What is Thought Leadership?

I’ve been thinking lately about how people define thought leadership. I define thought leadership as being a pioneer when it comes to identifying future solutions and trends. That means taking into account the past of a given subject, idea or industry, understanding the changes that it underwent to reach the present and what things about the present will ultimately drive the future. Thought leadership means different things to different people, but that’s my definition.

What frustrates me the most is that many individuals claim to be thought leaders because of their expertise and experience. While I am not trying to discount those things, that is only part of the big picture. Expertise and experience only help you to understand the past, the present and how you got to this point. The real differentiator for those that are actually thought leaders is the ability to understand the reasons for change and how that will affect their initiatives.

Inexperience offers a clear disadvantage as the only way to research how things were and became so is to ask others or research it alone. A lot gets missed when you haven’t “walked the path.” That doesn’t mean that inexperienced individuals cannot possibly be thought leaders. Inexperience offers an advantage as well.  Often, those that are inexperienced are young and idealistic. Youth can be defined as young to the industry, role or situation and/or young in terms of age. Youth can offer the advantage to not being set in a particular way of accomplishing things or generating ideas. This can be leveraged to initiate more creative solutions and visions for the future. 

In addition, thought leaders are not those that follow current trends without looking out ahead to see how they will develop and evolve. Individuals can be “superstars” currently in their industries, but if they don’t actively keep up with how things are changing, they are sure to fall behind. This issue sometimes goes hand in hand with the experience myth. Experience and current success does not automatically make an individual a thought leader. Thought leaders push the limits of things, look and plan ahead and develop multiple strategies for the future. 

While I don’t claim to be a superstar or experienced, I think that I am an emerging thought leader in a few different areas. In addition to seeing the future big picture, I think thought leaders really can change the direction of certain trends or overall practices. Things that are in place “just because” can be changed to be more efficient, or just make more sense for the current situation, time, environment, etc. Not all things should be changed “just because” either. I think thought leaders can identify those things that can be done better and actually come up with a solution to make it better. 

My last thought about thought leaders is that they don’t merely identify issues or trends. Thought leaders DO things, STRIVE to do things and ACHIEVE results. Just identifying something is less than half of the battle. Strategizing ways to leverage a trend or solution is the hardest thing to accomplish, and I believe true thought leaders do this. Any thoughts on thought leadership?