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Defining Thought Leadership

What is thought leadership?

This is slippery and subjective. What “it” is depends on the context we’re talking about – are we talking about the discipline, or some specific manifestation of it? Are we talking about a practice, a job title, or a blog post?

Let’s assume the former, for now. This will be the widest possible definition –

Thought leadership is content created to demonstrate the knowledge or skill of a person or organization in order to create future business value.

Breaking that down a bit:

  1. It’s content. There’s no way around that, really – whether it’s written or spoken or whatever, it’s content at some level. It’s information codified in a durable format that can be consumed and shared.

  2. It’s demonstrative. Thought leadership is a performance – it says, “this content is representative of the knowledge or skill level of the person who created it.” To be clear, the content can be valuable in and of itself – a tutorial clearly teaches something. But it also havs a larger value, in the form of an… endorsement – a recommendation? a promise? a reflection? – of the person who created it.

  3. It’s intended to create value. We publish and create thought leadership to further some professional goal – to generate leads, to increase revenue over time, to network with other professionals, to burnish our individual credentials or reputation, etc.

Back to #2 for a second –

All professional content can’t be considered “thought leadership” (it feels dumb quoting that, but it feels dumber not to…)?

Lots of content gets created, and some people are creating it just for their own personal desire, which is wonderful. Often they want to achieve a practical end, with no thought of the “halo effect” it might have. I think it becomes “thought leadership” when there’s some clear business intention to it (#3 from above).

Thought leadership is content specifically designed to demonstrate knowledge or skill with the implication that the creator can bring that knowledge or skill to bear on other problems. It’s a reference for someone; evidence; a promise.