before they call up my latte. Oh, let me educate myself and scroll away and get a little nugget. That's not the same, right? Because you, you're not reflecting on that. You're not internalizing those quick things as you would when you literally immerse yourself in a book. You know, you mentioned the, the chairs at Barnes Noble.

They— there's only one chair, right?

So that used to be the best. That used to be my favorite place in the world to like kill an hour. I hate—

you know, to be honest, I would go there and take my phone and take a picture of some page I liked.

Oh, I never did. But, but to sit in a comfy chair with a cup of coffee, you know, grab a book off the shelf, read it for 10 minutes and go, yeah, I think I'm gonna buy that, you know, or, or, or not. But, but anyway, so one, one point I wanna make is it could be that one of the challenges that thought leaders have today is you're fighting the dopamine and the attention span. How do you get your hit, your points across quickly and effectively? The second sort of reaction I've got to what you're saying is You and I are both throwing the term around thought leadership. How are you defining it? Because I think oftentimes what happens is you're having a conversation with someone around thought leadership and they're, you know, they're talking about pepperoni pizza and you're talking about ice cream. So how do you, how would you define it?

I think, I think thought leadership has to do with presenting a big idea or 1, 2, 3, 4 big ideas that when you communicate that idea, It's eye-opening, it's brain-tingling, it's paradigm-shifting.

Do they have to be proprietary, new, unique, your idea?

I don't think it really has to be. I actually don't think it has to be original, but it has to be a little different or better than what was out there. For example, I read a book a couple of weeks ago by Marty Neumeier. Have you ever heard of him? Yeah. He wrote a book called The Brand Flip, and he flipped around the idea of what it is. This is an example of thought leadership. Most people think that a brand is your logo, or your brand is your Super Bowl ad, or your brand is your advertising. He said that a brand is actually the gut feeling that people have inside them about you. What's the gut feeling that people have? So when you start thinking that a brand is the gut feeling that people have inside them about you, your company, your products and services, that, that, that thought changes the way you think about your business. It changes the way you think about strategy. It changes the way you think about strat—

I, I, I think you're right. I think, you know, you— there's a vibe that you get walking into a Walmart that's aligned with the brand Walmart. Walmart, how much stuff can you get, how cheaply, versus Apple, which is cool and slick and clean, and, and, and everyone that is serving you knows the product as an evangelist and loves the product, as do typically most Apple users.

I mentioned I went into the Apple Store with my wife, right? And I had a really great experience in there. The way all the employees talked to us, we actually had some problem with their iPhone. We had a great— now, I don't ever see any Apple ads anyplace, but the way that company interacted with us gave us a very good gut feeling. So what I'm saying is I don't see a lot of thought leadership on social media. I see a lot more thought leadership in the bookstore. And I think there's still probably, though it may be difficult, a market for books that contain thought leadership. Last week I read a story by Tom Friedman, the columnist in the New York Times. And the interviewer said, hey, well, your articles are a little bit long. He said, well, the New York Times has 10 million viewers, 10 million readers. If you write something that's good enough that contains thought leadership, then people are gonna read it. So I'm, I'm more along that.

I would say yes.

Or maybe making mistake. I don't know.

I, I would say yes. And I think it, some of it is personal preference where, you know, there, there's those that will watch a TED Talk, 18 minutes, 12 minutes, whatever, and say, wow, that's awesome. And then choose to go deeper, buy the book, you know, read 400 pages, whatever. And then there are those that will read the book and make that commitment. But I, I do like—

a good point. Let me just insert that. Yeah, you don't have to— you don't— to be a thought leader, you don't have to have a book. You could have, uh, you could give a speech, a TED Talk, you could be on this podcast, you could write a, a post, you could do a lot of different things.

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If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So I want to go back to sort of some of the language you were using around definition of thought about leadership is, you know, unique ideas, interesting ideas, et cetera. So I look at it as sort of two, there's two sides to the coin. There's thought. So regurgitating someone else's stuff might be useful to some, but the, it doesn't require a lot of thought, right? For me to go and Google 10 Winston Churchill quotes, they might be charming and they might be witty and they might, you know, whatever, be new and, and, and eye-opening to someone that's never seen them. But that doesn't require any thought on my behalf, right? No. That's just hacking, right? And then the leadership piece, and I think this is more where you were going, is it, it also doesn't take any leadership or any courage. It would take more leadership for me to take some Winston Churchill quotes and say, wow, and here's where he totally got it wrong, or here's where I agree and, and add something to the thinking.

So it's that, I think that leadership piece is missing for many where it's like, well, that's a good point you make because I noticed on social media it's very, difficult. You're not supposed to say anybody did anything wrong or anybody had the right— that didn't have the right idea.

No, I don't actually agree with that. I think that the— I think there's a lot of opportunity to do that, but you have to do it in a civil way. Like, if you write something and I don't agree with it, my first response, right?

Yeah, right.

Robert's a moron, which is what people do on social. It's to be, hey, Robert, appreciate the, you know, the energy and the work you put into this. But let me tell you where my thinking diverges from yours and why. Not just, you know, opinionated whatever, but you got this right and here's where I think a little bit differently. And whether my objective is to convince you to change your mind, which it shouldn't be, or just share my thoughts, I think part of what's missing is the civility in, in exchange of ideas.

Let me, let me build on your idea a little bit. I came across an interesting post on LinkedIn the other day by Ray Dalio, the hedge fund manager who wrote a book on principles. He's become popular. He's become like the Timothy O'Leary of 2024.

Transparency. Yeah, right.

So, so he said there are two, there are three kinds of people. The first is people who take a stand. And he said our society is on the verge of a civil war. America's on the verge of a civil war. So there's three types of people. The first is people who take a stand for one side and fight. He said the second is people who avoid, who pretend the conflict isn't happening and avoid it. And he said the third kind is coming to what you're saying, Peter, is people who nurture a respectful dialogue. He said the third kind, which is the fewest number, are people who nurture a respectful dialogue with people on the other side and build shared, who have a different view or perspective and build shared understanding that leads to something new. So that's, that's what I think. That to me was an example of thought leadership, by the way.

Yeah. No, I, I think that's right. I think, you know, one of the things I counsel my clients to do is, you know, you mentioned, you know, you don't have to write a book. I agree with that. I mean, many thought leaders do. There are plenty of other ways to express your ideas. One of the things that I, I advise clients to do early on is, you know what, go find others out there in a space that you're in that you admire, that you respect, et cetera, and put thoughtful comments on their post because think about the audience that person has, right? It's smart people following someone they admire. And, you know, a comment that says, hey, nice post, Robert, is meaningless to me. That's, that's filler. That means nothing. But if it's, hey, I really enjoyed it and here's why, or like I said earlier, I don't agree with you and here's why, people start to notice like, hey, who's this guy commenting? Or who's this gal commenting a lot? They actually have a perspective. And sometimes those conversations that happen in the commentary on social are equal to or better than the original post. If you get some good, engaging, respectful—

actually, again, to build on your idea, I've been using that same approach on social media. I'm posting less and commenting more, and I find this creates a relationship with people. And following your example and doing just— I would recommend to any of your— to your audience. By the way, let me ask you a personal question. When you're on this podcast, how do I refer to the audience? Because I prefer to say you— I'm talking to you. Or do I refer to the audience as the audience, which is a kind of third person category?

Whatever you prefer. I mean, my, my, my, one of my visions for the podcast has always been it would be like if the two of us were sitting in a Starbucks in person, having, having a cup of coffee and a conversation, and the person sitting next to us was sort of eavesdropping. That's always been my, like, it's just a good conversation.

So, well, I, I think you're absolutely right. And As you were talking, that's what I was thinking. Let me just take off on this a little bit. Yeah. So I'm somewhat new to podcasting and I had it in my mind that in order to do a podcast, you have to have something brilliant to say every second and every word.

Because I'm far from brilliant. Far from.

Every word that comes out of your mouth has to be of value. And I said, and I'm starting to realize that the most important thing is how you and I interact. Like your Starbucks example is fantastic. And secondly, not how brilliant what I'm saying is, but what— how brilliant the thoughts that people having in their own head are. How are we impacting other people's thinking? So as we're talking, I hope people out there are, are taking this on board and really— and what we're saying is really helping them.

Yeah. And it's a little bit of, you know, show your work in math, right? If I gave you a math math problem, you give me the answer. But now the way kids are taught math is show the work. And, and the showing of the work, meaning the showing of the thinking, is as important or, or greater or, or more important than did they get the answer right, right? How did they—

that's exactly what I was trying to express, but not as articulate— articulately as you, Peter. You're a podcast maestro, I can tell.

A maestro? There we go.

Well, I appreciate it.

Podcast— I'm a CEO Whisperer and you're a podcast maestro. CEO and entrepreneur. How is that for—

I like that. I like what you just did.

And I'm sure that as people are listening to this, something that, that you said or I said opened someone's eyes, opened their mind, shifted their paradigm. At least I hope that's what, what's going on. Yeah.

And I think, I think that's kind of the whole point is, you know, so I, I, I listen to podcasts all the time. I'm at the gym, in the car, whatever. And I don't need to agree or disagree with everything I hear. I, I, I wanna get a nugget. I wanna get an insight. I wanna get something that, that sort of shakes me out of the, the intellectual trance.

Who are you now? Tell me, who are some of your favorite podcasts that you listen to? I'm looking for some—

I like a lot of the behavioral economic stuff. I like Malcolm Gladwell. I like Adam Grant. Uh, I like NPR. I mean, and then some of the, the, um, what do they call those? Like the miniseries that they do, but usually more anything in, in, um, uh, Katie Milkman. Uh, so I tend to gravitate towards the sort of fun dorky academics that can actually make a point in non-academic language.

You know, again, we have something in common. I really like Adam Grant. I'm always quoting his book, The Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. That's a thought leadership angle. I consider myself an original, not a conformist. It's not always easy to be an original. I like Malcolm Gladwell's stuff, but I actually find their writing much more brilliant than their podcasts.

Yeah. And there's some that go the other way. There's some that the writing is dry, but the, the, the way they bring it to, like, I'm an awful writer. I mean, the reason I've, I've focused so much of my time and energy on the podcast is quite frankly, cuz I'm a crappy writer. I used to do a lot of blogs and on a good day they'd be mediocre. And most days weren't. This is more fun.

If you listen to, uh, Scott Galloway, what, what, what do you, I shouldn't ask you what you feel about it, but, uh, what, what did, how do you feel?

I like him. I, you know, I, I think sometimes he's overly theatrical, but I think he's really smart and I like it. And I like the, the that he has on there. That's one of my regulars.

Now let me ask you a question that— now, aside from these podcasts, what are you trying to do and how could I help you? I bet no one's asked you that.

No, people ask me that. I mean, as it relates to the podcast, this was great. I'm just looking for—

to your business and to the podcast and your business in general.

Yeah, I mean, to me, the podcast is about having great convers— it's, it's one, selfishly, it's a way for me to learn every time I have a conversation with people smarter than me. You buy yourself a microphone for $80 and you're a podcaster. Now I've done 560 episodes, so I've actually committed to it. So it, you know, if people learn from it, people take something away and ultimately down the road at some point, if they need some help, then they maybe they come back. So that's the goal.

And come back for what? More podcasts?

Well, either more podcasts or ultimately to, you know, retain, uh, myself and or the firm, you know, my company. To help them crack the code on their thought leadership, how to scale it, how to leverage it, how to monetize it, all the things that I spend all day doing with clients.

Oh yeah. I think you told me you're very good at helping people who are thought leaders or, or have maybe built a, an individual, uh, coaching or consulting practice, uh, scale their business.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But we, we can return to an infomercial at another time cuz I tend not to self-promote on here. Um, I appreciate your time as we're wrapping up, Robert, cuz we're hitting the, the, the magic, uh, bottom of the 20 minutes here. Any tips or thoughts to someone who's on the trajectory that you were on 20 years ago? So maybe to yourself 20, 25 years ago, there's, there's a—

well, you know, I, I would say you, you, you look at this, this book, Masterful Coaching. Write a book that has some thought leadership. Don't write a book by ChatGPT that just has an outline and a bunch of bullet points. Okay? The same would apply to a speech or a podcast or anything else. All right.

Put in the work, put in the reps. Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today, Robert. This was awesome. Thank you.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.