Questions on Developing Your Thought Leadership

Thought leaders are defined as informed leaders who are the go-to people in their field of expertise. They are considered trusted sources of information who move and inspire people with innovative ideas. To me, thought leaders are people we aspire to emulate, demonstrating the knowledge and expertise we want in our careers. This definition recalls questions I am continually asked by peers and security professionals interested in developing their thought leadership. As you can imagine, this is not an easy topic; however, in the following discussion, I will try to answer several questions on methods I have used to develop my thought leadership skills and serve our community.??

To begin,?what are some essential thought leadership qualities? I believe a thought leader should be passionate about their area of expertise.?They should also have endless curiosity and a willingness to learn new things and to share them with people. Another quality I believe essential is humility because you will never know everything in your field, and this gap should drive you to collaborate, learn new things, and be comfortable with being incorrect sometimes. We are all human, and we make mistakes. Learning from the mistakes, improving, and talking about the experience makes excellent thought leadership. We can all relate to being wrong at one time or another and appreciate leaders learn from it.

Next,?how can one get started developing their thought leadership? One of the first exercises I use is conducting a personal inventory. What type of jobs, technologies, services, tools, hardware, etc. have you worked with? What projects have you supported or led? Creating this inventory lists topics or initiatives that represent your experience. Next, review your list and ask yourself how comfortable you are with each item. I use a rating system based on a range of 1 – 5:?

• Score of 1?– I’m comfortable speaking to a group of 5 – 10 people.
• Score of 3?– I’m comfortable writing about the topic and speaking to a group of up to 50 people.
• Score of 5?- I’m comfortable publishing topics in a widely read medium and speaking to a group of 100 or more.

Once you’ve scored each item, segregate the list to contain only subjects scored in the range of 3-5. This list is the beginning of a thought leadership roadmap that you will use over time to develop content. You now must start updating yourself on the topics you highlighted by reading the latest articles and books, building projects, and attending webinars, keynotes, or classes on the various subjects. Please understand that this process of updating your knowledge on a topic isn't so you can speak about another person's point of view; it is for you to mature your vision, experience, and context on a topic before you share it with the community. Once you feel comfortable with a subject, I recommend writing an article about it and having some peers review it to develop your writing style and get feedback on how you speak about it. This process is what I did; I have extensive experience in multiple areas such as cybersecurity, risk, and IT, so I created my list and segregated it into topics I felt I could write & speak about immediately and a second group for later review. This latter group was areas of interest that I would need to read up on, play with the technology, or talk with current thought leaders to better develop a sense of context for what they meant to me as a CISO. Be warned: once you start this process, it is continuous if you want to keep your thought leadership current. Before the next question, your topics don’t always need to be about technology. You can cover topics like soft skills for technical teams or specific experiences such as working in government compared to private industry. Your thought leadership focus is unique and based on you, so feel free to explore and develop your voice.

?Next question:?in developing your thought leadership, should you choose an area of specialization??I feel selecting an area of specialization is good for you if you are starting. It prevents you from getting overwhelmed and helps you focus so you can get started quickly, and over time, you can expand the areas you want to include in your thought leadership roadmap. An excellent example of this is cybersecurity. As many of you know, cyber as a career field has numerous domains and specialties that continually change over time. To develop my thought leadership in cybersecurity, I thought it best to start with an area I was already working in, cyber operations, with plans to expand into other domains once I was comfortable developing content. Another note about choosing an area of specialization: you don’t need extensive knowledge about your subject. However, you should have enough knowledge to speak about it intelligently; it should interest you, and you should know how to educate yourself as it matures. Remember, this goes back to my statement about having “passion,” if you don’t, it will be tough to develop trust in the content you create. So, focusing on a comfortable area is best as it gets you started and allows you time to mature.

Now, with your list and focused areas of expertise, let’s publish something.?What are some venues or publications friendly to new thought leaders??This is a good question; I started small by just writing a few articles on LinkedIn, and from the responses of readers in the community, I asked about other publications I should use. I also read a lot of books, articles, white papers, etc., and there are numerous resources that you can use to put together a list of sites to target for publication. As for speaking, I started small; I spoke at local professional groups like ISSA, ISACA, Infragard, OWASP, and AITP. From those talks, I graduated to their regional conferences, and then one of my articles on LinkedIn led to a keynote at RSA. Once I started presenting at RSA, I began to submit applications to speak at other large conferences, and that was when groups like IEEE and ISACA reached out to add me to a list of professional speakers for them to call on for events. The big lesson is to start small and try the websites and magazines you are currently reading, for publication and local professional groups for speaking. This allows you to fine-tune how you talk and write, plus it will also help develop different ways to deliver information depending on your audience. While I was going through this process, I met my co-authors, and we decided to start writing books together, which has been a fantastic experience.

Now comes the hard part:?how do thought leaders develop relevant content??Once you start writing and speaking, finding new ideas to craft into material will be a constant battle. One process I use is a note-taking app on my phone. I am always jotting down notes of good ideas, weird subjects, rants about issues, or ideas from friends. As I read articles, read and watch the news, read books, hack with Linux, play World of Warcraft, and watch Dayz streamers on Twitch, all these activities generate ideas I need to write down. Periodically, I rank the ideas:

• Ideas I can quickly write about - top of the list.
• Ideas that will take research - middle of the list.
• Ideas that are the ravings of a squirrel - bottom of the list.

With that ranking in mind, some squirrel rants work out exceptionally well and almost write themselves. In a recent article I published on LinkedIn about being okay with being labeled as a Hacker, I wrote that in two hours with a nice cold beverage and a grudge. The critical point here is for a thought leader to develop content that people want to read and use in their daily lives takes a lot of effort, and to do it right, they need to be continuously educating themselves. No slackers allowed!

Now that you are writing and speaking,?how do thought leaders build a following??The answer to that question is easy. By delivering up-to-date and relevant content to the audience they speak or write to. To do this, you start writing and talking about a specific subject and then add additional topics you want to cover. It takes time, so the new thought leader needs to be patient and willing to spread their content to multiple sites, portals, magazines, etc. I know some thought leaders who mature and grow their audience create their own websites to host articles, blogs, podcasts, videos, speeches, etc., for people to read and download. I use LinkedIn, Medium, and Box as my platforms and link them to different magazines, websites, and conferences with my content.?There is no set way to do this; what’s important is as your content grows, you will want to consolidate it to specific platforms to make it easier to keep updated and to share with your community. ??

For our final question,?what are the benefits of becoming a thought leader??I think the most significant benefit is being able to share with people and help them. I know some people who have leveraged their thought leadership in specific areas to establish a second career. For me, it has helped with writing and publishing books, and it has helped with opportunities to speak at conferences worldwide. I enjoy it because I like helping people; I don’t forget for a minute that I am blessed to be in my position and work with some incredible professionals. So, I write and talk to help new people entering the cyber career field, and I mentor veterans who are transitioning and still want to serve by assisting them to join the cyber community.

Being a thought leader is a privilege; it can be hard work and is a continuous process of keeping current on topics and educating yourself on new issues and technologies. It is crucial to remember that it takes time because you have to build up trust and credibility with the community; remember, without that trust, you have nothing. Good luck!

***In addition to having the privilege of serving as a Chief Information Security Officer, I am a co-author with my partners?Bill Bonney ?and?Matt Stamper ?on the CISO Desk Reference Guide Volumes 1 & 2 and the Executive Primer. I have also authored The Essential Guide to Cybersecurity for SMBs and Developing your Cybersecurity Career Path. All are available in print and e-book on Amazon. To see more of what books are next in our series, please visit the?CISO Desk Reference website .?

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