Improve the Quality of Your Thinking
“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” Voltaire
Really thinking things through
OK, so you have read the books and articles. You have watched the videos. You have consumed lots of information on the subject you need to have ideas about. Time to do your own thinking now. That’s right — your own thinking. Although you may be surprised to hear that you don’t have to do your own thinking on your own. You can get help, you can discuss things with other people (sometimes called “thinking out loud”) or you can clarify your thinking in journals, social media interactions and blog posts. The key thing is that you move from The Thoughtful leader watching, reading and consuming, to crafting, producing and sharing.
Not content with content marketing
You may have heard of the term “content marketing”. It has become very popular, and some people even equate it with thought leadership. Here is an excerpt from a popular LinkedIn article I wrote on this topic: I am not really content with the phrase “content marketing” to describe putting your best thoughts and ideas out into the world. First of all, content can mean anything and can be of dubious quality. All kinds of things can be called content. Even the phone book contains content.
Secondly, marketing is too broad a discipline to describe sharing your key messages via writing, speaking and multimedia. Marketing strategies all depend on putting out some kind of content, so I don’t see what the big deal is.
And finally, business leaders don’t really have time to do marketing of any kind, right? Some people believe that leaders should outsource time-consuming things like writing. But then what about speaking and videos? It’s not yet possible to outsource those, just like it isn’t
possible to outsource your idea generation or your thinking. Not if you really want to be an inspirational leader.
Very few people have time to sift through more and more material that adds little to no value or original thinking. The metaphor I used in my book 24 Carat BOLD is finding a needle in an ever-increasing haystack, something sharp and to the point, yet very rare. The situation only seems to have worsened over the past five years.
So, what is the answer for the aspiring thought leader? A total, unapologetic commitment to discovering and delivering your very best, bold and opinionated messages. Messages that show people what you’re really about. Messages that rock the boat if necessary. Every week, just a few articles, blogs and books really cut through the noise and impress me. I love finding those needles. I constantly challenge myself to put only needles into the market and not add to the haystack. Do I succeed every time? Of course not, but my intention is to get sharper all the time.
Please think about the way you use the word content. Content is everywhere; there’s a glut of it and very little of it changes the world. Think twice and then think again before putting any more content out there. Shape and craft something truly interesting, amazing even. Something that others will call “thought leadership”.
What if?
Some of the best questions start with “What if”. It is a question we should ask more — of ourselves, of our situations, maybe even of the universe? It is a question that begins to stretch the boundaries of what’s possible. It disrupts the standard or obvious response, which requires no thinking. Asking “what if” and several other important variants liberates your mind in ways that most people never experience.
So, even if you have a decent amount of clarity around your idea, test it by asking several different “what if” questions. For example:
“What if it could only work in a certain way?”
“What if it were inside out, upside down,backwards?”
“What if the opposite were actually true?”
“What if my life depended on this?”
Now, come up with at least three more prompts for your thinking, all starting with “What if…”
“What if…”
“What if…”
“What if…”
Push your thinking
“Push your thinking” is a term we use at my companies with our clients. It stands for pushing yourself, and it also implies that you don’t allow yourself just one or two obvious responses to a question or solutions to an issue. If you found you could only come up with one or two answers to the above “What if” questions (if you even did the exercise!) then you may need to learn to push yourself a bit more. It only takes a few minutes longer, and the more you push yourself, the more interesting and exciting answers you can come up with.
Don’t settle for the easy answer or the cliché. If you have a mentor, a good coach or a mastermind group, you can get someone else to help you push your thinking and hold yourself accountable. Don’t settle for anything less and don’t let yourself off the hook! This is where you get traction and where you separate yourself from the pack as a thoughtful leader, sharing true thought leadership with the world.
You can read further in The Thoughtful Leader (£12.99, Panoma Press) by Mindy Gibbins-Klein
