Are you an influential thought leader?

…if not you, then who?

In our working life, the majority of us love making improvements and keep doing more and more that stretches us intellectually and professionally, in the quest of career progression and satisfaction.

However, with an abundance of information, growing competition, and changing economy, merely being good at what you do isn’t enough.

When you improve and rise above the norm, some become subject matter experts, some become influencers, and some become a thought leader. But hardly anyone becomes an Influential Thought Leader.

Why should you be the one?

Every industry and sector has a few people who are influential or thought leaders. There name always comes up in conversation, and they easily attract several opportunities without too much struggle. Their little involvement can make much positive difference.

However, the real positive difference makers are the ones who are influential as well as thought leaders. They have a double advantage.

Influential Thought Leaders enjoy a special status. People treat them with respect due to the value they bring as a thought leader as well as the influence they have as an influencer.

Others listen when they speak, they are in always demand, and often opportunities come to them without chasing.

Success requires the ability to have a positive influence. Anything that reduces your ability to create that positive influence is reducing your chances of success.

The three key ingredients

Being an Influential Thought Leader is more than knowledge or skills game. You must work on three critical aspects of Influential Thought Leadership. These aspects are — positioning, publications, and collaborations.

They get the positioning right

It is the first important step in maximising your ability to influence. How you articulate your value proposition to others is a key. Being able to consistently communicate what you stand for, your values and offering to the world has a profound impact on your positioning. Your positioning eventually determines why people should listen to you, and what do you have that they need.

Ask yourself — What are my values? What do I stand for? What can I offer that isn’t obvious? What can people learn from me? Everything you do and say must align with that. Authenticity is one of the critical characteristics of Influential Thought Leaders.

As your positioning starts to become more apparent, you will find that increasingly more people would begin to tune in to you. It is one of the good indicators of getting the positioning right. As more people start to tune in, they would want to work with you in various capacities and follow you. Having excellent positioning also enables you to clearly and consistently answer the most common question, “What do you do?”.

However, positioning does not mean having an excellent pitch. Your pitch can be different and will keep changing depending upon the circumstances. However, with your finely tuned positioning, it will always resonate with the next person.

When your positioning becomes more explicit, it shows up consistently in your online and offline persona. It helps further to strengthen your positioning and builds up an active profile.

They publish

Without any doubt, anyone with a good book carries some substance already. Publishing your ideas, relevant & useful content, and intellectual property regularly adds to your credibility.

However, where your ideas and content is published also plays a vital role in addition to who publishes them. Creating relevant, useful, thorough, elegant, and unique content can help in attracting potential collaborations and amplifying your message.

Depending upon the quality of your content, the level of perceived authority you have in your industry also increases. As a thought leader, your thoughts, ideas, and IP are your products. Thus, publications help in leveraging your value proposition commercially. More inbound opportunities come your way as your authority gets established along with increasing credibility.

They build collaborations

While excellent positioning and portfolio of publications can help you become a well-known subject matter expert, it would be highly limited. You must amplify your value proposition so that it reaches the maximum number of people to make a meaningful difference in your industry and everybody’s life.

By collaborating, you come across as an honest broker for making a positive difference.

Influential Thought Leadership is a brand; it’s your brand — you as a brand! And just like any other brand, you need to amplify it for increasing its impact.

Remember that, Influential Thought Leaders are not the ones who know something; they are known for knowing something.

There is nothing in the middle

As you look around, you will see that many people think or call themselves as thought leaders, but they are not necessarily the ones. Many people get two out of three principles right or just right, and yet that doesn’t make them Influential Thought Leader. There are three kinds of quasi-thought-leaders.

The first kind is the people who get the positioning right, and they do have several good collaborations. However, if they haven’t proven anything by publishing their thoughts, ideas, or IP or they don’t have good valuable and useful content out there, then it is a sheer waste of their positioning as well as collaborator’s time.

Then there is the other kind, who regularly publish much content in terms of blogs, videos, podcasts, and many other mediums. They also have access to various collaborations to maximise on their content. But then again, if they don’t stand for something substantial with their positioning that’s a problem. More often, you will notice that their positioning keeps moving in line with the trends in the market. They are simply trading their content to monetise from it, and may not add any value to their community, industry, or society.

The third kind is those people, who have got their positioning right, and they often publish excellent valuable content too. But then don’t actively go out to collaborate with others to spread their message and thought leadership. They remain subject matter experts or unknown geeks. A good valuable insight, ideas, and IP gets limited outreach and never makes a high positive impact.

The point is

Becoming a thought leader is a significant undertaking in itself. However, becoming an Influential Thought Leader is the real game where you get to make a substantial difference. Positioning, publications, and collaborations are the three crucial principles of Influential Thought Leadership.

These principles have a specific syntax for implementation. While working on any of these at random is possible, it is highly unlikely that they will yield any useful results if done at random. However, when you do it right, results can be astounding.

What is the point of having a strategy without execution?

Each one of us carries a mountain of value and can make a positive difference in the world. By taking the efforts to discover your intrinsic value and working across these three critical areas of Influential Thought Leadership, you can not only experience career acceleration but would also find the journey enjoyable, self-fulfilling and most satisfying.

Just like any journey, hereto, you need to take the first step. Most of us feel that we are not cut-out for all this; we suffer from the imposter syndrome and think that we are not valuable enough.

But then again, think — If not you, then who?

About the author: Anand is many things packed inside one person: a serial entrepreneur, an award-winning published author, a prolific speaker, a savvy business advisor, and an intense spiritual seeker.

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