3 Steps to Thought Leadership
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Thought Leadership
Leaders attract followers in order to pursue shared interests. If you claim to be a leader but no one is following; you are just taking a stroll through the park. One of the goals of leadership is to attract followers.
The key to that is to influence thought.
Today I want to share with you some thoughts on how to influence thought and in doing so attract followers and ultimately influence others. If you can’t influence others are you really a leader?
Leadership is a lifelong process. There is no one set time of arrival. No good leader would say, “I arrived at optimal leadership at such and such day”. It is a continuous stream of adjustments, learning and framing thoughts and surroundings. Leadership is a lifetime of lessons. It is not a set of do-it-yourself correspondence courses that can be worked through in a few months or years. - Robert Clinton: The Making of a Leader. Let’s unpack some ideas on what it is to influence others.
Thomas Jefferson. Influencer.
“Jefferson had a remarkable capacity to marshal ideas and to move men, to balance the inspirational and the pragmatic,” writes biographer Jon Meacham.
Jefferson preferring to befriend and reason with others instead of fighting and arguing with them. Jefferson transformed what would have been a mere political documents into a proclamation of America’s ideals.
Thomas Jefferson
Winston Churchill. Influencer.
Historians say Churchill was an effective leader because of his ability to inspire people; his unique strategic insight; his passion; and his strong personality. He had the capability of inspiring people, even in the middle of one of the darkest times of human history.
Thought Leadership Process
Create and Define your “What If” future.
As a future leader and influencer of people in family, business, economics or other; you need to start by creating the outlines or frames of your “What if” future. The goal of this is to become the go-to person in your particular niche. You may not have all the credentials or knowledge yet to be a thought leader but through this process you'll attain credentials and expertise by the actions you take to bring about that future. Your “What if” future should be exciting and energizing and inspires both you and other potential followers.
“What future am I committed to making happen in this arena?
What future do I stand for? What will I work to change or remove?
What must I work to prevent from happening? What must no longer be allowed to happen?
What “way it's always been done” is no longer the way it should be done?
What do people not know yet that they must be informed about?
What amazing transformation has already occurred that I know about and that needs to be shared more broadly?
What legacy do I want to leave?”
2. Identify Trends
Trends are the larger conversations, the big ideas, the popular things happening being talked about right now. How might current trends benefit or hinder you? If you know the current trends, you can inspire others to think in new ways, and beyond these boundaries.
What economic trends may help or hinder me?
What local, regional, national, and global political trends might impact me?
What are the technological trends? What technology advancements will be needed to bring about my ‘What If Future’?
What client, customer, vendor, market, and industry trends will impact my ‘What If Future’?
What trends can you buck? Meaning what trends can you ignore, or not pay attention to? Bucking the tend may help people question the status quo and view things in a new light. To make a difference you need to find new ways of approaching the problems or opportunities ahead. You'll have to push out of your normal boundaries and explore many different paths; inspire in yourself and others divergent paths of thinking.
Reframe your thought
3. Frame or Reframe Thought
A frame is a mental model—a set of ideas and assumptions—that you carry in your head to help you understand and negotiate a particular “territory.” A frame is a way of thinking about a situation.-Reframing Organizations, Lee G. Bolman & Terrence E. Deal
Frames define the questions we ask and solutions we consider.
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu: “Many options bring victory, few options bring defeat, no options at all spell disaster”.
Think like this to start reframing your situation to get a new perspective.
“What is the sum of 5 plus 5?” The only right answer is “10.”
“What two numbers add up to ten?” Many more options right?
“If I had a problem to solve and my whole life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty‐five minutes determining the question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in five minutes”-Albert Einstein
Asking the right question helps to break frames.
“There is nothing so confining as the prisons of our own perceptions”-William Shakespeare