Welcome to the podcast Just Saying. My name is Joe McCormack. I'm your host. In our podcast episode this week, I'm gonna ask who's in charge? Are you a thought leader or a thoughtless leader? If you're new to the podcast, I'm super happy that you're here. This podcast is all about helping you become an intentional communicator. And the podcast is based on the books, brief, Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less, Noise, Living Leading When Nobody Can Focus, and Quiet Works, Making Silence the Secret Ingredient of the Workday. When I wrote these three books together, they form a trilogy called Clarity at Work. And if you want more information about that, you can get it at thebrieflab.com. I am really, motivated to do this podcast today because it's been something that I've been thinking about for a while. Because thought leadership is a term that you hear, and people throw it out there like, I wanna be a thought leader. It's almost like an aspiration. And it's a pretty common term, but I I would say that it's probably way more aspirational than actual for people. And when I go back to my days in marketing and public relations and working in the media, I had so many clients that put that as one of their goals is I wanna be a thought leader. What prompted me this week to do the podcast was a conversation I had with somebody and they're like, I wanna be a thought leader. And it got me thinking like, oh, okay. Well, what would that actually look like to be a thought leader and what does that really mean? First and foremost, what it means is spending a lot more time thinking because you're a thought leader. Your thoughts are different than other people's thoughts. And you start to think about thought leaders in who come to mind. You know, you've got like guys like Adam Grant and Brene Brown and CEOs, you know, like Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, maybe Richard Branson talking about entrepreneurship, or you might have your own thought leadership people that you go to. You'll often find them on social media, like in LinkedIn, and they have large followings and they post things. Patrick Lencioni is one of one of mine. He's he's wrote a number of books that are really great books. He started a company called The Table Group. And really, he is, you know, he is, I think, a true thought leader. And there's many different shapes and sizes of thought leaders, and you can have them in different segments. You can have them in business, in psychology, in military strategy, and you can have it in the environment, in economics, in theology, in philosophy, and a whole host of different, areas. But the question is, are you a thought leader? Do you wanna be a thought leader? Or are you a thoughtless leader? And what do I mean by that? Well, a lot of people wanna be thought leaders, but they don't do enough thinking and it requires quite a bit. So as I take you through some considerations here, what I want you to to be thinking about is you might operate in a domain where you actually have a perspective on a topic that could help lead others to change, to evolve, to establish new guidelines, standards, directions of industries, organizations, where people might look to you for thought leadership. They may look for you for this perspective about what's coming. Friend of mine who wrote the forward to the book Noise, a guy named Mike Bechtel, is the chief futurist at Deloitte. Really smart guy, great guy. And I'm gonna be seeing him in a few weeks. When he wrote the the, the forward to noise, you know, more than five years ago, he was just assuming this role, at Deloitte as a chief futurist, which that's that's a pretty heavy job, you know. So he's people are looking for him for guidance and direction about the future. He spends a lot of time talking about things like AI. In fact, it's a big platform. So when you think about about thought leadership, it does require a lot spending a lot of time thinking. Let's use that as the starting point. And I'm just gonna walk you through kind of five areas where if a person, has a role or desires a role or sees you may see yourself or a person that you know in a role of thought leadership, what do you need to be thinking and doing in that role? Well, number one is you have to have a clear and compelling perspective. That perspective on a topic needs to be well thought out, it needs to be well conceived, it needs to be compelling. Why? Because you're leading people in how you talk about that, so it's gotta be compelling. And the ones that I've seen and referenced earlier, they're more, you know, you've got, like, Reid Hoffman, who's the cofounder of LinkedIn, and there's a whole host of them. I'm sure you have lists right now as I'm talking about this in in the area of thought leadership. Maybe you you're one of them. Is what is your perspective? What do you think? Because people wanna know. What what your expertise and how does it translate into, you know, what's to come or what's happening or why things happen in this way. So number one, a clear and compelling perspective. Second one is credible experience. If you want to do this or you feel compelled to do this or you feel like you're qualified to do this or somebody, what experience do you have? And is that experience related? Is it relevant? Is it is it believable? So having some life experience. This conversation that I had recently with this person, clearly, there was some life experience, but not a lot. There was limited life experience. Well, I would think that that thought leadership would run thin when that person couldn't go back on now I don't mean that a person has to be old or have been doing something for forty years, but having some body of experience in an area to give you credibility would be critical. The third thing is just consistent outreach. I think consistency over time is a big consideration. You can't just talk about something and then stop talking about it. You have to be knowledgeable about it, experienced in it, but willing and committed to be talking about it and leading in this area for a while. So let's say a person is wants wants to be a thought leader in, I don't know, the oil and gas industry. Well, there's gotta be some consistency in talking about the topics. So those person those people would be maybe writing a blog, maybe recording a podcast, writing news link LinkedIn newsletters, articles, white papers, giving speeches, going to conferences, but consistently over time. You can't just show up and you wanna talk about, I don't know, the future of electric aviation as a thought leader and you just do it once. Right? You probably need to join associations or be part of networks or be connected to other people that are in that industry, but over over a span of time. So I would say consistency and consistent outreach or connection within that industry or segment or area over over a period of time would be critical. I think number four is a generosity to share. And when a person is a thought leader, not a thoughtless leader, they're they're they're compelled to share a perspective, but they're generous with it. So they wanna do the work, and they wanna give that to others for their benefit. They're not gonna hold onto it. They're not gonna protect it. They're not gonna hide it. There's gonna be like a willingness to share that with a lot of people. I'll go back to one of the examples I gave earlier, a guy named Patrick Lencioni. His last name is spelled L e n c I o n I. Now he's written a number of books. You may be familiar, you may not be, but he wrote a book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It's a leadership fable. The Advantage, which I think is a great book. The ideal team player, death by meeting. So he's written a number of books as a thought leader. Well, one of the things about Patrick Lencioni, as I've been told by people who work with him, is he's generous. I I I saw a talk that he gave on YouTube, and it was with, some church leaders. And it was him sharing a perspective on helping, you know, church leaders manage change. It seems to me that a person like that is very generous with his time. He's giving. And if you have a leadership position, you know that leadership really great leaders are givers. They're generous. They're they don't hoard their time. They're generous with their time. And I think the last thing is humility. Humility to lead. You know, a number of years ago, it was actually when I was in college. I had to give a I was part of this, honor society, and I was the president of this honor society. I was elected, and I had to give a speech to hand over the leadership to the new president when I was a senior. And I actually talked about leadership. And that leadership is something that you it's a responsibility that you assume. You have the the humility to assume responsibility that I I have there is a need and for for leadership, for people to lead. And in this area, there's a perspective, some there's thought leadership that I have the humility to to lead and accept that role, accept that I'm not the only voice in that regard because pride can come into into case where a person's like, well, my perspective is the only perspective, so I don't listen to the insight, perspective, opinions of others. And also that people admit error. That's part of the humility of it. You know, thought leaders can be very, very opinionated people. And I think that they can say, this is what's gonna happen to the world. This is my opinion. It's all about my opinion. And they can often be wrong. How many times have you seen a person go back and say, you know what? I said this was, you know, I'm making this up, but, like, cryptocurrency would be, you know, a mainstream, you know, you know, currency in society by the year blah blah blah, only to find out that it wasn't or that theory was somehow flawed, and they didn't admit they were wrong. So when you look at the characteristics of things that consider is a person assumes a role of a thought leader, because maybe even aspires or recognizes that they may have a role as a thought leader, go back to the list. Right? Number one, you gotta have a clear and a compelling perspective on the topic or the topics that relate to that area of thought leadership. You have to have credible experience in the area. You've been there, you've done that, you've done time, you've got experience and it's really believable. Number three is you're consistent. Over time, you've been delivering. You don't just show up periodically. You're in it for the long haul. Number four, you have a generosity to share, to be with time, be with others to give them your time. And then finally, number five is humility. Humility to lead, to accept that role, that responsibility, that commitment, and not being so proud that you don't have any influence, input, or the opinions of other people. And that really becomes the characteristic of a great thought leader. Again, let's go back to why am I doing this. This is an area that some people, not many, may play. You may see yourself as a thought leader or emerging as one. You may know somebody that sees themselves as a thought leader or might be one or need to be one or could become one that you can encourage in this regard. Oftentimes people who are thought leaders write books. Now I am, as an author writing a book, I think that your perspective on book writing can be different. My perspective in writing was reluctant because it became really clear to me that it was something that I needed to do to support the business that I was pulled into to teaching people how to be clear and concise. Some people write books for notoriety and they create this whole sense of aura of thought leadership and it just rings hollow. Because at the end of the day, the fifth thing about humility is they don't have any humility, and it's all about getting on a stage and giving speeches, whatever. If writing a book, I'm just thinking like a book like Atomic Habits. I have not read it, but it's consistently like ranked as the number one in some lists that I get. You know, James Clear is the author of that book. Well, I'm assuming that he had all the characteristics of a thought leader when he wrote that book, and it wasn't about him, but he's gotta do all the things that I just outlined because that's his job. And if you think about anybody in that regard of thought leadership, it's a burden. It's a responsibility. It's a calling. But you've gotta go back to, is my perspective compelling? Is it clear? Well, that requires a lot of thinking, a lot of quiet dedicated to thinking about these things. Your experiences from the past, a lot of reflection on what has transpired in your life or in other people's lives. This commitment to to time, like, I gotta commit myself to this. I'm sure that you don't just write a book or do a podcast or a blog and do it once. You you gotta you gotta be committing yourself to doing this for a long time and have the generosity and humility to see it through. Those are all the characteristics I believe deeply that would make this person who said to me a few weeks ago, I wanna be a thought leader, maybe wanna shy away from that. Or if they really wanna do it, realize what they're actually asking for because it's it's a it's it's a big deal. It it it does require, a concerted effort, a commitment, to to see it through. So here's the challenge. If you want to be this, remember this. A true thought leader thinks deeply, communicates with clarity, and leads others with ideas that can translate to action. At some point, this action happens hopefully in our lifetime. Just saying.