What Thought Leaders Add
Friday, August 22nd, 2008I heard Matt Church on a podcast recently addressing people who make their living from their thoughts. He calls them “Thought Leaders”. Matt made a simple but profound observation – that thought leaders can no longer simply give information. Maybe 20 years ago expert knowledge alone was enough to make a great living as a speaker/trainer/mentor. But that’s a tough road since the internet made vast amounts of specialised information available to everyone, free, instantly, in their lounge room.
So where does your value lie? As a coach, speaker and (soon-to-be) author myself… what do I offer that someone can’t get for free on Google?
Three things-
1. Engagement. I need to engage my audience with the right information; capturing their attention, focusing their direction, appealing to their vision.
2. Relevance. I add value to people’s lives when I help connect them to the information that’s relevant to them. In a sea of data, what do they need to know?
3. Meaning. And then I help them understand the meaning of that revelation to their own situation.
So as a leader, next time you’re presenting your thoughts can I suggest you run it through that matrix? Does this truly engage my audience? Am I making the content far more relevant to them? Am I adding significant meaning?
If not, I’m dispensable
