My hope for better thought leadership; edited excerpt from my upcoming book

Anyone can be a thought leader.? Anyone, that is, who has ideas and wants to contribute to making the world better.

Thought leadership requires that we care about something enough to think in a more applied way about it. That we’re driven to think more deeply or broadly and develop new ideas and insights. And that we then use those ideas and that thinking to contribute, to help others.

Many of us are doing this in the course of our work every day – in the businesses we start, the movements we champion, the services we deliver. However, we’re not often thinking about this as leading with our thinking; to us it’s just your average Tuesday. It’s just us doing what we do. Even though we are working, day-to-day, to make things better, most of us are constrained by our capacity and our calendars. Our impact only goes as far as those we can work with. That’s what makes thought leadership appealing: it increases the impact we can have.

The opportunity in thought leadership

Without both the thinking and the leadership part, you can’t have impact through thought leadership. You can have ground-breaking ideas about something, or a game-changing new way of doing something, but unless you share them, their value, and utility – and therefore their impact – is limited. If your great ideas stay solely inside your head, they serve no-one. We need to make our ideas more available and accessible to others.

I’m currently on a mission to broaden the definition of what thought leadership is in most people’s minds, and to widen the criteria of who can be one – that’s what I’m writing my book about. And I’m doing this because we need our thinking – especially the influential thinking that is ‘out there’ – to be as good as it can be, and we need the leadership aspect – the part that makes the thinking influential – to be more accessible to more people.

Widening the possibilities for thought leadership, and welcoming new thinking and thinkers into the space, improves what I call the “collective ideas-scape”. In some ways, the collective ideas-scape is not dissimilar to the ‘zeitgeist’ (or ‘spirit of the times’), but narrows down the definition to focus on the domain of thought leadership. To me, the collective ideas-scape is the bank of ideas we have available to draw from when we innovate and ideate, as we navigate increasing complexity and attempt to solve the vast challenges that we face as humans. It is the sum of the information that we encounter, the conversations that take place in the public sphere, and the shared set of beliefs, values and moral attitudes that shape our society. The dominant concepts in our collective ideas-scape become our cultural and social norms, our frames of reference, and the lens through which we filter our experiences. We use these lenses to make sense of what happens to us and around us.

The better that ideas-scape is, the more we have to work with – and the better the solutions to the world’s challenges we can make happen.

Making like magpies to solve problems

Lecturer and acclaimed science writer Anne Murphy Paul has a rather radical way of thinking about thinking – something that I’ve drawn on when talking about the ideas-scape. Far removed from the brain-as-computer and brain-as-muscle metaphors that many of us are used to, Murphy views the brain as more like a magpie – “fashioning their finished products from the materials around them, weaving the bits and pieces they find into their trains of thought.”

As a total magpie brain myself, this analogy really resonated with me. I can absolutely see that we fashion ideas from the world around us. In the act of thinking, we’re continuously drawing on resources external to our own brains and assembling and reassembling ideas on that basis. The kinds of materials that are available to “think with” then affect the nature and quality of the ideas and solutions that we can produce.

Startlingly, Murphy also asserts that “individual cognition is simply not sufficient to meet the challenges of a world in which information is so abundant, expertise is so specialized, and issues are so complex. In this milieu, a single mind labouring on its own is at a distinct disadvantage in solving problems or generating new ideas.”

She insists that, instead, we need to generate a sort of ‘group mind’ which is replete with factual knowledge, skilled expertise and distributed mental effort and – I would add – diverse lived experiences and the varied perspectives they bring.

Not only do we need to be able to think well to solve the issues facing us, but that we need all those who are doing great thinking to share the valuable, progress-fuelling things that they’re thinking.

We need to allow better thinking, from all sources, to make it to this collective ideas-scape, where it can then have an exponential impact. For this, we need thought leadership to exist – and we need thought leadership to be better, in both its thinking and leading aspects.

A vision for better

In terms thinking, we need ideas that push our boundaries and that open us up to new possibilities. The ideas that aren’t necessarily the promise of a “sure thing”; the ones that aren’t yet fully baked, but that contain gems that propel us forward. Ideas that consider a range of angles and perspectives, and contain nuance. Ideas that aren’t claiming to be the finish line or the full truth. Ones that are still a work-in-progress, and that not only allow for, but invite, continual learning and evolution.

In terms of leading, we don’t just want to hear from those that we are historically used to hearing from; we need voices and ideas that represent varied perspectives. To get this, we need to encourage, hold up and celebrate all the types of people who are bringing forward into the world thinking that makes us better. We need different ways of taking and sharing our ideas, and different ways of inspiring and motivating action, to be accepted. This means different terms of engagement. We know that what works for the quiet and the considered types – the thinkers – is vastly different to what works for the talkers. It’s time to rewrite – and ultimately, broaden out, the playbook.

If we were to throw out the existing rulebook, and instead imagine what the best kind of thought leadership would look like for the world we are living in and the challenges we’re facing, what would you come up with?

For me, the best thought leaders have incredible ideas, great frameworks and game-changing ways of doing things. They also have a genuine and generous desire to help more people. They are purpose-driven – fuelled by conviction and a clear vision of ‘better’ that they are taking us towards. They’re humble, inclusive and empathetic – open to learning and gathering more perspectives. They’re committed to proactively improving and developing what they know. They’re curious and considered, bringing robust thought and deep reasoning to the challenges they are solving. And they’re backed by extensive experience, meaning they don’t just have a collection of wild theories; they have lived out, tested and proven their ideas. They’ve collected the evidence that what they are thinking works.

That might seem like a lot, or like I have simply created a new set of boxes to tick, but it’s much less about what a thought leader is or has, and more about what they are doing to successfully achieve a positive impact and contribute value to the world. How they are making their ideas accessible and available to others.

To me, better thinking – and great thought leadership invites and embraces complexity. It acknowledges uncertainty. It is shared in a non-threatening, inclusive and collaborative way. And, it is never fixed, but instead constantly evolves and improves.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.