The Power of Thought Leadership

So I spend a lot of time reading the works of folks that I admire and following them online. And I spend a fair amount of time contributing to the conversations they're having, adding what I hope are thoughtful and insightful comments to threads. So somebody that I admire might post an interesting article on LinkedIn or whatever, and I'll add to the— I'll add to it. I'll add to the conversation. And then it occurred to me, That's a form of thought leadership. Hi, my name is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and I'm here to talk to you today about the power of thought leadership. I'm here to try to convince you that thought leadership is something that you should think about making part of your repertoire that you should think about helping you accelerate your career, drive your business outcomes, drive your business goals. So early in my career, I thought of myself as having 2 distinct parts. There was Peter the entrepreneur. I started businesses, I grew businesses, I sold businesses, et cetera. And then there was Peter the nerd. We didn't have the language and the term of thought leadership. So nerd was the term that we used. What did that mean? Well, I was somebody that was really passionate about consuming as much information that was of interest to me as I could, reading a lot of books, reading a lot of magazines, reading a lot of articles. We didn't have the internet in the 1800s, so this is what we were stuck with. And as an entrepreneur, I constantly came up with struggles and issues and problems. It might have been cash flow or leading people or managing people. And it occurred to me that someone else might have possibly had this problem before. So I would track down a book on leading people or cash flow or KPIs or whatever, and I would consume it as much as I could. But I never once asked myself, how do all of these books that I've read— how do those people make a living? How do they scale? How do they leverage? How do they monetize their thought leadership? Frankly, I didn't care. I paid my $20 for the book, got a nugget or two out of it, and applied it. Well, then about 20 years ago, I got brought in to do a turnaround at a communications consulting firm. This is a global company. They were in trouble. If you haven't been in the turnaround space before, that's when you bring in folks to sort of figure out if it's going to live or if it's going to die, if there's anything worth saving inside of this organization. I prefer building things. It's one thing I learned from that journey. But when I got on board there, I learned that the basis of the company, most of the work that they did on the communication side, was based on the work that a founder did 30 or 40 years before, based on a book somebody wrote. And then this light bulb went off and I'm like, wow, everybody that writes a book might have a business model. Let me start thinking about that. And it occurred to me that if I can merge those 2 things, the entrepreneurial drive and passion and ability to take risk and all those sort of things applied in a fairly narrow lens of how do you do that for thought leaders? And I found my lane and that's where I spend all my time now figuring out what is the right model, what is the right strategy, What is the right way to get that thought leadership out on behalf of an author, an academic, et cetera, so that it has greater impact in the world, so that it generates more income for them? And as a thought leader, you should start with a strategy. That strategy should give you insight into who you serve, how you serve them, how they choose content. It should give you insight into the business models that you want to use to deploy your thought leadership. It should give you The things that you need so that you have clarity. And once you have clarity, you can effectively prioritize all that you could do, would do, should do against a set of clear-cut objectives and goals. So before we dive into thought leadership and how to do it and strategies and such, let's take a moment to reflect on what is it. So far too often, I see people inside of an organization having a conversation around what they believe is thought leadership, But one person's talking about content marketing and another person is talking about subject matter expertise and another person's talking, talking about thought leadership. So let me share with you what my definition is, and it's fine if you accept it or if you don't. So my definition of thought leadership can be broken into 2 pieces. There's the thought and then there's the leadership. Where does thoughtfulness come from? True thought leadership is based in either research, your experience, observations that you've made, roles that you've been on, industries that you've been in. That's where the thought could come from. And then the leadership part is where you have the courage to add to the conversation, to add to the discipline. It doesn't need to be radical. It doesn't need to be the earth is round, the earth is flat. It could be, this is what most of us think today as leaders or as managers, whatever the case may be. And here's a little bit of an interesting perspective or a thought that I'd like to add to that. I think that's a great way to think about it. I'd like to add a model. I'd like to add a method. I'd like to add a framework. But I also need to acknowledge that I'm standing on the proverbial shoulders of giants, that many, many others have come before me and dedicated lots of time and energy and effort to polish ideas that we all appreciate today. And if you could add just a little bit to the conversation, that's a great way to think about being a thought leader. Thought leadership matters today for executives more than it ever has before. Let me break this down a little bit. We are all as individuals, as producers of product, as producers of services, as providers of professional services being commoditized. We just are, right? There's somebody out there, if we're honest with ourselves, that could do exactly what you do, maybe faster, maybe cheaper, maybe even better than you. And even if they can't, there's a perception that they can. So we're all being commoditized by definition. Commodities are things that we buy based on the lowest possible price. That's not a great place to be for most of us in our careers and in our businesses. So how do you fight commoditization? One way as a leader, as a senior leader, to fight commoditization for you and your organization is to put out high-quality thought leadership consistently, to get out your perspectives, to get out your point of views, to show that you have empathy to your clients and customers that you understand the struggles that you're going through, that you could take them to a better place, that you could show them based on your thinking and your organization's thinking and your models and your methods and frameworks into a little bit of a different direction, one that might benefit them, one that might help them, one might— that might help them see the world in a little bit of a different light. So thought leadership gives you a competitive advantage. Let me put it another way. If you don't practice thought leadership, you're leaving opportunity for others to have a competitive advantage. So let me let me think about this in two ways or share it with you in two ways. In a career, all things being considered, even if you love your current job, and I hope that you do, you probably won't be there in five or ten years. You're going to be in the job market at some point. Your future employer has three candidates to consider. They all look great on paper, great education, great. Great accomplishments, great career trajectory. They're reliable, they're trustworthy, great references. But one of them's been practicing thought leadership for 3 or 4 years. They're speaking at conferences, they're writing, they're putting out research. Who do you think's going to win? All things being equal, the practitioner of thought leadership brings so much more to the table, potentially for the same salary, maybe for even a bit more of a salary, to that potential employer. It shows that you have a point of view. It shows that you have a perspective. It shows that you can bring that organization into different places than they might not have been before without your thought leadership. And as an organization, think about it the same way. All things being considered, I have buying choices to make every day, B2B, B2C, whatever the case may be. If one entity is out there constantly putting out high-quality thought leadership and I'm considering them against 2 or 3 other competitors, how do I not choose that one? In many instances, actually, I might be following the thought leadership of a particular organization for years, but I'm not in buy mode. I don't need what they have. And when the time comes for me to buy, I'm not even considering these other 2 options. That's the only place I'm going to go. They've developed a rapport with me. They've got trust. They've got share of my mind space and share of my thinking. Why would I consider spending my dollars or my organization's dollars elsewhere when this is the organization that I follow, my trusted partner, my trusted advisor? for thinking on the issues that I'm struggling with. So often when we think about thought leadership and the benefits of thought leadership, we think about it externally. We think about, wow, we're going to differentiate ourselves or our organization in the marketplace. We're going to elevate our brand. We're going to attract new clients. And all that is true. But I want to take a moment and share with you some of the benefits that that has internally in the organization. So if you're going to practice thought leadership at the organizational level, Let's talk about that for a minute. Number one, there are people in your organization today that, given the right framework and a little bit of capabilities development, some tools, would love— they would love to share their ideas. They just don't have a platform to do it. They would love to add their insights. They would love to do some research. They would love to create social media posts or video or articles that are aligned with your organization's objectives. It creates a culture where We encourage people to share their ideas. It creates a culture where the innovation levels are increased. It creates a culture where we're retaining our high-quality talent because we're able to do things that we might not be able to do in another role or in another job at another company. So, huge benefit on culture, huge benefit on retention, huge benefit on creativity and innovation. So, where do you start as a thought leader? Here's where I would start. I would say, there are a few things that are more than interesting to you that really kind of gnaw at you in a good way that you're trying to— you're curious about, you want to learn more about. And some of those things are aligned to your organization or your team's goals and objectives. So narrow it down to say 3 or 5 things that are both interesting to you, because if it's not interesting to you, you cannot make it interesting to others and potentially beneficial to your organization. And start there. Just start. Start by thinking about everything that you put out initially as an experiment. Some experiments will fail, some will succeed. And a failure of experiment, putting out a short post on LinkedIn that doesn't go over particularly well, is not going to get you fired, right? But the learnings that you can get, the benefits that you can get by putting things out there and seeing how the market responds to it, seeing how the people that you care about the people that you serve respond to it, that's going to give you intelligence and insight, which is going to give you the directions you need to say that you want to know where to go deeper, to know where to expand your thoughts and ideas. So the key thing is to start, narrow it down to a few ideas, and have the courage that it takes to experiment by putting them out there. Thought leadership never grows if it doesn't see the daylight, if it doesn't see the sunlight. So one of the critical decisions you're going to have to make as a thought leader is to understand your audience. It's not about you. Separate yourself from this for a moment. You are trying to be of service to a couple of avatars, and a good avatar has some psychographic elements to it and some demographic elements to it. And you need to understand, you need to have some empathy and, and understanding and insight into how do they choose to consume content. Do they like it virtually? Do they like it short form? Long form? Does it need to have a lot of footnotes? What do they like? And the way they like to consume it might not be the way that you like to create it. And if that's the case, guess what? The burden and the onus is on you to close that gap and change your creation preferences, right? If you're afraid of video, have the courage to see the little red light and shoot some video. If you don't particularly like to write, get out in front of the keyboard and start to write. Start to get your ideas out there. Develop those capabilities. Put the content out there in the way that is aligned to how your avatars choose to consume content. So one of the things that you need to do as a thought leader when you're putting content out there is to commit to consistency. Consistency of cadence, right? So when you're putting things out there, you're going to understand your avatars, then you're going to come up with some sort of a cadence. I'm going to post on LinkedIn 3 times a week and put up 2 YouTube videos, or what Whatever that is, and there's some pros and cons into how you make those choices. We're not going to get into the hacks here, but once you make the commitment, stick to it. Because think of those publication commitments that you're making as a promise that you're making to your audience, as a promise that you're making to a future employer, as a promise that you're making to a future client. We don't want to disappoint and let people down. It takes a while for people to get into the rhythm of saying, oh, every Wednesday you do X. Every Tuesday you do why? They might not tell you with likes and shares that they're relying on you or they they're consuming it. But when you stop doing it, what you're sending is a signal that you're not a reliable person. You're not trustworthy. You're not consistent. And before I'm going to even engage with you on a deeper level, if you can't at least consistently get something out there every Thursday as as you say you will, that's going to you know devalue the The brand that you're creating, whether that's your personal brand, your team's brand, or your organization's brand. Most thought leaders think that the burden is on them to create all of the thought leadership that comes forth from their brains and their fingertips. That's just not true. One way to create thought leadership is to listen. Now, who you listen to and how you listen matters. I would suggest that as a thought leader, you know who else is out there that the people that you're trying to serve are following, that they respect, that they admire, and you follow them as well. And when they put up something that's interesting, you comment on it. And it, and the comment that we wanna see is not thumbs up, like, great article. That's useless. That adds nothing to the conversation. You wanna add a thoughtful comment. Maybe it's a paragraph, maybe it's 2. Doesn't need to be, uh, a chapter in a book, But something thoughtful. And it doesn't have to be totally in agreement with what they're doing. Be respectful, be courteous, because the internet's forever and it doesn't give you an excuse to not be courteous or respectful. But you might say, hey, really interesting article. I agree with A, B, and C that you said, but I have a little bit take on D that I'd like you to consider. And oftentimes what you'll see is the flow of comments that happen is where real thought leadership is happening, real interaction of ideas. Good, bad, better, building on each other, whatever the case may be. So by listening, uh, to others that are out there, that's going to feed your thought leadership journey. The other thing I would say with regards to listening is we tend to all get myopic. We tend to be specialists and stay laser-focused on our field. Start to take in information and thought leadership from another industry, from another field, from places you wouldn't normally go to, because The seams where 2 different industries meet or 2 different functions meet is where interesting things happen. If you could sort of balance 2 worlds, you get the insight from both and there's a higher probability that that's going to spark some creative thinking and insightful thought leadership that you can put out and share with your followers. Early on in the journey for many thought leaders, they take on a persona, right? They say that I am now going to be a keynote speaker, and everyone that I've observed that's a keynote speaker is overly charismatic, and they're over the top, and they have buzzwords, and they, they come out on stage, there's glaring music, and they try on that role, and it's not for them. It's inauthentic. It's artificial. That's somebody else's personality. My advice to those aspiring to be thought leaders is to be authentic. Find out what it is about what you already have that you can double down on. What is it that you can present to the world in an authentic way that will resonate? Now, it doesn't give you a pass for developing capabilities that you might need down the road. If you're not a great public speaker and you'd like to be a public speaker, you can learn to do that. But be authentic, right? If you're not a funny person, don't try to be funny. If you're not naturally charismatic, Don't fake it. Stick to your voice, stick to your your true you, and the audience will be able to pick that up. And they might not say, "Wow, that's not the most engaging person I've ever listened to," but they're authentic. And if they're at least being real, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and lean in for at least a moment or two to see if their ideas stick. And if their ideas are helpful to me, I'm going to I'm going to lean in again and again and again. And I'm not going to hook them. based on some phony persona that I've created every time I'm playing the role of the thought leader. So let's summarize a few ideas together. First off, you got to have a strategy. You must, must, must put a strategy in place. That strategy has to be really grounded in who you're trying to reach and how you're trying to reach them. That should be your sort of guiding light. That should impose some constraints on you. And constraints are really, really great. Constraints give you a narrower place by which to play as opposed to staring at the proverbial blank slate, right? So that's, that's a really key piece. Authenticity— really, really important to remain authentic. Consistency— people lean into people that are consistently delivering high-quality pieces, high-quality content. And thinking of everything that you do early on as an experiment. There will be ideas that you put out there that you look back on a year or 2 or 5 years and go, well, that was really dumb. And that's okay because there will also be ideas out there that got fed more, that got nourished more, that grew and grew and grew and grew. And if you never had the courage to put them out in the first place, they never would have seen the light of day. I also think that you need to make a commitment that thought leadership is important to you. That thought leadership is something that you enjoy, that thought leadership is beneficial to you in your career as well as your organization and your business's goal. So here's my challenge to you today. Start, period. Start thinking of yourself as a thought leader. Start behaving like a thought leader. Start acting like a thought leader and start creating thought leadership. If you don't start, you're never going to get anywhere, right? So make that commitment. Find an hour a week. That's all you need to do to start on this. Start researching something that's spinning around in your head. Start writing a little bit. Start playing with video. Just start. And by starting, you'll come to learn what you enjoy and what you don't, where you're good and where you might need some work. Some of thought leadership requires developing capabilities that you don't have. That's growth. That's good. Some thought leadership requires you to just do things that you're naturally and intuitively good at. That's good as well. It's the combination of developing some capabilities and playing to your strengths that's going to make you a great thought leader in the months and years to come.