How can you evaluate your Thought Leadership skills in a face-to-face work environment?

One of the things I recommend when presenting is to think of it as a collective experience. Where do you want to take your audience? What do you want them to learn, or even better, what action do you want them to take? How will you engage your audience to make the experience more meaningful and memorable? Presentations are too frequently one-way communication. Experiences are opportunities to share purposeful stories in an interactive manner that makes your audience feel part of the session.

In my experience, successful thought leaders start with the destination in mind, creating a shared vision where people want to go. Meeting people where they are to map the journey in that direction is essential.

Establishing well-defined objectives is paramount. Before embarking on any Thought Leadership endeavor, whether it's a presentation, report, or meeting, it's essential to outline your objectives clearly. Consider your main message, identify your target audience, and determine the desired response or reaction. By setting specific and measurable goals, you not only streamline content planning and delivery but also gain the means to monitor your progress and gauge your impact effectively.

Setting simple clear goals, identify your capabilities to deliver and able to recognize anyone /thing that can be of help should be clear. If you know or didn't know the audience, let your approach be professional and relational in order to communicate effectively.

What is the nature of present thought that needs to be led somewhere new.? Argyris and Sch?n’s “double loop learning,” emphasizes critiquing an objective while pursuing it. Take an organization makes a profit by recycling #1 plastics in states where recycling is not mandatory. This is a modest postive contribution to the emergence of the much-needed circular economy. Thought leadership might entail showing your organization how it could play a foundational role in creating a coalition that would craft legislation that would increase plastic #1 recycling by 1000%. The organization wouldn’t stop what it’s doing, but thought leadership would put the present in the larger context of the future.

Thought leadership is a powerful tool for individuals and organizations looking to establish themselves as authorities in their respective fields. However, it's not enough to simply produce content and hope for the best. To truly excel in thought leadership, it's essential to seek feedback from others. Feedback helps you identify areas of improvement in your content, style, and overall approach. By incorporating feedback, you can enhance the quality of your work and ensure it resonates with your target audience. Feedback also allows you to tailor your content to meet the needs and preferences of your audience. By understanding what works and what doesn't, you can adjust your approach to better serve your audience.

One thing that I found useful, self-reflection is a powerful tool in assessing your Thought Leadership skills. Regularly evaluate your own performance by reviewing your content, presentations, or strategies objectively. Analyze the impact of your ideas, the engagement level of your audience, and the resonance of your messages within your industry or community. This introspective approach enables you to identify areas for improvement, refine your expertise, and continuously evolve as a Thought Leader. Combining external feedback with self-assessment creates a well-rounded evaluation framework to enhance and hone your Thought Leadership capabilities.

Thought Leadership is one of the critical activities that serves as a rich tapestry of in-bound leads for any organization. It becomes important for the case studies, white papers and POV to be on the dot and one of the ways to do this is to have meticulous review processes especially if you are new at doing this. Learning can happen 2 ways. Secondary data such as prior articles can be gone through to get a good understanding. Competitor analysis in this area is also useful. Primary data refers to new articles that gets created. While each one has their own style its important that's in line with organization branding standards as well as it ticks attributes such as structure, infographics, key take aways etc.

You may be an expert in your field, hence a "thought leader". But if you are not creating the right team who can give you their sincere feedback, you may be missing out. Two brains are better than one. 10 brains working together are even better. Make sure your team is trusting you enough to give you the right feedback and not afraid to point out things you may miss or blind spots. Connection is the complementary skills to bold leadership - a paradox that very few can handle. Cultivate your open and genuine connection with your team not just plow in, expecting everyone to follow just because you are the top thinker. Make room for the introverts to speak out - you may be surprised by their insights.

Reflection is art and it often requires a clear mind and a commitment to self awareness, resilience, and emotional intelligence. The trick, however, is to get feedback from trusted peers, mentor and sponsors who may be able to give you a perspective that you may be oblivious to - otherwise called our blind spots. While we think that we know what we constantly project, there are often spaces that need improvement. Johari's window model can be useful when evaluating the four quadrants of 'self'. Once we know where we may lack, we can then identify resources to improve our entire self, grow as a leader, and add value to our organizations.

"Reflection is one of the most underused yet powerful tools for success." - Richard Carlson Evaluating your Thought Leadership skills starts with introspection. Whether it's through a journal, blog, or video, take time to reflect on your experiences. Ask yourself: What worked? What didn't? What lessons did you learn? How did you impact your audience and grow as a leader? This self-reflection isn't just about identifying areas for improvement; it's also about recognizing your achievements and the value you've added. Embrace both your strengths and challenges. It's through this thoughtful reflection that true growth as a thought leader emerges.

Thought leadership is a journey, not a destination. To truly excel in this field, it's essential to continuously evaluate and improve your skills. One effective way to do this is by reflecting on your experience. Reflection helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a thought leader. By analyzing your experiences, you can determine what you excel at and where you need to improve. This information can help you tailor your content, messaging, and delivery to better serve your audience. Reflection gives you the opportunity to celebrate your achievements as a thought leader. By acknowledging your successes, you can boost your confidence and motivation, which can help you continue to excel in your field.

Introspection is very important and a great tool in aiding one become more mature in thought leadership activities and acquire the finesse. One way to keep honing this is to regularly take part in Hackathons,Ideathons and similar events. This helps us keep honing our skills with strict deadlines makes us more meticulous, resilient and the feedback of the judges who are experts in their respective fields too is very useful. Publishing articles in internal knowledge repository like Confluence too is of great help and it becomes like a journal for your purpose and that becomes useful for others as well. Last but not least mentoring others too will help you to remain updated. Being part of startup accelerators, launch pads too helps.

Reflecting on one's own experience is the single most important thing to begin the thought leadership journey. This will also give a touch of originality to the thought leader. In my professional journey, the leaders I've worked with consistently advise documenting the lessons learned from each project. This practice serves as a valuable resource for continuous learning and improvement. In today's digital era, there are numerous productivity tools available to easily capture and apply these insights. Why do thought leaders have such a massive following on social platforms? It's because they openly share their experiences and the lessons they've gained. Personally, I treasure such insights from the thought leaders like gold.

Benchmarking one with others is one of the great ways to keep honing our skills and get outside perspectives on what's happening in your field of interest. Attending Thought Leadership Events, Webinars where Industry Leaders come and share their perspectives. Getting to listen to them, panel discussions and getting your questions answered by them is of primordial importance. Following the top companies in your respective area of interest is also precious. Each Thought Leaders have their own style and all their insights become valuable.

A observa??o de líderes próximos ou distantes, como se comunicam, refletem e se comportam é uma ferramenta extremamente útil. Compreender como obtiveram acertos é importante, mas também como falharam e como reagiram nos ajudam na preven??o de situa??es semelhantes.

In my experience, you have to have the innate ability to innovate through change and experiment with new approaches to reach your target audiences. Sometimes there is a need to consult completely different professional sectors to bring new insights to niche problems. If in healthcare, this could include taking notes from hospitality connections, professional sports, or the food industry. The key here is to challenge your comfort zone and your beliefs. Be comfortable with the importance of 'unlearning' and partnering with diverse thought. Through this testing and iteration, you may be able to scale your solutions in ways once unimaginable.

Experimentation pushes you out of your comfort zone, encouraging you to explore new topics, perspectives, sources and collaborations. This helps you expand your knowledge, broaden your perspective and develop new skills that can enhance your thought leadership. Most importantly, experimentation demonstrates your commitment to innovation and continuous improvement. By constantly testing and refining your approaches, you establish yourself as a credible and forward-thinking thought leader in your field. Hence, experimentation is a powerful tool for enhancing your thought leadership skills. By constantly testing and refining your approaches, you can stay ahead of the curve.

The format for thought leadership events keeps on changing. First it was more like paper presentations, ideathons and these it's happens in a few days in the format of hackathons as well as Innovation and Business Plan events. In fact these have become the latest version of placements. Even students who are part of top tier b schools and engineering colleges take part in such events to increase their chances of getting very good placements and roles. It's important that one is aware of all such forums and put their best efforts to take part in such events. One has to change with tide to ensure the journey is smooth :)

These days there are multiple channels for people to improve their thought leadership mettle and get good feedback on their progress as well. If it's Hackathons lot of learnings happen in the form of detailed feedback from the jury as well as listening to the winning teams about their approaches and so on. The same is for similar events such as ideathons, innovation challenges as well as business plan challenges. Mostly mentors come from top roles in top companies and each of their feedback is very crucial to one's progress. For eg: when our team took part in one of the Tata business leadership award events we made it a practice to ensure we personally interacted with each of the judges post event and their feedback was very valuable.

In face to face situations, command attention not just through ideas but also through a compelling presence. Assess your body language, tone, and overall demeanor. How does your physical presence complement your intellectual prowess? Elevating executive presence involves harnessing energetic dominance. It's about radiating a positive and influential energy that captivates the room. Evaluate how your presence resonates—do you exude confidence and enthusiasm? Thought leaders with energetic dominance leave a lasting impression that draws others into their sphere of influence. Mastering this aspect enhances your ability to captivate and inspire, amplifying the impact of your thought leadership in face-to-face interactions.

Thought Leadership roles offer lot of scope for learning and can be challenging. But at the same time one has to be aware that it demand certain skill sets. Before one gets ready to enter into a role one should do their proper due diligence. Challenge 1: Unlike a technical role or managerial there won't be any tangible outcomes at the end of each day. Some problem statements given might take some days to make slow and steady progress. One has to be mentally strong. Challenge 2: Some times when one gets to work on new technologies there might not be much reference material to bank upon and one has to rely upon themselves. Challenge 3: Usual perks like onsite arent available. It will be short visits and one has to be upto the challenge.

Thought leadership is a strange term to me. Does it mean to influence the culture of an organization. Organizational culture is very difficult to change when an organization is succeeding. I have talked about this before. Large organizations take dramatic events to cause them to change. Great leaders anticipate dramatic events and are prepared to exploit them. I am reminded of the scene in Patton when General Patton took command of the US Corps that had lost in North Africa. And, oh by the way you may have to take someone out “behind the barn and shot them” to get the required effect.

Learn how to influence. Get them motivated to do what you want them to do. This influence will look different in every scenario and with every team. 1) Allow your team to have an active role in problem resolution and decision making: this will make them more invested in the process. 2) Learn about your people: How do they learn? How do they receive feedback? What type of communication works best for them? Tailor your approach to each person. 3) Who are they outside of work? Asking questions to make them feel like an individual vs another number is vital for them to feel supported and cared for. 4) Balance out your organizational needs with their needs, whenever possible.