The phone rings. The panicked voice of a client asks how I am and – before I can answer – wonders if I have some time over the next couple days. You see, the number two person in the company will be on a stage in four days (it’s always four days; go figure). Maybe it’s an industry event or it might be an internal strategy session with all the global vice presidents in town. They started with the most recent field marketing deck (“there’s good stuff in there”) but the speech just isn’t coming together. Can I help?
This is the second blog in a series of musings on just what thought leadership is and how it can be practiced. At the moment, we’re dealing with the basic problem of ambiguity in the concept. That ambiguity causes problems like this one when you’re trying to execute. This scenario and others like it happen often so if you see yourself in it, you’re in good company. That field deck no doubt has some good stuff in it. But, the marketing director or chief of staff on the other end of the line knows that thought leadership requires a higher reach than just a competent rendition of the details.
To understand the nature of thought leadership and ways to execute, we’re breaking down the term. In the last post, I discussed the word “thought” and its complexity. That leads us to the word “leadership” and my contention in this post is that much of the ambiguity (the “know it when you see it” aspect) of thought leadership stems from this term.
Take me to your leader…if you know who that is
I teach a class in leadership at a nationally ranked liberal arts university, one of those places that makes the “schools that change lives” lists. One of the things we talk about early in the semester is the ambiguity of the term leadership and its “know it when you see it” nature.
“Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on Earth,” according to James MacGregor Burns, one of the founding thinkers of modern leadership studies. Over the course of the 20thcentury, academic literature proffered more than 200 definitions of leadership, according to researchers Michael Hackman and Craig Johnson.
Even people studying leadership can’t agree what it is.
But, one of the commonalities that has emerged as various theories of leadership have evolved over the decades is the importance of followers. In fact, our ideas of leadership have drifted out of assessing the DNA of the leader (what I call the hunt for the leadership gene) and become much more rooted in the relationship and interactions between leaders and followers. To oversimplify, you cannot lead unless someone is following. And as a practical matter, we’re actually talking about many people following. In the most contemporary versions of leadership theory, leaders activate and satisfy followers’ needs in various ways with various feedback mechanisms that discipline both parties.
So, where does that leave us when we contemplate thought leadership programs? And how can all this help that poor client on the phone?
Follow my lead here
If leadership is a less useful concept without followership, then the equivalent dynamic for thought leadership is getting wrapped up in our thoughts before considering the needs of the audience. The audience is central to content development because you are trying to activate and satisfy the needs of potential followers. And they don’t have a need to buy your product or listen to your strategy. Their needs lay elsewhere.
So, I tell the nervous client to send me the Powerpoint they have, but in the meantime let’s talk about who is out there in the audience. Depending on the situation, you might actually have a lot of information about them. If it’s an internal strategy session, you know who the VPs are and what they’ve gone through. If it’s an executive blog series in question, let’s get someone on the phone who is talking to customers regularly to find out what’s really on their minds.
This runs counter to our natural tendency to focus on our own thoughts first in crafting communications. Last quarter’s marketing deck might have good stuff in it, but it’s a resource only – not the starting point. And starting with the audience rather than the content or the speaker is even harder when you’re talking about a powerful executive you’re putting in harm’s way. You are, after all, more in control of the thoughts in that Powerpoint deck than you are of audience expectations and that control can feel comforting.
And then, what do we want them to do? What action, perhaps action loosely defined, do we want them to take? Maybe they need to understand something differently or approach a problem with a different mindset. Maybe they need to get out of strategy setting around big ideas like digital transformation and start executing. What do they need to hear from us to move in that direction? And why will they follow our lead?
Once you understand the audience, then you can consider the thought you have to convey and design the content so it translates into their situation and drives the change in them that you need. Said another way, too much of what passes for thought leadership is an abundance of thoughts and not enough leadership.
So, how do we take these separate concepts – “thought” and “leadership” – and put them back together in a definition that can drive programs? That’s the next blog post.