I know, I know, you hate management speak and trendy buzzwords but these days it is hard to be different and get properly noticed for what you do and what you can offer clients, especially if you are a small business working hard to grow.
HubPages has a great article on Thought Leadership. They define “A “Thought Leader” someone who is not only recognized by others as an innovator of ideas, but has the confidence to promote the ideas they created. This quality is often called “Thought Leadership”. The thought leadership process includes coming up with ideas, dissecting them, and developing a plan to promote them. It also includes the final execution of a plan for the idea to come to live. In general, thought leaders do not need to be well financed, but they should have a good reputation. This is because effective thought leaders need to have a good reputation so that others will back their ideas and hear what they want to say. In reality, if you’re a thought leader with a good reputation, companies large and small will recognize and respect your views. “
So I went searching for tips on how to develop your thought leadership skills, gain the trust of others, and boost your reputation.
I found two lists and they couldn’t be more different. Let’s take a look.
List #1 – Five Tips from Paul Dunay, Global Director at Bearingpoint
- Start by defining a clear objective – Most thought leaders become thought leaders because they have a desire to educate the folks that follow them.
- Pick your spot - There are always just a few thought leaders in every industry and/or field of study so pick a spot that you can differentiate yourself with.
- Find your voice – We can’t all be Hemingway. Don’t try to write like someone else, find your own voice and don’t try to change your demeanor.
- Don’t try too hard – Thought leaders genuinely influence others by creating, advancing and sharing their ideas. Thought leadership is not what you say or write. It is a state of being. Use your content as your attraction vehicle.
- Lather Rinse Repeat – you can’t just write one blog post and call yourself a thought leader – it comes with persistence, it comes with passion about a particular topic and it comes with dedication to continue to publish and publish often.
List #2 – Hubpages Tips on Thought Leadership
- Be innovative - Being innovative means you should be capable of providing ideas and plans that are better than the other ones in the market. If your idea is brilliant, then surely you will be recognized as a thought leader. The basis of thought leadership lies with concept of generating new ideas, communicating them and finally,implementation. But all thought leadership roads start with innovation, so hone that skill first before anything else.
- Be generous – The key facet of thought leadership is to gain a reputation. What’s a better way to gain a reputation than being generous with what you have to offer. In the early stages, it’s perfectly reasonable to share the ideas you have with others as a way to prove that you have ideas worth paying for later.
- Communicate well – Quite often, brilliant ideas are lost because they are not presented in an appropriate or conducive way. Communication to convey your idea must be done with lot of clarity for people to understand your idea and accept it. Polish your communication skills and you’ll find a more attentive audience to your ideas.
- Increase the visibility of your idea - Use the different media available at your disposal to spread your ideas. With blogs and social media, it is very easy to spread ideas for low or no costs. This can help you boost your reputation and raise your profile online, building a sort of fan base that looks forward to what you’ll come up with next.
- Learn to take constructive criticism - Every idea has its critics. This is not necessarily bad. Human nature often makes you overlook your own mistakes. But critics can point out problems in your ideas that you probably did not think of. Answering critics helps to build reputation, but you must respect these critics and think about the criticism as well. If possible, use the criticism to improve on your ideas. A good thought leader listens to outsiders before finally implementing ideas.
Learning from the Master – John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
There is also a fantastic 15-page interview of legendary venture capitalist John Doerr and it covers a range of topics and perspective on becoming a thought leader and the lessons he learned along the way.
Here is an excerpt on how he says you can become a thought leader:
“You have to be passionate. You have to really like what you’re doing. It cannot be a task. It cannot be a chore. It has to be something that you really care about doing. Because it’s ongoing, because it’s something you’ll always be doing, if you feel like it’s a task or a chore, eventually you’ll get burned out and tired of doing it. So I would say, without really caring about it, it’s not going to happen.
I would also say there has to be a certain intellectual curiosity about whatever you’re writing about or doing. You have to want to understand what’s going on, learn how something works, what makes a difference and then put it all together… because you can’t fake this.
Another big thing is being willing to take a risk. Starting a business was a risk. With any of these things, you’re putting yourself out there. You write an article, you put it out there, and people write back to you. As I said before, the worst thing is if nothing comes back to you. I’d rather get bad feedback than none at all. At times, my writing style is a little irreverent… but you have to be willing to take that step, not just say what everyone else is saying.”
Bottom Line Lessons?
Reviewing these and tons of other articles on Thought Leadership and what it takes to become one I come from away with the following:
- Gotta love what you do, people will see the passion but don’t over do it or you will turn people off
- If you are the one spreading the ideas then when people come to learn they will find that you are the one speaking and the one to learn from
- Be unique, listen intently and just get started because no one will do it for you
What did you learn? How will you apply it? Leave a comment and discuss.
Photo Credit: istockphoto
