Periodically in the Bull Pen Discussion Forum, a topic comes up that warrants being put out to everyone in the broader Essential Message community.

Last week, the issue of thought-leadership came up — and that gave me pause for thought…

From reading the original post and subsequent comments, it occurred to me that becoming a thought leader is an inevitable by-product of The Essential Message. Then I realized that it was more than just a by-product; it actually is one of the key goals of discovering your Essential Message.

Now let’s be clear — I am not referring or advocating anyone become a thought leader simply for the sake of becoming a thought leader. That strikes me as shallow and inauthentic, and as a result doomed to failure. Everyone seems to have a unique, specific area of expertise and interest that they might not be aware of, or they might not value, but once surfaced, becomes the authentic platform to build their thought leadership on.

What I do advocate, then, is that people actively discover what that platform is…

Here’s why:

1. Becoming a thought leader forces the individual to shine a spotlight on one specific area expertise and interest. By building on it, you are literally contributing to humanity’s library of knowledge. You are helping the world evolve, (presumably in a positive way.) Would you deny future generations of your efforts? If you could contribute in this way, do you think you have an obligation to do so?

2. If you have been following my writings for a while, you know that The Essential Message places a great deal of emphasis on solving challenges. Your thought leadership, then, continually seeks to solve challenges for people who have been left out of previous thinking. In others words, your thought leadership has the very real potential of helping some others in very real ways.

3. From a marketing and business-building standpoint, your thought leadership establishes your unique differentiation and competitive advantage. This places you in a better position to be called on by the media when they are looking for an expert (in your specific area) to quote; and to be called on by clients who are looking for an expert to solve a specific challenge they have. Yes, higher fees may result from this as well, but please note that this is different from traditional selling which seeks only to ‘sell more’. Authentic thought leadership seeks to clarify the specific area and the specific challenge to such a degree that those clients who are best suited for it will self-select.

4. Authentic thought leadership strengthens your self-perception/self-worth/self-confidence. While external validation is nice, I am referring here to the personal satisfaction from what Dr. Seligman might describe as leveraging your signature strengths to a more significant end beyond yourself. There seems to be something inherently fulfilling in ‘making a difference’. You can play small and make a small difference — or you can play a bigger game and make a bigger difference by consciously embracing your thought leadership.

So if the response to the question in the title of this post is a very definitive ‘yes’, the question then becomes, ‘What are you doing about it?’

Essentially yours,

Michel Neray
Chief Differentiation Officer
The Essential Message