What Does Effective Thought Leadership Looks Like

Being a thought leader does not mean sharing an opinion on everything all the time

Seems like everywhere you look, someone wants to be a thought leader on some subject. Speaking out is meant to give an advantage in leadership and drawing attention to what you have to say. But with so much social media proving exposure to so many insights, it is really important to know what and when to contribute to a public conversation. Understanding the differences makes the difference in identifying meaningful, inspiring thought leadership.

Thought leaders are assumed to be people with interesting opinions. While that is true, it runs a bit deeper than that. Thought leaders are people with informed opinions. They are meant to be the go-to people in a given field of expertise. Industry leaders consider them trusted sources whose comments can inspire people. The inspiration was meant to spark innovative ideas into reality.

Thought leaders have become popular because through their content and presence they command authority on industry-related topics. The distribution of their content has become easier thanks to social media. People can read and share videos that they feel are interesting and compelling. This puts a prominent spotlight on thought leaders. A real good thought leader makes a statement that resonates with people for a long time.

But in replicating thought leadership success, people have wrongly assumed that to be a great thought leader all they have to do is to share their thoughts without having the challenge of examining those ideas against a real-world business or production environment.

The end result is people conflating platitudes for meaningful theories. Consultants with significant expertise spend hours developing processes and then looking at ways of trying to implement those processes in a business environment, be it a small business or a multinational enterprise. Some concepts are understandably a hypothesis based on limited information, but thought leaders offering platitudes that lack value will often see major pushback that can damage a company image.

Many people are not intentionally issuing lightweight ideas. Sometimes people are “false beginners”, folks who are just discovering what the “rest of the class” discovered about a given topic. That kind of beginning translates into people trying to sort their ideas into more coherent concepts.

Other times an idea can come from someone so influential that it takes off without examining the process steps involved to make it a reality.

A great example comes from Steve Jobs, for example. Jobs mentioned the importance of passion in entrepreneurship during his public chat with Bill Gates at D8 in 2010.

Here is his quote from the video.

“People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing, and it’s so true. Because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard and you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it…you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people actually.

“If you really look at the ones that ended up being successful unquote in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t oftentimes it’s the ones that are successful loved what they did so they could persevere. you know when it got really tough. and then the ones that didn’t love it quit ’cause they’re saying right who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it. so it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly. If you don’t love it you’re going to fail so you got to love it. You got to have passion.”

That idea has lasted long after Jobs’ death, with many business people, from driven start up leaders to celebrated gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk, adopting variations of Jobs’ theme, that passion is a critical essential driver of success.

In recent years a counter thought has emerged from the ranks — passion is not really an essential factor for success. In a 2018 Inc post a Stafford University study explained the reasons why passion is not. A Stafford business professor, Professor Scott Galloway, argued a very good point that successful people often mention passion as a cliche that has no value in real life.

I suspect part of the reason for that cliche has been because of the enduring image that Jobs gave at the 2010 D8 summit, one of his last major public appearances. His words hit a nerve for people, to go do what they want. Add Jobs’ mystique, heightened further by his death, and it’s no wonder that entrepreneurs and social media influencers alike picked up on his message.

There are plenty of examples where leaders have spoken out on various issues. There’s nothing wrong with being a thought leader on a variety of issues, topics about which a leader feels passionate. But commenting on anything and everything is not necessarily a great thing. Even public servants should know when to say when.

Former President Donald Trump is a clear example. Instead of focusing on the economy and other issues, Trump often focused on what decisions companies should and should not be doing in an attempt to support his economic vision of building the American economy. Most times it created havoc and pushback.

For example, he snapped at Goodyear after a news report mentions that the tire manufacture was prohibiting MAGA hats at its facilities. The city of Akron, Ohio, the location of Goodyear headquarters, clapped back on Twitter, demonstrating that it would not be intimidated by Trump’s bluster. Moreover, it demonstrated another instance of Trump’s typical tyrannical-authoritarian approach towards news and current events without researching any meaningful details.

Another excellent example is the comments from the former CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman. Glassman resigned from the company he founded after tweeting a comment that made light of the death of George Floyd, the black man whose death at the hands of the Minneapolis police sparked multiple Black Lives Matter protests nationwide. The Guardian reported that Glassman also made follow-up controversial tweets on the COVID-19 pandemic. These tweets were not the first set of public comments — recordings of audio meetings surfaced with more controversial statements. Because of the tweet, CrossFit began to lose endorsements and partnerships, including Reebok and several gym chains.

Thought leadership is not just issuing a random unsolicited opinion on everything. It’s also about knowing when to STFU. Real thought leaders recognize when to not comment on issues where their comments are likely to not be well informed. The words from thought leaders are meant to challenge the status quo, leading to influential trends that others decide to follow. But not every word works that way.

Protecting thought leadership has become more of an imperative these days as the nature of being online has shifted. More and more people have adopted internet usage in their lives. Through social media people have started to speak out and say what’s on their minds, but it’s not necessarily a refined thought or one that’s been researched. The end result is having to sort through when people are just talking versus people who may be passing along conspiracy theories without vetting their information.