Leveraging Thought Leadership

In today's episode, we showcase some of the best guests from our Organizational Thought Leadership series. We think their insights will be as useful this year as it was last! Lynette Jackson is the Head of Communications at Siemens. She shares how thought leadership can act as an umbrella for your brand, bringing all the various disciplines of communication together under it, enabling them to move in the same direction with purpose! Kathy Risch is Senior Vice President, Shopper Insights & Thought Leadership at Acosta. She takes us inside what it takes to understand how and why people buy. She shares how it goes beyond the usefulness of a product and dives into the impact the emotion a product or service can tap into while speaking to an underlying need or frustration in the consumer's life. Kasey Lobaugh is the Chief Futurist for the Consumer Industry and Principal at Deloitte Consulting, LLP. He shares how the research they did over a year is more than a white paper, it's a platform! Kasey explains how they can shape the thinking of the future of not only Deloitte but their entire industry by engaging with hundreds of people inside and outside the company. He shares how they approached people from diverse backgrounds to get a better picture of the future by seeing it through many unique perspectives. Three Key Takeaways: · Having the ability to create content that speaks to an audience on their level, be it introductory or expert is the key to reaching a wider audience. · Connecting your product or service with the consumer's insights is how you hit the sweet spot. · When engaging others on large scale research you need to allow them to engage with and shape the content.

As we ring in the New Year it is always a good idea to take a moment and reflect on the past year. We continue our tradition of doing so by providing a compilation from a few guests who provided timeless advice. Jenna Fisher is the Co-lead of Global Financial Officer Practice at Russell Reynolds Associates and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author with a new book To the Top: How Women in Corporate Leadership Are Rewriting the Rules for Success. In this conversation, Jenna shares how she interviewed dozens of women who provided inspirational and practical stories that she used in her book. In addition, she discusses the synergy the book has with her business and what she learned in the process of writing. Mark Miller, is the Vice President of High Performance Leadership, Chick-fil-A Inc. and author of Culture Rules: The Leader's Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Mark gives insight into being an embedded research house within Chick-fil-A and how pragmatism and leadership are the keys to balancing the scales between the two. Lily Zheng is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion speaker, strategist, and organizational consultant. Recently they wrote DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Right. Lily discusses the ebb and flow of DEI in the workplace and how it is something that is needed all the time not just when things go wrong. Jane Hanson is an Emmy Award winning Journalist with thirty years of coaching experience helping people communicate more clearly and efficiently. Jane shares what thought leadership means to her and how the heart of soul of it is communication. She discusses knowing your purpose and provides tips and advice for communicating in mediums you might not excel at. Three Key Takeaways: · While doing research for a book or any thought leadership, reaching out to a diverse audience can help give you a wider and more balanced perspective. · Everything rises and falls with leadership. · As a thought leader your purpose needs to be getting the important information you have out into the world for others to hear and use

Thought leaders come from a wide variety of backgrounds and skills. Each unique path leads to inspiration, solutions, and frameworks that can reach niche groups on a personal level. Selena Rezvani is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and consultant on leadership. Her newest book, a Wall Street Journal bestseller "Quick Confidence: Be Authentic, Boost Connections, and Make Bold Bets on Yourself" is a guide for overcoming the nine most common obstacles that stand in the way of building authentic confidence. Selena shares how her journey in thought leadership started while she was a young management consultant whose boss created a policy that all consultants would have to write and present at conferences twice a year. While incredulous at first she was also thrilled at the challenge and agency the opportunity presented. That push into thought leadership resulted in seeking an MBA to better speak to her audience. Selena shares how during her MBA program she interviewed high performing C-suite level women to discover the commonalities and hardships they face. The result of these interviews came together as her first book The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won't Learn in Business School and led to continued relationships with many of the women interviewed and Selena breaking out on her own to further her thought leadership work. Selena shares how her business continued to grow adding speaking, learning to value herself and the years of previous research that were required to create engaging and actionable speaking engagements. Selena shares wonderful advice for speakers, authors, leaders, and budding thought leaders on how to create content, build relationships, and measure your own success and self worth. Three Key Takeaways: · Great things happen when you bring the frameworks and thinking of one discipline into another that might not typically be blended. · You have to value yourself. You have to own your authority. Ask for what you need. Don't settle. · The success or failure of an experiment is not a measurement of your success or worth. You will either win or you'll learn.

You can find an audience for your thought leadership on almost any social media platform. Time is the ultimate commodity - so, how do you break through the noise to get your audience's attention? Today's guest has a keen understanding of audience, message, and modality! Robert Glazer is the best-selling author of Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others, a keynote speaker, award-winning executive, and host of The Elevate podcast. Our conversation starts by discussing creating content and discovering what the audience is seeking. Robert shares how experimentation is required, but one trick for content creation is writing an article on anything you've been asked about five times. This shows that the topic is a pain point to many and allows you to point back to the article as something you've previously dealt with, not something you are tackling at the moment. Furthermore, Robert tells us why you have to create content that is more than a sales pitch. By creating content and opportunities that are mutually beneficial you increase the odds of reaching your audience. In addition, we look at the medium for thought leadership Robert explains that you need to understand the reason for tackling the platform you are. Many platforms like podcasting reward longevity, so digging in and preparing to stick it out through the crickets is required to find success down the road. He also discusses picking one channel and learning to excel at it. Once you've built an audience there, you can expand to other platforms. Three Key Takeaways: · Pick a strategy, pick a tone, and pick a channel. Learn to do that one channel well before moving on to another. · Success of a platform can take on various looks. From increasing brand awareness, creating new relationships, or by establishing yourself as an expert in your field. · If you want to make something go viral, make something worth sharing.

Can you spot a good idea? And when you do, how do you successfully find its best audience? These are just two questions we examine with today's guest, Ward Kampf. Ward is the President of Northwood Retail, which leases, manages, and markets a portfolio of over five million square feet of mixed use and community properties. With retail facing constant technological changes, leaders are always trying to discover the next frontier. Ward shares with us the exciting way content and context come together to impact a potential consumer. Part of creating that impact involves staying relevant, fresh, and - if possible - first to market. Searching for the next frontier means having to constantly examine new ideas. Ward explains why we need to step back, absorb the idea, and learn about it. Only then can you create a vision, strategy, and execution that can bring success. We also discuss building relationships. Again, retail and thought leadership involve creating relationships based on trust, which means not always seeking to make a sale. Ward shares how some of his best relationships took years to develop before any business transactions took place, but that time invested has paid off in the long run. Today's episode is a great example of how thought leadership can have an impact on a wide variety of industries - around the world! Three Key Takeaways: · You have to have an open mind and a want to listen and learn. It's an evolve-or-die environment. You can't afford to become irrelevant or stale. · Financial and human resources are not infinite. Go where you can be your most productive with the resources you have. · It can take years to develop a business partnership. Investing time can pay off down the road when you are trying to sell a better experience and partnership instead of just a product.

It can be easy to think "I'm just not a confident person" But confidence isn't something you have to be born with. Like any other skill, you can practice behaviors to grow that skill. Our guest today is Emily Jaenson, a keynote speaker, host of the hit podcast Leadership is Female, and co-founder of The Assist Group a collective of experienced sports professionals ready to step in and provide sales, marketing & leadership consulting. Emily has an impressive resume in sports and thought leadership, but at one time she was too shy to even order a pizza. She shares her journey leaving her small town to attend university where she realized she needed to level up and that could only be accomplished with confidence! She pushed through one uncomfortable situation after another taking them as opportunities to grow and even take on leadership roles helping others grow. One way Emily has been able to help others grow is with her TEDx talk "Six behaviors to increase your confidence" which has been viewed more than 3 million times. Emily discusses how the TEDx talk was the culmination of years of knowledge, experience, and interviews from her podcast distilled into an incredibly impactful twelve-minute talk. The talk was so impactful that corporations began to reach out to her to deliver that message to their employees. We learn how she took this opportunity to grow her business, going on the offense creating a website, networking, and developing a pitch to take her content to the world instead of waiting for it to come to her. We wrap up our conversation with Emily giving examples from her career on the behaviors others can practice to get through tough times, expand their comfort zone, and ultimately grow their confidence! Three Key Takeaways: · Once you have content out in the world you can't sit and wait for the clients to come to you. You need to network and take the content to the people who need it most. · People tend to believe you are born with confidence or you're not. However, confidence is a skill. It can be taught and learned. · Confidence is competence. And you gain competence through curiosity.

When the time comes to hire someone new, how can you tell if you have the right candidate? Plenty of thought leaders can tell you that even the best programs often have knowledge gaps, between what is learned in school and what it takes to do a job from day to day. Our guest today is William Vanderbloemen. William's been a senior pastor for 15 years, and comes from a strong HR background at Fortune 200 companies. He is the founder of the Vanderbloemen Search Group, helping churches, schools, nonprofits, family offices, and values-based businesses find key staff, and also the author of Search: The Pastoral Search Committee Handbook, the go-to guide for creating a pastoral succession plan. William shares his journey into thought leadership, starting with his blog on how to build, run, and maintain a great team. As his business expanded, he instituted a content quota for everyone in the business, literally making thought leadership a companywide responsibility. With so many contributors to the content pool, it would be easy to get off track. William describes how they've created detailed "personas" (also called "avatars") to guide their marketing. These "personas" are clearly defined, allowing them to address specific, identifiable pain points. Additionally, William shares how these personas are regularly updated to keep up with the changing world. Finally, William discusses his book Search: The Pastoral Search Committee Handbook, which targets a micro-niche audience but has sold 60000 copies and secured him a spot as the go-to guy when churches are seeking a succession plan. William shares how the book is full of quantitative data with qualitative stories, giving data-driven facts instead of opinions. This conversation demonstrates how you can find great success by getting super focused on your audience and how you can accomplish that. Three Key Takeaways: · If you create target avatars to guide content creation, update them often – and be sure to know their current challenges! · Content-based marketing and thought-based leadership that doesn't come from the top it's not going to work in the organization. · Clickbait might get immediate attention, but thought leadership earns you a loyal following!

Thought leaders know that a sharp eye is the best tool for keeping a sharp mind. In fact, others see abilities in us long before we see them in ourselves, and can support us as we blossom into a new role or skill. Our guest today has found herself asking "Who me?" and "Why me?" at almost every step of her incredible career. Deborah Levine is the Founder and Editor of the American Diversity Report, whose mission is to boost the effort to repair the world and inspire fellow diversity, equity, and inclusion change makers with the resources they need. Deborah shares how her history weaves together seemingly unrelated skills and experiences that take her from being the only Jewish girl in her community in Bermuda, to unexpectedly being put in charge of inter religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, and eventually becoming an award-winning screen writer and producer! One of the threads that is common through most of her experience is others offering aid to move her career and thought leadership forward, eventually allowing Deborah to learn and step up to the task on her own. Deborah shares real life experiences of getting help and learning to grow into new roles that she might have thought were impossible for her to accomplish. This episode is full of stories and antidotes that are sure to inspire anyone who has been asked to step up to the plate and thought "Why me?" Three Key Takeaways: · When asked to do something, take the opportunity that is presented. Don't say no because you aren't sure how to do it. Take the time to learn and grow. · Part of being a thought leader is encouraging and creating spaces for conversations that will have meaning and value. · Being a thought leader means being in a constant state of evolution of who you are.

Before anyone shares their ideas, feedback, or concerns they tend to ask themselves two questions: Am I safe to speak? And is it worth it? If the answer to either of these questions is no, odds are they will stay silent. So how can leaders, teams, and organizations facilitate an environment where speaking up is celebrated and not ignored or punished? Our guest today is Stephen "Shed" Shedletzky, a speaker, leadership coach and advisor who is using his new book Speak-Up Culture: When Leaders Truly Listen, People Step Up to help create a culture where people feel safe and supported to take part in and start conversations. Shed shares how his work with Simon Sinek laid the groundwork for developing his own content that focused on two areas that stood out to him over his years of work: Psychological safety and living your message. We examine what Psychological safety and Speak-Up Culture mean to Shed and how he is bringing these elements to individual's, teams, and organizations. In addition we discuss how psychological safety still comes with accountability, which is best achieved by mutually established agreements that bring what is best for both employee and employer to the front. Three Key Takeaways: · Business books are written for two reasons. It's something you are so good at you want to share that knowledge. Or you are so bad at it that you need to write a book to fix it. · Whatever you message is you have to live it inside and outside of your organization. If you talk the talk, but fail to walk the walk people will see right through you. · When people don't feel like speaking up will have an effect they become apathetic. When they don't feel safe they stay silent. Creating an environment where employees can speak and be heard can create a happier and higher functioning atmosphere.

The journey of a thought leader often involves moving from being a subject matter expert inside the house, going from room to room sharpening various skills, to eventually leaving the house and applying all of those skills to the greater neighborhood you've always lived in. Kon Apostolopoulos is the Founder and CEO of Fresh Biz Solutions. He's been helping businesses achieve strategic goals for more than 20 years by preparing people for the right leadership roles. In addition, Kon is the co-author of 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics & Other Disasters, a guide to help readers through crisis both personal and global. Kon takes us through a series of milestones, including publishing his first book, having to take that material to scale, and finding success that had his audience asking new questions — forcing him to continually expand his thinking and problem-solving. We explore the way thought leadership needs to move the audience further along than they are. Kon explains how this often means having to speak in simplified terms that allow you to break through both ego and preconceived notions. We learn how this can only be accomplished by understanding your audience, where they are, and where they need you to take them. Three Key Takeaways: · There are two parts to thought leadership. The idea and thought part. And the action and external part. They are symbiotic and necessary to each other to create content that is actionable. · Thought leadership needs to move the audience further along than they are. The conversation doesn't have to go from 1 - 100, but you have to move the audience at least from 1 to 2 and beyond. · Sometimes the best way to break through adult egos and preconceived notions is to present complex ideas in simple ways.

Topics like climate change can be a hot button issue in discussions. So how can you deliver thought leadership on controversial topics without disengaging various portions of your audience? In order to thread that difficult needle, I've invited Nora DePalma to join me. Nora is the CEO of Dialogue, a modern PR firm that builds value for organizations seeking to advance climate solutions. Nora starts the conversation by sharing how discussing climate solutions instead of climate change helps to shape the conversation, allowing them to start a dialogue without turning off certain parties that might be needed in order to meet their goals. Once your audience is open to hearing what you have to say you'll need to be prepared for what comes next. Nora explains how you need to tie activity to business outcomes and understand what action you want them to take next, moving them deeper into your content but not necessarily leading them into a sales funnel. She shares why not every call to action has to lead to sales and why education and relationship building can be as powerful and lead to sales in other ways. Nora provides great advice and examples of how to deliver complex thought leadership that tactfully opens the door to deeper, more meaningful conversations. Three Key Takeaways: · In addition to understanding your audience and shaping the conversation you have to deliver your ideas with authenticity and passion. Otherwise, they are likely to tune out. · Not all calls to action have to lead into the sales funnel. They can be a call to education, or to further a relationship. · You have to earn people's attention. That is how you build trust and sustain relationships.

A lot of thought leaders have written books, eager to get their insights out into the world. Yet many start the task without having a well-defined plan for what comes next! Our guest today has literally written the book on writing thought leadership books! "Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write and Promote a Book That Matters" is the work of the amazing Josh Bernoff, and we can't think of a better person to help nonfiction authors succeed. In order to help authors find success, they first have to understand what that means to them. Josh explains how success can look differently to each author and often is unrelated to the quantity of books sold. Success can take the form of launching a speaking career, generating leads, or purely having a book that makes you the authority in your field. Once you know what sort of success you want, you'll need to plan beyond the book. Josh shares how many authors don't look beyond the launch of their book and become disappointed when nothing happens. However, those that properly promote their book, and have scalable plans in place for after the book is launched, can take their business to the next level. If you have an idea for a book, but you're not sure if it checks the boxes of "big, right, and new," then this episode will guide you on your journey. Three Key Takeaways: · For authors the success of a book is typically not measured in sales but in the additional business generated from the book. · Before you publish a book have a plan to define yourself beyond the book. · Tradition, hybrid, and self-publishing all have pros and cons. You have to understand the needs of your book to find the right fit.

Could poor leadership have a direct impact on workers' insurance claims? Today, we go outside the box by discussing insurance with Clint Tripodi. Clint is a National Practice Leader for The Liberty Company where they are changing the way business leaders look at and think about insurance - through the use of thought leadership. While insurance is often thought of as "mundane," Clint shares what his company found when they tracked leadership's impact on workplace culture, and why they are looking to find the root issues, in order to mitigate risks downstream. Through data analytics, Clint is able to see where claims have an impact, and then go directly to the root of the problem, which is often a lack of leadership. Clint uses data analytics to show the way poor leadership has an effect on workers' compensation claims as well as employee retention, and ultimately, ROI. Clint helps us understand how the culture of wellness at Liberty is being spread to their clients through thought leadership that sets them apart from and above the competition! Three Key Takeaways: · Culture is a strategic tool and insurance can help you drive that strategy. · When working in a highly commoditized market you have to position yourself as a business partner, not just a solution. · Data analytics can help to identify problems so that you can go upstream and fix them at the source.

If Generative AI is fed all writing on the internet, then when you ask it a question, it can give you a good answer. Or at least an answer that is good enough. For this reason, good enough is no longer good enough. To discern the role Generative AI can play on the future of thought leadership I've invited Mahan Tavakoli to join me. Mahan is the CEO of Strategic Leadership Ventures which helps people become the sort of leader people want to follow. He is also the host of the Partnering Leadership where you can learn the leadership journeys of successful CEOs and the top global thought leaders. Our conversation with Mahan starts with getting an understanding of both generative AI and what we would call good ideas. From there we explore how asking the right questions is the secret to getting useful knowledge out of either. While asking the right questions of AI can allows us a great understanding of the vast amount of data in our organizations, the right questions of an idea can discover the power of differentiation and niches. If you're looking to expand your use or understanding of AI and how we can unlock the power of our ideas this is a great episode for you. Three Key Takeaways: · Part of thought leadership is marrying the ideas of others to see new patterns. · When we think we know the answer, we don't ask the simple fundamental questions that can unveil new insights. · The power comes from the differentiation and the niches. Rather than the belief that you need to go wide.

Moving from internal thought leadership to being a solo act means having to take on a lot of new roles. Marketing, research, and publishing all fall on your shoulders now. Are you prepared? Today our guest is Dan Pontefract, who, after a long prosperous career at companies like Telus, struck out on his own as a leadership strategist, change expert, keynote speaker, and award-winning author. His fifth book Work-Life Bloom: How to Nurture a Team that Flourishes will be released in November of 2023. Dan shares his journey from working at Telus as Chief Learning Officer, using the company as a lab with the ability to real-time test ideas to teaching the models he helped create internally, to external companies guiding others through leadership development and culture change. As an author much has changed over the ten years since his first book was published. Dan shares his experience both with untrustworthy and fantastic partners in publishing. In addition, he explains why you should be ready to market the book yourself, the big differences between self, hybrid, and traditional publishing! If you are just getting started or about to break out from corporate thought leadership, Dan provides valuable advice for thought leaders at any stage! Three Key Takeaways: · When doing market research look at others in your sphere at your level. Then look at those above you and determine what sets them apart. What can you learn from what they are doing? · Be continually and continuously adding to your body of work. · Thought leadership can take a product that might not land you a meeting, and open the door to a more interesting conversation.

What happens when the tools we use to analyze and take control of our environments become the cause of our destruction? Is your company using the tools they have at their disposal? Or are the tools using you? Our guest today is Don Schmincke an explorer, researcher, and partner with The Pacific Institute. He is also the author of Winners and Losers: Entrepreneurial Lessons from 30,000 CEOs on How to Come Out on Top, which teaches entrepreneurs how to win powerfully! Our conversation begins with Don telling us how he went from almost dropping out of high school, to learning technology and ultimately strategy and leadership. While working at Johns Hopkins he began to find an astonishingly high failure rate in management theory – and he knew he could help. Don goes on to explain the seduction of tools. Why we believe they can save us, allowing us to analyze and control our environments. And how we can easily fall to letting the tools use us because without altering human decision making through true transition, the tools won't change the choices we make. With such a high failure rate many might think diving into the entrepreneurial pool would be foolhardy. However, Don gives us hope by telling us about losing powerfully – taking the loss and learning from it, picking ourselves up and becoming stronger from it. Three Key Takeaways: · It doesn't matter how good your theory is if it doesn't have a measurable impact. · We get seduced by our tools because we think they will save us. But without changing how we think the tools won't change the outcome. · Formulation without execution is just a good idea on a shelf.

How does a thought leader get an audience to take notice, remember, and actively use the content you are putting out? To get a firm grasp of exactly what engagement means and how to get your audience there, I've invited Scott Gould to join me. Scott is a consultant, speaker, and author of The Shape of Engagement: The Art of Building Enduring Connections with Your Customers, Employees, and Communities. Our conversation begins with Scott not only defining what engagement is but how he has broken out into three types. Head, Hands, and Heart engagement – while each is very different, we learn how they act as building blocks on each other to create deeper connections between you, your idea, and your audience. A big part of having an audience become engaged is presenting an idea that is easy to understand and remember. Scott shares his process for distilling an idea down to the essentials, which sometimes means blowing the idea up to something huge first! In this episode Scott offers great insight for taking ideas from brainstorm to living at the heart of an audience! Three Key Takeaways: · Properly defining the topic you want your thought leadership to center around is one of the biggest jobs that you have. · The name of an idea is incredibly important. People engage with ideas when it is easy to remember the essence of that idea. · Sharpening ideas to the finest point often involves discarding ideas that you like but don't connect with your audience.

The past few years have seen shake-ups in almost every aspect of thought leadership. Big challenges can - and have - pushed a lot of people out of the field. But what some call a "big challenge" is everyday fare to a fighter pilot. Our guest today is Christian " Boo" Boucousis, a former fighter pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. He's an inspirational keynote speaker, author, and CEO of Afterburner; an org that helps corporate teams execute with the same precision and accuracy as elite pilots. After Boo's Air Force career ended he reinvented himself numerous times by transforming his ways of thinking and working using the skills he acquired as a fighter pilot. This eventually led to the purchase of Afterburner a globally connected group of current and former fighter pilots, U.S. Navy Seals, and other elite military professionals that use the discipline and strategy developed in their previous careers to enable organizations to achieve new levels of success. Much of the Afterburner experience came from in-person speaking, which instantly became impossible when COVID shut the world down. Boo, shares how he led his company through the turbulent time, moving to virtual mediums to deliver immersive movie-quality experiences. As an author and speaker, Boo is keenly aware that audiences have a shrinking attention span. He shares advice for understanding the differences between information, knowledge, and wisdom – and how to walk your audience through those phases over various modalities using humor and emotion to keep the audience's attention. If you are in need of advice for making your content soar, this episode is the one for you. Three Key Takeaways: · As a thought leader you should be infinitely curious. Not just about your domain but about how you communicate that information. · You need to be versatile with your content. Delivering important and valuable information but also including humor and things that maintain the audience's attention. · We remember what we feel more than we remember what we see or hear. That is why you have to evoke an emotion that is connected to the message.

Death is a natural part of life, but our ideas and dreams can live beyond us - and be an inspiration for generations to come. Today, our guest is a dear friend and mentor, Dr. Mark Goulston. During his long career, Mark moved from being a psychiatrist and FBI hostage negotiator to being one of the most highly regarded coaches and keynote speakers in the business. He helps companies and individuals gain deeper self-awareness, and grow as leaders. Now Mark is facing his most difficult challenge yet. Having been diagnosed with a condition that leads to acute myeloid leukemia, Mark is learning not only to accept his diagnosis, but also, how to walk the road ahead with grace. More, Mark is sharing that knowledge, and the lessons he's learned through life experience, to help others. Mark discusses how he is able to have a good death because he has lived a good life. But what does a good life look like? Mark shares how he is focusing on the things that really matter in life, the need to hire and connect with people that share compatible values, and how his life as a psychiatrist has translated to corporate leadership. In this frank and open conversation Mark gives advice for life, death, and leadership. It's a must-experience episode that celebrates life, and how our journey can help others - even generations after we have passed on.

Part of thought leadership is making the invisible, visible. When that happens, it can challenge beliefs and make people uncomfortable and defensive. So, how can you break through feelings, and make change deeply significant to that future? Our guest today is Dr. Suzanne Wertheim, the Founder, and CEO of Worthwhile Research & Consulting, where she uses her expertise to improve hiring, organizational culture, engagement and retention. She is also the author of The Inclusive Language Field Guide: 6 Simple Principles for Avoiding Painful Mistakes and Communicating Respectfully, which is filled with real-world examples and exercise that can help boost your inclusive language skills. As a linguistic anthropologist, Dr. Wertheim has been researching and studying the intersection of language, power and culture for decades. She shares how linguistics, like thought leadership, is about recognizing patterns. Accomplishing this can be a difficult task, as people realize they might not be as inclusive as they had believed. Suzanne explains what inclusive language is and why it matters. We learn how language is social action and the building blocks of how we create, maintain, and end relationships. She shares the six principles found in her book that can be worked on in order to better our own use of inclusive language. In addition she gives real life examples of how the wrong wording can cause a deal to go south, as well as how inclusive language can repair that damage. If you want a better understanding of inclusive language as well as how you can move from being able to identify those problems to acting differently this is a must listen episode. Three Key Takeaways: · Just because something is simple to describe does not mean it is easy or effortless to implement. · Inclusive language is like learning any new language. It takes time and practice to become good at seeing it and changing behavior. · A lack of inclusive language can force great employees to leave for greener pastures. This is one of the many reasons leaders need a better understanding of what is acceptable language.

Thought leaders are often torn between scale and depth.Scale allows you to reach a large audience, while depth allows you to have massive impact. So, where's the happy medium? Today's guest is Jennifer Dulski, the CEO and founder at Rising Team which blends experience and science to help leaders ensure people on their teams feel valued, motivated, and connected. In addition, she is the bestselling author of "Purposeful: Are You A Manager or A Movement Starter?" The book provides invaluable resources for leaders who want to step up and make a difference. Jennifer has had a number of roles in her career from entrepreneur for a non-profit start-up, high school teacher, and executive leadership roles at Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. We learn how all of these roles have given her the experience to take her passion for creating a happy and successful high-performing team to scale using technology. Often thought leaders believe they have to stick to a single domain, but Jennifer shares how her varied career has allowed her to adjust, grow, and change her domain expertise over time as her own experience has developed through both success and mistakes in the field. Our conversation wraps up by discussing putting content into various modalities and how using LinkedIn, being an educator, and writing a book all play together. Jennifer explains how the book and book talks helped to tighten up her content and give her credibility while bite-sized portions of that content go out on LinkedIn to have larger engagements with her audience. Jennifer shares useful information on taking ideas to scale and leveraging a book to create a deep impact on your audience. Three Key Takeaways: · You don't have to be a thought leader in only one domain. You can grow your thought leadership in multiple domains as your experience grows. · Having successes and mistakes are both part of the thought leadership journey. · A book can help you solidify your ideas and present them in the clearest way, which you can then build additional product offerings.

How do you get people to think about new ideas?And then, how do you move your audience from thinking - to buying? To examine how ideas go from brainstorming to industry-changing, I've invited Pete O'Heeron to join me for today's podcast. Pete is the Founder and CEO of FibroBiologics, a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing fibroblast cell-based therapies. We kick the conversation off discussing how Fibroblast has gone from a few peer reviewed papers a year to dozens each week in the span of a mere eight years. Pete helps us understand exactly what fibroblast cells are and why the amount of interest and important research for them has spiked. Not only is research into fibroblast cells new but the work Pete is doing at FibroBiologics is going in directions no one else is. Pete discusses why they are doing work no one else is and how the research and science are the mechanics that steer the direction of the company. Working on such new and cutting edge ideas often means having to convert people from no, to yes. Pete shares how their scientific discovery board is made up of world leaders in stem cell research, which gives the work they do a great deal of credibility. This creates an opportunity to start conversations that spark interest in what the company is doing and allows the science to sell itself as people dig into these new ideas. Pete offers great insight into how to take new niche ideas from prototype to market and have conversations that draws your audience in. Three Key Takeaways: · Allowing research and science to dictate the direction of your company can take you in new directions. · Getting new ideas out means starting a conversation with the points that will spark interest. After that follow with research and science that can't be disputed. · Having a board within your company that is filled with respected professionals will give the new ideas you produce a level of credibility that others might not have.

An investment in thought leadership - for yourself or your org - compounds over time. Starting earlier in your career will have a greater impact. So what's stopping you from getting started? For today's episode, I've invited Vaishali Dialani to chat with us. Vaishali is a Senior Customer Experience Strategist at Konabos Consulting; a full-service, end-to-end, digital experience solutions agency. Vaishali paints a picture of her earliest journey in thought leadership by participating in everything she could find, and every event possible – often leading events, even though it was early in her education and career. By taking these initiatives she was able to get speaking and presenting opportunities that strengthened her confidence and opened the door to networking prospects. Meeting a connection at a conference is great but you need to follow up to foster that new relationship. Vaishali shares how she does active outreach, reaching out via LinkedIn to grow her network. She goes beyond people she has met in person and explains what you should be looking for in a contact before reaching out. Finally, Vaishali shares how growing up in India and being from a blended family gives her unique perspectives that she uses to enhance her Customer Experience (CX) work. We learn how her personality not only affects the CX work she does but also how her personality is blended directly into the work. In this episode Vaishali shares incredible advice for starting the thought leadership experience, excelling at customer experience, and nurturing a network of value. Three Key Takeaways: · Thought Leadership doesn't have to be industry changing ideas. If you have thoughts and opinions - share them! · You are never going to know everything about your field of expertise. Share what you know now, you can share now. · People don't invest enough in learning. You can never know enough and can always be sharpening your craft.

All right, thoughtleaders – be honest. Have you ever nodded off a little during a presentation? Now imagine a conference filled with rock and roll, choreographed numbers, and comedy. That's a presentation you'd sit up and pay attention to! Our guest today is Kraig Kleeman, the founder and Executive Producer for Rock the C-Suite a production company that brings electrifying original and relevant musical performances to corporate events. In addition, he is the author of The Must-React System: User's Guide to Prospecting C-Suite Executives which provides a strategy for winning meetings with senior executives. Kraig shares where the inspiration for Rock the C-Suite came from and how corporate messaging is better received through the performing arts. He describes the high energy performances he produces that can be the main stage of a conference delivering an audience-focused show that provides researched topics that mean the most to those putting on the event. Before Kraig was rocking the stage he had authored The Must-React System and he explains why when doing outreach leading with value proposition and product benefit language might seem intuitive it actually isn't the most effective method. In fact, providing fact-based briefings combined with smart questions can allow the potential client to map your research to their own experiences and advance you to the next step! Kraig provides great advice for landing meetings with executives and creating high-octane events that any company can take advantage of. Three Key Takeaways: · Conference producers should prioritize the well-being of the audience over the distribution of information. If the audience has zoned out, they will not take in the information. · When crafting content for a conference make sure to collaborate with the event owner to really dial in a deliverable that is effective for them and their audience. · Cold call outreach to executives will have greater success if you lead with fact based research and not value proposition

Data Governance may not sound exciting - but it's critical! It covers how your company produces, consumes, collects, and destroys data. So, with businesses generating and using more data than ever, why is this role so often forgotten? Our guest today is Lauren Maffeo, Author of "Designing Data Governance from the Ground Up" and an adjunct Lecturer of Design at The George Washington University. Lauren sets the tone for us by explaining what Data Governance is and how too much data is produced for one person or even a single team to own it all. Lauren lays out how you can create data points from subject matter experts around key areas of data your company produces or ingests, such as Sales, Marketing, and Customer Data; each of which can then have sub-sets to provide even more structure. Lauren shares why you need to understand how data works in the subject matter expert's day to day job and how data governance will help them do their job more effectively. In addition, we learn about data dictionaries and the big part they play in data governance and enablement efforts to ensure clarity is provided across domains on the exact meaning of terms that might have different meanings depending on the context. Three Key Takeaways: · The biggest challenge to doing data governance well is having a thought leadership strategy around it to get other colleagues on board. · There is too much data produced today for one person or one team to own all of it. You need to make it a collective effort across technical and non-technical roles. · You can not succeed in sales, marketing, or customer success without data.

The road to becoming a Thought Leader is never a straight one. So going from college basketball coach to book influencer might not seem that odd. Still, the map to get there is fascinating! Our guest today is Owen Sammarone the Founder and CEO of Unleash the Knowledge, LLC; an online, educational community of lifelong learners and avid readers helping authors reach a larger audience. Having a business based around books you might assume Owen has a background in publishing or marketing, but he was previously a graduate assistant with the UConn men's basketball program. Owen shares that while he loved basketball his true passion came from the self-development habits of coaches. Owen began to explore what his coach was reading and listening to, then sharing the takeaways he found on Instagram, nurturing a following of self-development junkies. After Owen was contacted by a heart doctor, seeking to pay for promotion of his new book to Owen's followers he realized Unleash the Knowledge could be more than a social media platform. IT could become a business model. Through this episode Owen shares his journey growing his platform and finding his footing as well as tips you can use to grow your own social media platform! Three Key Takeaways: · In order to grow a social media platform you need to create a niche that works for your audience and provides value. · Certain social media platforms tend to skew towards certain trends or topics. That doesn't mean you can't grow a successful audience outside those bubbles if you are dedicated to it. · Growing a platform requires consistency. You can't just post when you need something from your audience.

There are few thought leaders who work behind the scenes to create, develop, and deploy programs while simultaneously being the face of the brand. What does it take to find success on both ends? Today we've invited internationally recognized presenter, content developer, business leader and coach Curtis Bateman! He is currently the Vice President of International Direct Offices at FranklinCovey, and was previously the President and CEO of Red Tree Leadership before orchestrated a buyout to FranklinCovey. With few thought leaders working both the back and front of the house, Curtis gives us some insights into what it takes to be successful doing both. He tells us about the passion and extra hours that are required to practice what you preach. However creating doesn't have to be a solo job, in fact, Curtis shares how having Brain Buddies can help sharpen your skills. Having a knowledgeable team around you to help research stories and ideas as well as draft or polish content creates a high quality end product. Curtis tells us how being in the market place every day while creating content creates a constant cycle of feedback as content goes out to the audience, gets live reactions, and can be revised based on that input. This system has been used to pressure test everything from their framework to his newest book Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity. Having had a boutique company that exited to FranklinCovey, Curtis fully understands what it takes to position yourself for acquisition. While each instance is different Curtis shares how having principle-based content that matched up with the prospective buyer, having a Fortune 50 client, and thought leaders with significant industry experience that were capable of making contributions inside the new organization all played a role in a successful acquisition. Three Key Takeaways: · Content creation doesn't have to be a single player game. By working with others you can polish your skills and elevate your content. · Taking ideas to your audience and revising based on feedback can give you real time advice on where the market agrees or disagrees with your content. · Exiting a boutique firm for a bigger company means you don't get to touch every aspect of the business anymore. You have to learn to trust others.

How do you get attention for a product that could be used by millions but few are aware of without having a massive marketing budget? Thought leadership! Our guest today is Martha Orellana, Vice President of Marketing for MrSteam, a company that converts regular showers into steam showers in personal residence as well as gyms and spas. While most people have heard of a steam shower, few would imagine that you could have one in your home or that people have had them for decades. Martha shares the history of MrSteam and the challenges they faced getting people to know they could have such a product in their own home. By targeting and educating architects, plumbers, and designers MrSteam was able to create a chain that not only knew about their offerings but became champions of it! When it came to educating the professionals that would be installing and selling their products Martha went beyond information sessions or bookwork, creating elegant invitations to Camp Feelgood, hosted at high end hotels where they would not only explain the health benefits of steam showers, but spend time in them providing a luxury experience they could then speak directly to when answering questions of future clients. Martha offers great insights into reaching new audiences and differentiating yourself from the pack by using interesting, dramatic, and meaningful tactics. Three Key Takeaways: · When you don't have a massive marketing budget, solid thought leadership can allow you to punch above your weight class. · When getting the message about your offering out you have to target the right audience. By going after the professionals between you and your product you can educate the supply chain and create champions. · Theatric and dramatic visuals can often help grab the audience's attention and allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Publishers often look at books as seasonal, but an author needs to look at their book as a long term investment. What should you be thinking of a year before publishing, and how can your book help your business - even years after it was released? I've invited Katie Anderson, internationally recognized leadership coach, consultant, speaker, and founder of Katie Anderson Consulting to join me. At the time of this recording, Katie was celebrating the three year anniversary of her book, Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn: Lessons from Toyota Leader Isao Yoshino on a Lifetime of Continuous Learning. Katie's journey into thought leadership literally took her around the world, from California to Australia and then to Japan, where she had the unique opportunity to partner with Isao Yoshino, a 40-year Toyota Motor Corporation leader. This time spent together became the fuel for her book, Learning to Lead, in which she weaves together Mr. Yoshino's heartwarming and deeply reflective stories of personal discovery and organizational history, and offers her own unique perspective, with the intention of helping others learn to lead and lead to learn. In the year leading up to publishing the book, Katie had a lot of big decisions to make. Katie shares how she was introduced to traditional publishers both big and small, but ultimately chose to self-publish. We learn the importance of having the goals of the publisher align with those of the author, and how an author can maintain control over the message and look of the book. Now, three years after publishing, Katie shares the impact the book has had on her business and what she did to ensure it found its way into the right hands. She talks about sharing stories from the book and doing so from the heart, without a focus on selling units, but with a passion for the lessons that can be learned and the impact and value the book can have for others. Three Key Takeaways: * You need to have a full understanding of the purpose of your book. Allow that purpose to influence the choices around publishing, look, and feel. * There needs to be complete alignment between a publisher and author. If you can't find that perhaps another publishing method would better suit you. * When self-publishing it is still important to hire professionals to do the work you are not good at. This will ensure a polished end product.

You need top talent to start a thought leadership function in your organization. But what if that talent already exists in your org? Whether you are responsible for starting a thought leadership function at a startup, or at a large company, you need to have the right talent, the right org support, and the right metrics to define success. In today's episode, we're chatting with Dr. Karthik Nagendra, Founder and CEO of ThoughtStarters, the first thought leadership marketing company in Asia. He's also the author of The Thought Leader Way: Leading Your Business with Thought Leadership in an Altered World, which details his experience and journey as a thought leader, and offers mental blueprints for helping new thought leaders and their teams excel. Karthik takes us back to 2007, when he first started doing thought leadership at a startup in an emerging field. He shares how an assessment they created boosted the profile of the organization, and shaped the engineering industry as a whole. Moving onto larger corporate thought leadership roles, Karthik shares how he helped stand up thought leadership as a research wing. He worked to identify internal subject matter experts and help them "come out of the shadows" and share their knowledge and passion. This partnership led to co-created white papers and other content that elevated organizational awareness while increasing their credibility. We also discuss category creation and the need to continue to look forward, finding new ways to solve old problems. Karthik discusses how we often keep doing things the same old way, even if that way might not be as effective as it once was. He explains how he's helped take salespeople down a journey of exploration and experimentation, to a point where it influences their peers to seek newer methods as well. This episode tackles thought leadership from both a large and small scale, and offers advice for leaders, sales teams, marketing, and researchers alike! Three Key Takeaways: * When starting a thought leadership function look internally for experts who are eager to share their knowledge and passion. Then give them a platform to do so. * The buy-in from senior leadership is key when starting thought leadership. If they don't believe in working for the long game, then thought leadership won't be effective. * If you are asking poor questions you are going to get poor answers. And if you are creating thought leadership from those answers, people are going to think you're a poor thought leader.

Thought leading is a busy life! You write books, travel for keynote speaking, network with other experts and create lots of content. However, that means your business is limited to your personal time! So, what can you do to help your content sell itself? Our guest today has excelled at everything "thought leadership," including the ability to remove himself from the day to day of a business he built. Michael Bungay Stainer is the best-selling author of The Coaching Habit, a renowned keynote speaker, and Founder of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that provides training to enterprise companies. With Michael's newest book How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships having just hit the shelf we start our conversation discussing the phases of a book launch and how marketing a book is more than marketing just the book. He shares how a book can become the gateway to your larger ecosystem. Michael gives the pros and cons of traditional and hybrid publishing as well as why you need to treat your book like starting a business, giving it at least 2 – 3 years to flourish and grow. In addition to being an author Michael knows the keynote speaking side of the business sharing how at the best of times focusing on speaking can be lucrative, ending with standing ovations and nice hotel rooms. However it can also mean hundreds of days on the road, airport delays, and fatigue. We learn the criteria Michael uses for saying Yes to a possible gig and how speaking can fit into your business model. Books and speaking are powerful tools for spreading thought leadership but how can your business go on without you writing and speaking? As the Founder of Box of Crayons, Michael ensured the company benefitted from his best-selling books and reputation, but also ensured the sales training could stand without him. He shares both the B2B and B2C strategy that is allowing him to work 1 hour a month for Box of Crayons without the company falling apart in his absence. This episode is a master class on everything a thought leader needs to know to ensure not only the success of their personal brand, but the company they someday will leave behind. Three Key Takeaways: · It is really hard to write a book. Except compared to marketing a book. It's really hard to market a book... except compared to getting people to read a book. · Hybrid publishing means you are the executive editor of your book. You get to call it what you want and give it the look and feel you want. · As time goes on you need to watch the market and see if your target avatars have changed. When they do you may need to update your content and offers to accommodate their growing needs.

You've been invited as a guest on a podcast! How exciting! But... what now? What should you say, and how do you use this opportunity to shine a spotlight on your best ideas? Our guest today is Dana Lindahl, the Founder and CEO of Legendary Podcasts, an agency that helps clients get booked on podcasts, so they can increase their visibility, brand, and legacy! Being a guest on a podcast can be of tremendous benefit to your thought leadership. Dana explains how most clients are seeking to increase their exposure, create brand awareness, and generate leads. Many believe being on a podcast with a larger audience is the way to do this but Dana clarifies why a smaller audience is the one that needs to hear your message the most can have more impact. Getting booked on a podcast often means doing a quick call beforehand to ensure what the guest has to offer fits the needs of the host's show. We discover how a shockingly low number of potential guests have taken the time to listen to the show they are seeking to be on. Dana tells us why this is a critical mistake that can lead to the guest being passed over. The host/guest relationship needs to be a mutual one where the guest is providing valuable information to the host's audience. If both ends are not getting something out of the interview it might not be the right fit. Finally, Dana takes us beyond the podcast interview to the benefits that can blossom afterward. A guest appearance is more than a way to reach a larger audience it is a unique networking opportunity where the host and guest can find further ways to work together, share their network, and help each other. However, if only one side is doing the work the relationship will fail leading to missed opportunities. If you are looking to be a guest on podcasts, you'll want to check out this link where Dana has collected valuable information you can put to use in your quest to become a legendary guest! Three Key Takeaways: * A podcast that directly speaks to the audience you want to reach most is more powerful than a larger more general audience. * When seeking to be a guest on a podcast research both the show and the host. Listen to the previous episode to identify how you can provide value to their audience. * The value of a podcast doesn't have to be one-and-done. The episode can be repurposed into blog posts, infographics, and sound bites continuing to provide content for weeks.

We've all heard the saying, "many hands make light work." Can collaborating help thought leadership content reach scale and create greater impact? In today's episode, we discuss the critical impact of allies and ambassadors in thought leadership. We highlight valuable conversations from past guests that truly understand that collaboration with influencers and others can significantly elevate a brand or idea. Morag Barrett is the Founder and CEO of Skye Team. She helps us define what allies and ambassadors are and how they can help take ideas to scale or even create a movement that would be unachievable alone. Kerry-Ann Stimpson, Chief Marketing Officer at The JMMB Group shares how the influence of a corporate brand can be expanded by working in tandem to build personal brands of the employees. We learn how this creates new ways for the audience to interact with the brand while increasing confidence and trust in both brands. Jacqueline Jodl, Senior Vice President of Global Youth & Education, and Haylie Wrubel, Director of Global Unified Champion Schools discuss the importance of allies and ambassadors to the Special Olympics. They share how they seek out thought leaders that are sharing message which run parallel to their own, then co-create content to reach a larger audience with the message. Three Key Takeaways: * Personal brands can be good for corporate brands. Don't feel the need to micro-manage employees who are building their own brand. Instead, work with them to align the goals of the individual with the organization. * Allies and ambassadors often create a greater level of trust in a brand. People trust individuals faster than organizations. * Having brand ambassadors is a great way to be better in tune with what is being said about your brand.

If fewer people are buying and reading books, why should a thought leader write one? Today we delve into the world of authorship and publishing with Henry Mintzberg. Henry is a Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University and the author of more than 20 books including Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development and Simply Managing: What Managers Do - and Can Do Better. Our conversation starts by discussing where you find the value in writing a book. Whether it be the intrinsic value of codifying your thought leadership or the extrinsic value of higher engagement and client acquisition. Henry shares with us his compulsion to write books, regardless of if they succeed or not. He discusses how a few newer books have not done as well as expected and how difficult topics like climate change might play a part in those results. When publishing about important, but hard topics that many would rather not think about how do you get your message out? Henry talks about expanding into new modalities to capture the audience's attention and how hard it is to get uninterrupted attention for your topic. He explains how interruption is just one of the reasons a book can have a bigger impact than articles, even if the book reaches only a fraction of the audience a short-form piece might. Three Key Takeaways: · Reaching ten thousand people with a book can be far more influential than reaching one hundred thousand people with an article. · A publication date is not a measurement of value. Many books continue to be relevant years after their publication. · Do what is in your heart. Don't let anyone talk you into something else because you will end up doing it badly.

If you're going to practice thought leadership, you need good instincts. You've also got to ask good questions! To discuss how thought leadership can be beneficial in change management I've invited The Chief Innovation Officer at Prosci, Tim Creasey to join me. In addition to his work helping individuals and organizations build their own capabilities in change management, Tim is the author of Change Management: The People Side of Change. For Tim and Prosci, creating thought leadership starts with pattern recognition and identification. By asking questions of hundreds of people and documenting their answers you are able to start to see the patterns that already exist and get input on how to create impactful change. Only then can you synthesize the information into content that is actionable and accessible. Creating content that can have a positive impact goes beyond research and a good idea. What you make has to be relevant to the audience and suited to their knowledge level. Tim discusses setting a contextual anchor for the conversation and using different modalities to reach the audience where they are comfortable and in a way they can understand. Three Key Takeaways: · Thought leadership comes from a lot of hard work, and asking smart questions. Then discerning the patterns that others can act on. · There is an art to asking the nuanced questions that are going to yield the insights you are looking for. · Creating good thought leadership comes from collecting data, analyzing it, and then turning those findings into actionable content that is easily accessible.

Thought leadership is a great source for lead generation. So how do you create content that a sales team can easily access and assess? And how can you measure the success of it? To discuss these topics I've invited Dani Buckley the Vice President and General Manager of LeadG2 to join me. LeadG2 is a sales performance agency helping businesses sell smarter and faster. Dani is also the host of the podcast Sell Smarter, Sell Faster where she offers insights, strategies, and real-world examples to help her audience take sales enablement to the next level. Our conversation begins by establishing a baseline of how thought leadership and lead gen intersect. Dani talks about how powerful thought leadership can be and how it really needs to come from a philosophical belief in wanting to help people and your industry, even if you never get anything in return. Next, we discuss reaching your audience and focusing on them. Dani shares how they have a created persona they keep in mind while creating content, but also how a few times a year they look at who their largest clients are. Discuss what their needs and problems are, even reaching out to them to gain greater insights into what they are looking for. Then incorporate that real-world information into the content they create. Often the bridge between sales and thought leadership can be a tough one to cross. Dani tells us why it doesn't have to be. Having a sales background she offers examples of what sales team love to see from thought leaders, from the time of content they seek, how technology can make it accessible, and even help evaluate how popular or useful content is. Three Key Takeaways: · When creating thought leadership for sales teams take the time to understand their role. Listen to sales calls, and get to know what they do, and what sales conversations sound like. · Thought leadership has a compounding effect year over year. Start making content early and be consistent in sticking with it. · Thought leadership needs to be created with a very specific audience in mind. Look at the clients you've had success with and use them as a template of who you should be speaking to.

Accountability and compassion are often thought of as two things that can't go together. Yet they are not ideas that are in opposition to each other. In fact, when put together they can have a transformational effect on the employees, leaders, and culture of your organization. In order to really understand how we can merge these two concepts I've invited Nate Regier to join me. He is the Founder and CEO of Next Element, a global leadership firm helping build cultures of compassionate accountability. And his newest book is Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. We start with Nate explaining exactly what Compassionate Accountability and why putting the two ideas together can create psychological safety and build trust that will ultimately lead to stronger relationships and increased performance. Now that we know what Compassionate Accountability is, how can we practice it? Nate explains how he has developed a working definition of compassion that helps to shift our mindsets. This mindset is about more than simply getting along it is about being an active participant in solving problems and being in the trenches together. Not only does Nate help us understand how to practice this mindset he shares how you can deploy it across your entire organization! In order to do that you have to be clear about what the behaviors norms are. Nate lays out the six areas of organizational life where you can apply this new lens, how you can identify critical behaviors being manifested, where the gaps are, and where the opportunities for improvement are. If you want to see revolutionary change in yourself and your organization you'll want to listen to this episode and immediately pick up Nate's book! Three Key Takeaways: · Leaders that hold people accountable without also treating them as valuable and capable will not have employees for long. · Compassion is a teachable and learning capability. And it can have a dramatic positive impact on people's lives. · If we struggle together and bring more compassion to the world then everyone wins.

Thought Leadership can be very complicated, with nuanced ideas and industry jargon. Unfortunately, complex language and niche ideas won't catch your audience's attention! To explore how to take big thought leadership ideas to market, I've invited Jessica Duffield to join me. Jessica is a Senior Consultant at Thought Leadership Leverage. She's worked with clients for nearly 10 years, helping them create content, find their best audience, and go to scale with unique ideas. We discuss the most effective ways to take big ideas and turn them into bit-sized content, ensuring your audience will notice them - and easily remember the content. Jessica walks us through the process of finding the strongest core ideas of your thought leadership and focusing on those, creating a simplified vision of your content that can be easily grasped. In addition to breaking your content down, you need to know your audience - who do you want to work with and for? Jessica gives valuable advice not only for finding your audience, but understanding their needs, worries, and where they are within their organizations. Additionally, we discuss the need for a hook that will grab your audience quickly. Jessica shares how and why sharing your story authenticity can be the "hook" you need to get your audience to stop scrolling and want more. Three Key Takeaways: * You often only get a few seconds to grab your audience's attention. And if you can't evoke interest and curiosity in your idea in that time, you've failed. * When creating content, sometimes you'll have to "Kill Your Darlings" to maintain focus on the most important facets of your thought leadership and your audience. * Big ideas don't have to be complicated. In fact, making your ideas easy to understand means a larger audience will be able to consume your content and follow you to the next level.

Summary:Ever heard, "To be successful, you have to get out of your comfort zone!" But if your "comfort zone" aligns with your core values, what then? Can you find an alignment between those values and marketing that will allow you to stay in your comfort zone and find success? Our guest today is the "Go for Yes Gal!" Stacey Hall! Stacey is the founder of Success with Stacey Hall, a well-known success strategist, TedX speaker, and best-selling author with her fifth book "Selling from Your Comfort Zone: The Power of Alignment Marketing". Our conversation starts by covering the 23 years between Stacey's first and fifth books. She shares what has changed and what has stayed the same in the publishing industry and why she returned to BK Publishing for her newest book. Stacey discusses the content of her book Selling from Your Comfort Zone explaining how people want to stay aligned with their core values and are no longer willing to let them go. She covers how the current environment for sales can be confusing and why it is often better to stay in your comfort zone, expanding on it in alignment with your current values and skills. In addition to learning about the content of the book Stacey shares how she is marketing the book and what she is doing differently now. She gives us insights into using technology like social media, AI, and podcasts to market the book from home to create both free and paid offshoots of the book that you can use to lead people to the book or your other offerings. Three Key Takeaways: * Put tidbits of your book on social media. Don't just tell them the book is coming give them bits of the content as a teaser. * When creating free tie-ins to the book, they have to come out before the book to create interest and excitement. * It is important to publish your book in different formats. Paper, ebooks, and audio have all become popular methods of consuming books.

AI is a powerful tool that is growing at an astonishing rate, but can thought leaders trust the technology? Or should a human be keeping an eye on the process - and importantly, the output? Our guest today is Stephanie Grayson, a Content Marketing Leader and Thought Leadership Advisor with experience in the worlds of agency marketing, large consulting houses, and enterprise scale software. She is also an AI enthusiast with a creative view on how to best use this remarkable new technology. We start the conversation by defining the difference between thought leadership and content marketing. Stephanie helps us understand how content marketing focuses on the now, while thought leadership focuses on the future. Stephanie explains how the current limitations of AI make it unlikely to generate truly new ideas that could be considered genuine thought leadership. In addition, since AI can only learn from what we give it we have to be careful about introducing bias and be sure to fact check any results it gives to ensure it isn't a very convincing AI hallucination. So if AI isn't completely trustworthy, how can we best use it? Stephanie shares AI would be capable of sorting through huge datasets that might be too cost and time prohibitive for people to go through. From these datasets, the AI could deliver valuable stats and even pose answers to various hypotheses allowing the thought leader to spend more time asking smart questions. Three Key Takeaways: * AI cannot (yet) accomplish the level of thought leadership that gets executive response. Collation is not creation! * Great thought leadership should stop you in your tracks for a moment and make you say, "Now that is a unique and interesting #idea." * There is a need for more than one set of eyes on large company-level data-backed thought leadership - be it human or AI. Check your facts, your sources and make sure everything is correct.

Thought leaders have a passion for ideas, frameworks, and methodologies. But many struggle with defining their brand, finding clients, and maintaining a stable revenue stream. Don't worry - help is on the way! Today, we're talking with Vaughn Sigmon, the co-founder of Results Driven Leadership which specializes in helping businesses unlock their full potential through transformative leadership practices. Vaughn is also the host of The Business Mechanic – where he shares his expertise to improve the impact of executives and managers by enhancing their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Leaving a stable executive position to start his own leadership development business was a huge risk. We talk with Vaughn about the driving force behind his shift in career and why he chose the area he did. Leadership development is a crowded space to enter. Vaughn shares what he did to stand out and win clients. Acquiring clients is the hardest part that few want to talk about. We learn how it requires a multi-step marketing process that creates multiple touch points, allowing potential clients to get to know you, what you stand for, and the problems you are able to solve. Vaughn explains how the two main marketing platforms he has been using are LinkedIn and podcasting. We learn how Vaughn became smart and focused on who his audience would be and how to create awareness, interest, and a relationship with your audience on the platform. Finally, we learn about the advantages of starting a podcast or doing the circuit as a guest. Plus, he shares tips for getting your audience to engage and move further down the sales funnel. Three Key Takeaways: · You need to get in front of the right people so they get to know you. If they don't buy who you are they're not going to buy your concepts. · If you are smart and focused, your message is on point, LinkedIn can be a gold mine. · The title of a podcast or blog entry is of utmost importance. Having great content won't matter if no one reads it because the title does not entice them.

Authors tend to be very proud of their books and believe what they've written can help anyone, anywhere! Although that might be correct, the hard truth is you are going to have to focus on the .001% of the population that is going to get the most out of your book and that will in turn get the most out of your content. To discuss the ins and outs of marketing to your target audience we've invited first time author Michelle Gladieux to join us. Michelle is the president of Gladieux Consulting, which offers one-on-one executive and employee coaching and strategic plan facilitation. Michelle's first book is Communicate with Courage: Taking Risks to Overcome the Four Hidden Challenges. Michelle shares how she spent four years writing her book to ensure it was ready for publication. Then, her editor suggested that she rewrite the book and focus on an overarching message that would better resonate and pull the reader in. That message would become the four hidden challenges that prevent people from becoming fearless and peerless communicators Peter and Michelle discuss the hard task of marketing a book, and why you need to start marketing before you're published. We learn what personal touches Michelle used to give the book legs and what experiments she has tried and is continuing to do that have a low cost but potentially high impact! Three Key Takeaways: · For most people making money cannot be the main driver for writing a book. · Don't be afraid of failure when experimenting with marketing. Some ideas might not fly, but others could go further than you might imagine. · It is easy to fall into the trap of feeling like everyone can use your book. In order to get the best return on your investment you have to drill down deep into who your target avatar really is.

It's celebration time! The Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast is celebrating our 500th episode with our co-hosts, Peter Winick and Bill Sherman. In this special episode, Bill and Peter share news about their most recent white paper, "The OrgTL Canvas," and walk us through the deep insights they've gained by spending more than 20 years working with thought leaders, from Fortune 500 and Global 100 successes to new, single-shingle startups - all looking to get their remarkable insights out into the world. Over the past four years, Peter and Bill have spoken with more than 250 heads of thought leadership, many of them on this very podcast. Those conversations have given them incredible insight into the pain points that organizations face when creating, curating, and sustaining thought leadership initiatives. The OrgTL Canvas synthesizes their acumen into actionable steps that help organizations use thought leadership to gain higher visibility, greater success, and a strong, loyal following. In today's conversation, Bill and Peter share how organizations are changing the way they interact with consumers (and potential clients), and how thought leadership can bridge the gap that leads to "next steps" for their audience. They discuss thought leadership strategy (and how to create one), as well as the baseline criteria and metrics you should use, the warning signals that your strategy isn't working, and the importance of alignment across the organization. The OrgTL Canvas is a framework that can help your ideas spread beyond the walls of your organization, and create real impact. We're pleased to share it, and to join with our listeners in celebrating an amazing 500 episodes of Leveraging Thought Leadership. Thank you for listening to our podcast, and here's to 500 more! Three Key Takeaways: * Strategy does not happen by accident. It has to be purposeful. * You only need 3 - 5 core provocative ideas to bang the drum on. More isn't always better. * Thought leadership works to facilitate awareness, provoke curiosity, and serve as a call to education.

Many organizations want to formalize their thought leadership efforts and take it to the next level. But how do you turn a "casual thought leadership presence" into something more? Today, we discuss ways to harness a "casual" message and turn it into powerful thought leadership that you can take to scale. Our guests are Stacey Flax, Thought Leadership Communication Manager and Carlos Williams, Applications Development Manager from Hach, an organization that focuses on water analysis. Stacey and Carlos share how people at Hach had been doing thought leadership on their own, before Hach chose to formalize it and amplify the expertise the organization had to offer. Carlos explains how part of the job of a thought leader is to convey your message in relatable terms but also somehow make it fun, through story or anecdotes. Stacey further explains the need to take a step back and think about your message. Who are you trying to reach? What's the core essence of your insights? They discuss how to convey your thought leadership message in different ways, using different media forms and different techniques. We also learn how Stacey aided in putting the formal structure in place, getting a baseline of subject matter experts, cataloging all of the previously produced content, and gaining further support from the leadership by being able to show the impact thought leadership was having. As a bonus, we take a look back at John Snow's discovery of cholera in the water in the 1920s - perhaps some of the first thought leadership on the topic of water analysis - and how those insights still affect us today. Three Key Takeaways: * When formalizing thought leadership within an organization, start by discovering the experts in your organization, and curate the material they have already produced into a usable catalog. * When creating thought leadership for technical or niche topics, it is important to use storytelling to spice up the content and make it somehow relatable. * Ensure any information you distribute in your thought leadership aligns with the organization's strategy.

Executives often feel they need to be the ones creating thought leadership, but true thought leadership needs to move beyond a single person. That's how insights goes the distance; it needs to be elevated by others while you are not in the room. In order to fully understand how organizations build their thought leadership teams, I've invited Will Milano to join me. Will is the Chief Marketing Officer for Integrity Solutions, which focuses on sales training for organizations. He is also the host of the podcast "Mental Selling". Early in Will's career, he found that content and insights could drive conversations, increase credibility, and create strong brand affinity. Since then, he has been encouraging organizations to move their thought leadership beyond the C-Suite, bringing senior consultants into the game and allowing clients to see the full extent of what your organization has to offer. While many fear saying too much or "giving away the magic," it actually works as a sneak peek that shows clients why they need your services. One of the hardest parts of creating a thought leadership engine is keeping it going. Will shares how having a knowledgeable team can make it easier to keep that engine going and take your ideas to scale. In addition we learn the importance of by-lines, which give potential clients a name they can seek further content from and grow to trust, and why you'll want to not only meet your audience where they are, but also meet your content creators where they are most comfortable. Three Key Takeaways: · Thought leadership is about relationship building. Building trust and credibility and authenticity as a brand (and individuals in a brand) above anything else. · Early in the sales cycle customers care far more about what you have to say than what you have to sell. · More and more people are seeking to know exactly where their information is coming from. By-lines on articles allow the audience to build trust and know it isn't simply AI-generated content.

Ever thought about writing a book to support your thought leadership? Or maybe you have already written a book - and now you're trying to get the word out! Either way, a book can be an incredible investment for an entrepreneur, but to get the full return on that investment, you'll need a marketing plan and a product roadmap. Today, we've invited Stephanie Chandler to be our guest. Stephanie is an experienced consultant, specializing in content marketing, internet marketing, social media, search engine optimization, and publishing. She is also the founder and CEO of Stephanie Chandler Enterprises, and the author of The Nonfiction Book Publishing Plan and The Nonfiction Book Marketing Plan. We start our conversation by discussing the huge changes in the publishing industry during the last few years. Stephanie shares that physical books are still being read (as well as a surge in e-books), but sales of audiobooks are rising, and expected to grow exponentially through 2030. In addition to audio, self-publishing has exploded - bringing more than 1 million titles to the market each year! With so many books being published, having a strong promotion strategy has never been more important. But what does that look like? Stephanie walks us through the best methods to include in your marketing plan, from podcasts and Amazon promotions to book tours and speaking gigs, as well as giving us surprising insight into one method that might not work as well as you think! In addition to promoting the book, entrepreneurs will want to create additional products to support that book, and give customers something to put into practice right away. Stephanie shares insights around workshops and webinars, and explains an underutilized method that can actually make more money than your book - with less effort! Be sure to listen in! Three Key Takeaways: * Well-written, well-produced, and well-promoted books will always rise to the top. * Social media isn't a great way to sell books. It's great to build a platform and your e-mail list. * To give your book the best chance of success, spend as much time on preparing the promotion strategy and supporting materials as you do in writing the manuscript.

When you start a new thought leadership project, what's the first question you ask? Do you look at who the project is for? What does it mean to your organization? What the ROI could be? Today's guest asks the question, "What is universally true about this topic?" Our guest today is Mark Miller, Vice President of High Performance Leadership, Chick-fil-A Inc. and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do and his newest book Culture Rules: The Leader's Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Mark takes us back to his first book and how it was born out of necessity: Chick-fil-A wanted stronger leadership, and took it upon themselves to do the research to find out what that takes. During the process, Ken Blanchard realized the work being done not only articulated what great leaders do at Chick-fil-A, but more, it touched on the things that distinguished great leaders throughout history. And thus, Mark created The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. With every project, Mark starts with the seemingly simple question, "What is universally true about this topic?" The question acts as a guideline to create a point of view on emerging business issues, and builds a foundation that can serve their organization and the world at large because the viewpoint created reaches beyond any one industry and to the heart of topics like leadership and culture. Having authored and published books for twenty years, Mark has seen a lot of change. We discuss the strategies Mark is employing as an author, to keep landing on the Wall Street Journal Best Sellers list. We explore prelaunch campaigns, creating a personal army of enthusiastic ambassadors to share the news about your book, and more. Mark gives us the inside track of how he used incentives, gamification, and helping non-profits, to promote the book and find his audience. Three Key Takeaways: · With most projects, try to start with "What is universally true about the topic?" · Everything rises and falls with leaders. If you can help them grow their capacity, impact, and influence, then everyone wins. · Multi-faceted book launch campaigns that recruit champions, incentivize their participation, and generate Amazon reviews are just a few ways to have a successful book.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways you can elevate your thought leadership. It can create an emotional connection, convey the need for change, or provide a vision of the future. In this episode, we collect advice from our experts on the various ways a thought leader can utilize the storytelling skill to elevate their content. Adam Zuckerman is Product Leader, Employee Engagement Software at Willis Towers Watson. Adam shares how his personal approach of sharing experiences in storytelling can help connect the research and data you provide with your audience in meaningful ways. Mary Cronin is a Research Professor at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. She teaches about entrepreneurship, and explains to us how storytelling is a vital component of the success of both thought leaders and startups. At the time of publication, Michelle Mellon was the Thought Leadership Director of SalientMG. She is also a published fiction author. Michelle takes her experience writing stories and applies those same principles to writing thought leadership explaining how the fundamentals of storytelling need to be followed, as well as how they can be broken to create engaging narratives. Our final guest is Christopher Brace, Adjunct Professor of Marketing at MICA. Christopher helps us understand how storytelling can be used in marketing to build brands. He explains how, by employing a listening ear, you can discover the emotional territories of your audience that will help you know what resonates most with them. Three Key Takeaways: * Storytelling is a component of the success of entrepreneurs and thought leaders; yet storytelling is often neglected. * Don't be afraid to provide predictions for the future in your thought leadership. Your speculation doesn't have to be 100% right it just has to provide a glimpse of what could be around the corner. * When starting a narrative look at the questions of "What if" but ensure the basic elements of storytelling are not forgotten.

Consultants often approach clients seeking to answer the question, "How can I help you?" What would happen if you instead asked, "What can you and I create together, to solve the problem?" Our guest today is Jennifer Kenny. Jennifer is a speaker, technology leader, strategic advisor, and bestselling author of "The Innovation Mindset: A Proven Method to Fuel Performance and Results" Jennifer shares with us how her career started out in geology, where she delved into the depths of systems thinking. Those practices, built to support her scientific hypotheses, led her to consulting and developing her own content. Jennifer's innovative attitude to solving problems by using a mastery of coordination, communication, and co-creation of solutions elevated her approach, and allowed her and her clients to overcome complex challenges. One problem that was not easily solved was writing her bestselling book, The Innovation Mindset. Jennifer tells us how the book started with an entirely different focus before getting scrapped for a second iteration… which she also discarded! Through conversation with Page Two Publishing, Jennifer realized that she should be focusing on innovation and collaborative ideas - and thus, her book was born. In addition, Jennifer talks about the huge learning curve that exists in the publishing industry, and how she worked with her daughter to enhance her own capabilities and create an incredible book! Three Key Takeaways: * If you are going to share your mastery of a complex field or system, you need to make it easy for your audience to understand your insights. * Aspiring authors should find a good editor that can elevate a manuscript to its full potential. * If you are going to write with a partner, you need to understand the intricacies of collaboration - and communication!

Some thought leaders focus on long form content, like research papers or books. Others prefer short form media, such as videos and infographics. It's simple: audiences gravitate to formats they prefer. If you know your audience, you can use this information to get your content in front of them - but what happens when your ideas run into modality barriers? Today, Bill Sherman, host of the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast and the COO of Thought Leadership Leverage, goes solo to discuss the "Comfortable Corners of Thought Leadership" Framework. Bill takes us through each of the four corners helping us understand as content creators how there is a difference between being comfortable with our idea and being comfortable with a modality. We learn that exploring a new modality while working through an idea can spell disaster while sticking with a modality you are most comfortable with while discussing a well-polished idea can allow you to shine! However, what happens when your favorite medium is not one the audience is comfortable with? Bill explains that on average the majority of your audience is going to have a low to mid-level of comfort with your idea, so leaning into a modality they are more comfortable with can help keep them engaged. During this episode, Bill helps us to understand the nuances of using various modalities, from both the perspective of the content creator and the intended audience. Three Key Takeaways: * Where is your comfort zone? Do you stretch yourself to new modalities? Is your comfort zone the same as your audience's? * When looking at the four corners, remember to consider them from the audience's point-of-view. * Avoid "sitting in the opposite corner" (no matter how comfortable it is there!) from your audience.