Thought leadership is sharing the knowledge and experience you have gained with a wider audience, so other people can learn from it. For a leader, it can happen inside the company through open conversations, or outside it through a podcast, blog, video or stage. A thought leader adds value and moves the conversation forward.
- Thought leadership is sharing what you know with more than a few people.
- It works inside your company and outside it. Both count.
- Start small. Pick one topic, share an article with your take, or record one conversation.
- Sharing changes you too. You think more clearly and hold yourself to what you teach.
What is thought leadership?
Thought leadership is taking what you have learned over your career and bringing it to a larger group. My co-host Arturo Gomez has led teams for 25 years, and he sees it as a responsibility. Leaders gather insight and education through their experience, and part of the job is passing it on.
It is also a branding tool, and a healthy one when it comes from passion. Arturo points out that it opens up dialogue, which is where much of the value lives.
If you know something that can help, share it.
Why should leaders share what they know?
So many executives and CEOs hold a lot of knowledge and share it with only a few people. That limits the impact they could have. People want to learn from the highest level leaders, and real change starts when a leader shows others what they can do.
The usual excuse is inexperience. I've never made a podcast. I've never been on video. When I hosted a marketing conference in New York, a woman stood up during the Q&A and asked why anybody would want to listen to her on a podcast. The answer was simple.
If you have something inside of you that can help even one person, it is your duty to share that.
Rob Cressy, Episode 13
What is the difference between internal and external thought leadership?
Arturo has practiced both, and each one has its place.
| Internal | External | |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Your staff and teammates | A much larger audience |
| Format | Open conversations, like a leadership roundtable | Podcasts, blogs, video, YouTube and speaking gigs |
| Example | Arturo ran a voluntary leadership roundtable at a previous company for about four years | The Leadership DNA podcast |
| What it builds | A team that learns together and talks openly | Your brand, your impact and new relationships |
The roundtable was optional, unrecorded and well attended. Employees came because they wanted to talk about leadership, and many of them learned a lot from it.
Who can be a thought leader?
Anyone with something of value to add. Arturo believes someone who is 22 or 23 can be a thought leader. A thought leader advances the conversation and shares what they learned along the way. Bashing others has no place in it.
Many experienced people underestimate what they know. If you have done something long enough, you have a lot to contribute in a lot of circles. Focus on your passions and the areas where you have spent real time, and you will be surprised by what comes out.
How do you become a thought leader?
- Pick one thing. Be intentional. This podcast talks about leadership, and that is it.
- Start by curating. Arturo was shy about sharing at first. He set up Flipboard as a digital magazine for leadership, marketing, design, food, hospitality and travel, then shared articles with a layer of his own context and opinion.
- Join the live conversation. Skip the blank page. React to what is happening in the news right now and add your perspective.
- Choose one channel. Podcast, blog, video, YouTube or a stage. It can be as simple as opening Zoom, clicking record and publishing.
- Share experience, and let people decide. I avoid telling people what they need to do. I share what I did and what I am doing now, and invite them to consider it for themselves.
What are the benefits of thought leadership?
- Impact Your knowledge reaches people far beyond the few who already work with you.
- Brand Sharing your passions shows the world who you are and what you stand for.
- Relationships Your message draws like-minded people. Someone answers your call to action, you write back, and a relationship begins.
- Your own growth You start writing down ideas all day and thinking more clearly about your work.
How does sharing your thinking change you?
A few months into the podcast, Arturo noticed the change in himself. The ideas he had carried for years came to the forefront of his day to day interactions. He felt accountable to living what he talked about. He became a better, deeper listener, and leadership articles started jumping out at him.
I see the same thing in the people and companies I help launch podcasts and content. Before launch, it feels uncertain and other priorities seem bigger. Once it is live, they see the results for their audience and for themselves. Teaching what you know is also how mentorship sharpens the mentor.
What does thought leadership look like in the AI era?
AI tools answer questions by drawing on what people have published. If you keep your knowledge to yourself, those answers get written by somebody else. Let AI help you draft and repurpose, for example turning a recorded conversation into a post, and keep the judgment and the stories human. Your experience is the part nobody else can produce. When you go first with AI as a leader, you also earn something worth sharing: what you learned using it.
Do this today
- Get into the dialogue. Share one article in your field with two or three sentences of your own perspective. Go at a level that feels comfortable.
- Read the book. Pick up Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds. It is an easy read.
Listen to the episode
Thought Leadership
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Questions people ask
What is an example of thought leadership?
A leader sharing an industry article with their own perspective, hosting an open leadership roundtable for employees, or recording a podcast about what they have learned.
Can a young professional be a thought leader?
Yes. Arturo Gomez believes people in their early 20s can be thought leaders when they add real value to the conversation.
Is thought leadership the same as self-promotion?
Thought leadership builds a brand as a result of sharing knowledge that helps people. The focus stays on adding value and moving the conversation forward.
What is the easiest way to start?
Pick one topic and one channel. Sharing articles with your own take, or recording a single conversation on Zoom, is enough to begin.
Full transcript
Episode 13: Thought Leadership
Welcome to Leadership DNA, a podcast for those who aspire to be a better leader. Alongside Arturo Gomez, I'm Rob Cressy. Today's topic, thought leadership. Arturo, what is thought leadership? Arturo Well, I think how people are interpreting it today, it's, you know, somebody sharing knowledge, information from their background and exposing that to a much greater audience. And so, it's a huge topic today and obviously it's probably one of the reasons that it's become one of our podcasts. But people, there's a thought that people have a responsibility, certainly as leaders, to be able to share some of these insights and to be able to share education that they've received over, obviously over a course of their experiences and bring that to a larger group.
For various reasons, you know, there's some people that really are doing it to share with the world and tell the world a little bit more about themselves. Not necessarily in an ego way, but it's certainly is a branding tool at a really high level. And, you know, it's also a way for individuals to open up and share more about their passions, whether, you know, whether those passions are leadership or whatever that may be.
And then it also opens up dialogue, you know, and so I've actually, I've been fortunate to be able to experience, you know, this concept of thought leadership on both kind of an external and an internal type of way. And so obviously externally, you know, what we're doing today and what we've been doing on this podcast is a form of, I think, both of our passions around thought leadership and bringing, you know, some of these concepts around leadership to a bigger audience. And, you know, we've gotten some great feedback over the last couple of months that we started doing this.
But it's also, you know, one of the things that I've done over the years, too, is actually bringing up these kind of concepts of leadership and dialogue internally. And so what I mean internally is really sharing for about four or five years. In one of my previous companies, I had a leadership roundtable that wasn't a mandatory thing and it wasn't in the digital space and we weren't videoing it or anything.
But we had a group of individuals that if you wanted to show up and kind of talk about some of these concepts around leadership, we can do that. And so, you know, over the four years, it was really, I would say, very well attended. And they were all, you know, employees and teammates that would come to these conversations. And I think that a lot of people actually learned a lot from it because we were able to open up dialogue and conversation about a lot of the things that we've talked about on these podcasts.
And so, to me, I view it as an internal and also as an external opportunity, internal being really kind of being able to share some of these concepts, dialogues, conversations with a group of individuals, whether it's staff, employees, teammates. And then externally being able to bring some of these passions to a much larger audience. Yeah, so many good things to unpack there.
And one of the things that I see with thought leadership and it's an area in which I'm very much involved in as a creator is so often executives or CEOs or people in management positions, they have all or a lot of the knowledge. And they only share it with a few select people. What that does is it limits the amount of impact that you could have.
And so often you'll hear the excuses of, yeah, but Rob, I've never created a podcast. I've never been on video. I've never dot, dot. I've never done these things. And I think about when I was an emcee of a marketing conference in New York and this woman stood up and there's a Q&A and said, why would anybody want to listen to what I have to say on a podcast?
And the answer was, if you have something inside of you that can help even one person, it is your duty to share that. And you talked about it as it's our responsibility as leaders. And if you want to be a better leader and you want to grow others, both the people who work with you as well as people externally, then to be a thought leader, you need to share your thoughts and your voice and your conversations because you have so much to contribute.
And so often we allow the excuses to tell us why we can't do it. But I think one of the positive things that has happened over the last six months is we've become a lot more digital as a workforce. People are using Zoom. We're using Zoom right now to record this podcast. To become a thought leader and share your voice, it is literally as simple as jumping on Zoom, clicking record and publishing it.
It can get a lot more complex than that, but let's make it as simple as humanly possible. And I think the opportunity is so big for the highest level people because so many people want to learn from them. There's so many stories and knowledge and a lot of change can happen. And we always talk about, oh, we want to help make change in this world. Well, it's kind of hard to make change if you're not leading by example and saying, hey, here's some things that we can all do to help change.
I think people need to make sure that they're, like you said, it's not, there's so many different levels of it. And there's, I think even getting, you know, sharing with a larger audience or even sharing with, you know, it doesn't need to be a specific number, but getting into conversation about anything that you're passionate about and that you may be able to contribute, right?
So, you know, are people that are 22, 23 able to be thought leaders? I think the answer is yes. I mean, I think the answer is that if you have anything to contribute that can add value, to me, a thought leader is not somebody who's coming in and bashing or doing anything that would be negative to the conversation.
It's trying to advance the conversation or share something that you may have learned along the way that certainly can help or benefit somebody. And so I, you know, I think I've, and I might've mentioned this before, but, you know, at times, you know, I've been shy about sharing information or ideals or things that I've learned along the way.
Not necessarily shy with one-on-one conversations with staff members and stuff like that. But, you know, I never really found that outlet or that opportunity to really be, to be outwardly passionate in a conversation about, specifically about leadership, because it's something I've been passionate about for probably my entire life. But I started, I started using Flipboard. So are you familiar with Flipboard? I am.
So I started using Flipboard and this is probably about two years ago. And so what Flipboard does, it's a great platform and allows you to actually really create a digital magazine that feeds you information on anything that you want to learn about or you want to read about. And so mine is set up first with leadership. So any articles about leadership, marketing, design, food, hospitality, travel.
So my entire little digital universe is really designed around the things that I actually, again, that I'm really passionate about and that I feel like I can contribute. I have an opinion. I've had experience. I've had experience in all those things that I'm particularly following. And so what I started doing a while back was actually sharing some of the articles that I found to be really interesting and providing a little bit of layer of context or opinion or some type of, you know, editorial against what I had just read. And so that's a very easy way for people to kind of get themselves in that position of starting to like loosen up this thought leadership concept.
Because, you know, maybe to the point I was making, you know, something that you had mentioned earlier, some people just aren't aware of the value that they have inside. And, you know, so somebody questioning, hey, what is so-and-so? What could this person benefit from hearing me? Well, the answer is probably going to be quite a bit. If you've been doing something long enough, you're going to be a really great contributor in a lot of different circles.
But focusing in on passions, focusing in on areas that you spent quite a significant amount of time, I think that you'd be, you know, you're going to be really surprised at what this brings out. And so utilizing content that's already alive in the digital space and universe, you know, it's the same thing kind of with like blogs and people, you know, get stuck on, hey, where am I going to, how am I going to write this blog?
I said, you know, there's things that are currently, that are occurring right now that are real-time media. Let's just get into the conversation because I think that there's a lot that we can actually add and some value that we can bring audience by giving our perspective. Yeah, and you nailed it. It's about being intentional. You don't need to talk about everything. Talk about just one thing.
This podcast, we talk about leadership and in terms of the various ways, podcasting, blogging, videos, YouTube, speaking gigs. There's so many different areas. And Arturo, I'm curious to hear from your experience in doing this podcast. We are, I think, over 10 episodes into doing this. How have you seen a change or a maturation in yourself going from zero to where you are now?
Well, it's definitely brought all these concepts that, you know, that I've been passionate about and that I've been exposed to for many years really to the forefront. And so I think about them a lot more, literally in my day-to-day interactions, you know, how these things that I'm speaking to you about, but we're also bringing this to a larger audience. And there's also a level of holding myself accountable to these things.
But it's been great. It's been great sharing these passions. And hopefully through this process, you know, some people have been able to pick up some valuable tidbits. I know they have because I've gotten some great feedback over the last couple months that this has been out. But it just is, I think, continuing to develop and grow my passion towards leadership and being a little bit a better, deeper listener.
So as I read articles, whether, you know, in the newspaper or in specific media outlets that are driven towards concepts of leadership, I'm picking up a lot more. So it's made me a little bit more magnetic towards those things. But yeah, I mean, for me, it's been a really great experience over these last couple months to be able to actually share these things that, for me, I know have 100% made me successful over the last couple years.
And it makes me happy because I knew how much goodness you had inside of you, both in your heart and in your mind. And one of the things that I work with people and companies on on a daily basis is taking them through this process of thought leadership and creating podcasts and content. Because so often you can't see it when you've never done it before. And to get it launched, people are still a little bit uncertain. It's like I got all these other things that are bigger priorities.
But what I want them to do is to live in this zone of genius that they have. Is once we get this thing launched, you're like, holy smokes, I can see the results, not just for other people, but also for myself. Because you transform as a person when you're sharing thoughts. Because now I'm writing down ideas on a regular basis. It says, oh, this would be a good topic for a LinkedIn post or a live video. So I'm constantly thinking about it.
And now on my end, as someone who creates content on a daily basis, I'm always looking to share nuggets from my own journey that can help others on there. So I never like to say, this is what you need to do. I like to say, this is my experience and what I'm currently doing. You may want to consider this for yourself. There's a lot of lessons that we can learn from our own success and our own failure in the journeys that we've had along the way.
So you know what? Come on board this journey with me. We would love to have you. Let's share some thoughts. Let's build relationships because that, guess what? That's one of the best parts about thought leadership is you're going to find other like-minded people where the message that you have resonates with them. And after you say the same call to action at the end of every single podcast, maybe just maybe one time someone's going to say, you know what? I'm going to hit up Rob Cressy and Arturo Gomez and say, what's up? And guess what just might happen?
We might just respond back to you. And boom, that's how relationships get built. So for me, I'm so passionate about it because I know the impact that it can have. And I just want to help people get there because there's just such beautiful things on the horizon for it. For me, I've got one book on this to read. Talk Like Ted, The Nine Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds. Super easy read. Absolutely loved it.
Arturo, time for the takeaway or action item. What do you got? Yeah, don't be afraid to get into the dialogue. I think that we all have a responsibility to become thought leaders as we get older and as we mature in our lives and in our careers. I think that we all have positive things that we can contribute and we should share those things.
I mean, I think that if there was a lack of sharing throughout the years and throughout history, well, we would be continuing to repeat mistakes, right? And although some people do that, I think there's a lot that we've learned from individuals that have contributed throughout history and things that we can learn on a daily basis from people that are experts or passionate about certain things. So don't be afraid. Get involved.
Do it at a level that makes you feel comfortable. And there's so many ways to participate. And just share. I love it. And for me, I've got a very simple action item. If you are a thought leader or you want to become one, hit me up and let's have a conversation. There is a 100% chance that I can help you on your journey because this is what I do every single day. And I want to continue to provide as much value for you any way that I can.
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