#62 What is thought leadership and how do you use it?

On this week's episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast, we're starting with a jargon-busting episode dedicated to detailing out exactly what the term "thought leadership" means.

As a comms pro, you've likely heard the term "thought leadership" a million times and wondered to yourself: what does that even mean?

Not to worry! This episode is here to detail all of the reasons why thought leadership is important, alongside what it is and how you can use it to elevate your brand, comms plans and your comms internally, and externally. We even give you some free templates to help you do it.

So, why wait? Let's get into it!


Links mentioned in this episode:

• Change Isn't Hard! Mel's book
• Find some templates here.

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Transcript

Mel: 0:01

Hi, and welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter, a podcast about all things communication without the waffle. I'm your host, Mel Loy and in this show, I will give you short, punchy, practical communication tips and insights. You can start using in your communication practices right away. I'm a former corporate communication executive who happily took a redundancy, started my own business and never looked back. These days I use my 20 plus years of experience to help guide organisations of all shapes and sizes in how to communicate more effectively. I'm wife to Michael, cat mum to Cookie, aunty to 12 nieces and nephews, a yoga teacher, and a group fitness fanatic. I promise these episodes will always be short, sharp, and helpful, so let's get amongst it. Well, hello there friends, and welcome back to the show. I hope you've had a stellar week so far, and it only gets better from here. Speaking of stellar weeks, I've had a few good ones and they have been jam packed, but all with good things. A highlight has really been seeing the sales of my book, which to be honest, have completely surpassed my wildest expectations. Honestly, I would have been happy just to sell 10 copies and we are well past that. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. To everyone who's bought a copy and also shared your feedback and reviews, I cannot thank you enough. And while we're on the topic of feedback and reviews, I would love it if you would leave your rating and review on this podcast. Often with podcasting, it's a little like you're just talking into the void. You don't really know who's listening and what they're thinking about your content. So please share your thoughts because I'm here to keep improving so I can keep helping you. Okay, let's get into today's episode where we're going to tackle the topic of thought leadership and how to use it as part of your comms strategy. Now, firstly, let's start with understanding exactly what thought leadership is. There's a definition I really like from Western Governors University, and the definition reads, thought leadership is the expression of ideas that demonstrate you have expertise in a particular field, area, or topic. Most thought leaders not only have command of their subject area, they are passionate about it and share their knowledge with others to benefit a company, an organisation, or cause. So I think the three elements in that definition that really stand out are particular expertise, passion, and a willingness to share. Think about all those thought leaders who embody those three things. People like Steve Jobs, Malala Yousafzai, Brené Brown, Adam Grant. I'm sure you can think of many more. They all have or had those three things in common. Great expertise in a particular field, passion for that area and a generosity in sharing it. Now in your business or organisation, you may not have a Brene Brown or a Simon Sinek floating around, but you do have people who have earned respect as passionate experts who you could potentially establish as thought leaders, not only in your organisation, but they could be thought leaders within your industry. But why would you even want to do that? Well, from a comms perspective, both for individual leaders and organisations, there can be tremendous value in identifying and establishing thought leaders in your business. A few of the benefits of thought leadership, number one, influence. That's the big one. That individual, and by extension your business, become a reliable source of insight and information and expertise. And that can give you influence in your industry and a platform for advocacy to help change things. Number two is brand. Now, obviously great thought leadership can boost your brand's presence in its industry, as well as building the personal brand of your thought leaders. And that leads, of course, to more exposure. Number three is credibility. So as a thought leader, you can gain credibility as a subject matter expert in your field. And that credibility extends beyond you to the business or organisation you work for. Number four is focus. Setting up a thought leadership structure can help you develop strategic communication guardrails. So the issues you will focus on and the issues you won't. Basically, doing fewer but better. And number five, innovation. Thought leadership can really inspire forward thinking and innovation because you have to be communicating something that stands out, if people are going to take notice, but standing out for the right reasons. So how do you actually go about setting up a few individuals as thought leaders and then using that thought leadership for strategic communication purposes? Let's get into it because that's the guts of today's episode. There's four big steps I'm going to talk you through.

And the first one is: 4:49

identify the issues. Now, this can be a little bit of a chicken and an egg scenario because in some organisations there may be a person or a couple of people who already stand out as potential thought leaders because they are already considered experts in their fields. And in which case you might leverage that and determine some of the topics your comms plan will focus on based on those individuals areas of expertise. But it's more likely that you'll first start with identifying one to three issues that are pertinent to your business or industry, and these should ultimately contribute to you achieving your strategic communication goals, which, of course, should be linked to your business goals. That's the end game. You want to help the business achieve its strategy, and thought leadership is one tactic you can use to help you do that. So for the purposes of today's episode and demonstrating how these steps might play out, I'm going to pick the early learning and childcare sector as a hypothetical case. So in this sector, there are plenty of issues you could draw on. Everything from quality to accessibility to affordability to inclusion, et cetera, et cetera. For this example, we'll look at the issue of attraction and retention of early childhood educators. It's a big issue here in Australia because it is a traditionally poorly paid field. Even though employees are expected to have qualifications, teachers still need to have bachelor degrees, for example. So that's one issue we could choose to focus on. And it's likely to ladder up to support a business goal. Maybe something along the lines of being able to sustain business growth by ensuring you have the right people on board. So that's step one. Just choose one to three issues. Remember, do fewer better. Step two is then developing your position statements for each of the issues you've chosen to focus on. So position statements are essentially your organisation's opinion on the matter. And having a unique and well thought out statement helps you be very clear on your message, helps you stand out and helps you have credibility. Now, a few words of advice on position statements. Number one, they are not war and peace. They are very short statements that clearly articulate your position on the matter. Number two, it should be something people can easily recall. So like an elevator pitch. Number three, your position statement should state what the issue is, why it's an issue, what you think about it, and what the call to action is. So again, what's the issue, why is it an issue, what you think about it, it's your statement, your position, and what the call to action is. And then you can develop a whole list of points of evidence, and your thought leader can use those for various comms. So using this example of the issue of attracting and retaining qualified educators and teachers there are several position you could take. So for example, you could take a stance on the affordability of tertiary study. And say the government should provide it for free for early childhood education. Or you could suggest that the government provides tax subsidies for early childhood educators to help encourage them to enter the industry and stay. Or maybe it's the government should help to subsidise wages because organisations would go broke if they increased wages themselves. So those wages were on par with teachers in government funded schools, for example. If we took a position on subsidising wages, our position statement could be something like this."Australia has been facing a shortage of skilled early childhood professionals for some time and we're now at crisis point. Not only are we struggling to attract, but we're also struggling to retain because of many factors, but mostly wages. If we can't pay these professionals what they deserve and on par with government funded primary schools, then children miss out on vital quality early learning experiences that lead to improved long term outcomes. It's time the government helped to recognise the critical role our people play and subsidise wages." Okay, so that's probably a little long. It's just a first draft. But you can see we've got a hook, where we talk about the issue being a crisis point. We zero in on the issue of wages, why it's an issue, and then that call to action. Now this can take some time to write and you'll probably need to get a few stakeholders to agree to the statement. But once you have it, it provides clarity on what issues you stand on and what your stance is.

So that's step two: 9:08

positions. Step three can be one of the most challenging ones, and that is deciding who your spokespeople or thought leaders in this case will be. For this step, it's really important to have a really clear set of criteria, but also recognise that not everybody will meet all of that criteria right away. You will probably need to do some capability building as well. So a few things that you might want to consider for your criteria could be. Qualifications. So in some industries, qualifications are very important signifiers of credibility. So for example, you wouldn't want a thought leader on medical issues who wasn't a doctor. You wouldn't want a thought leader on teaching who's never been a teacher. So qualifications might be one criteria. A second criteria could be experience. What organisations and industries have these people worked in? And do they have a really good bank of experience that they can draw on when they speak on this issue themselves? Another criteria could be what contributions they've made to date. So some of your experts may have already contributed to conversations on this issue, whether it's in the media, journal articles, being on roundtables, etc. Again, that gives them credibility, but that also means they're probably well connected, which can be a big bonus, but look back at what they've said on those issues and see if they align with your position as well. Which leads me to the next one, which is reputation. That's a big criteria. So, like any influencer, you need to vet people. So do they have the respect of their colleagues and their team members now? That's something you can find out because you work with them. Because if they don't have that respect internally, rest assured that is a risk to your business and your strategy. So you really want somebody who has the respect, not only of the industry, but the people they work with. Another criteria could be their savviness. So what I mean by that is if you put them in front of an audience, whether that's at a conference or on a morning national TV breakfast show, would they have that nous to know what to say and what not to say, when to shut up, when to revert back to the key messages, or do they have a reputation as a bit of a loose cannon? So again, something to consider. And another criteria. And this is something that can be taught, but speaking ability. So obviously it makes your life a lot easier if the person already has some experience with speaking and can clearly articulate points of views in a simple way. So using that early learning example, you could have someone in your organisation who is a really experienced teacher. Maybe they've done a lot of work in pedagogical research, or maybe they've worked in policy roles. Your thought leader, this is really important, your thought leader does not always have to be your CEO, especially if they're not an expert on that particular issue. So that leads to part B of this step, which is the training you will need to provide to your thought leaders. This could be things like social media awareness, media training, public speaking training, et cetera. It is really important though, that for thought leaders who are speaking on complex topics, that they're able to explain those in a way that resonates with a large audience. Like all of us, our thought leaders can succumb to the curse of knowledge where we know our areas of expertise so well... that we forget others don't. And your thought leaders need to be able to take what they know and not only make it simple and easy to understand, but also persuasive. We want them to persuade people to a point of view. Again, Steve Jobs was a master of this and one of the most famous examples of him in action was when he introduced the iPod to the world. Now he could have talked about how much RAM the iPod had, the dimensions of it, uh, battery power, gigs of memory, et cetera, et cetera, all that techie stuff. But if you don't know what that means, or you have nothing to compare that to, it means nothing. Instead, all he said was it's a thousand songs in your pocket. That's it. A thousand songs in your pocket. And it was so much more powerful because it gave people a reference point that they could understand and compare to. So for example, you couldn't get a thousand songs on a CD. And the fact that this could fit in your pocket gave you a reference point about how big this thing was or how small as the case was. So it's a size you can understand without getting out the tape measure. So that's so important. You need to be able to coach your leaders in simplifying their message and doing it in a way that's really persuasive. Remember that thought leaders are not just representing themselves in their own brand. They're representing your business brand, so we need to set them up for success. One final note on this step in terms of working with your thought leaders is , this step should also involve updating your stakeholder matrix, or creating one if you don't have one yet. So that's a matrix that sets out who speaks to which audiences and stakeholders on particular issues. If you don't have one of those yet, shoot me an email. I'll send you a little example you can use as a starting point. Okay. Step four, the final step is all about the comms planning and delivery itself. So this is where you're going to get very clear on who your target audiences are for this issue and how you will reach them most effectively. So using this early learning example, again, our goals might be to influence the government to help subsidise wages, And by doing so, of course, we help with attraction and retention of qualified staff. With that as our goal, our key target audiences would obviously be government ministers and advisors, but potentially also unions, other early childhood providers that we want to partner with to help drive that advocacy, early childhood educators and teachers, of course, and families as well, because they can create a real groundswell of support. Also, do not forget your employees. From an internal comms perspective, thought leadership can be a powerful tool, tool to galvanize people behind your strategy and your purpose and set them up as advocates too. And it helps to build their knowledge and capability as well because of this sharing of expertise. Now, with our audiences, once we know them, we can then start to tailor our channels and tactics to reach them in the most effective way. So things like posts and articles on LinkedIn, blogs on the website, being a speaker at industry events, joining government roundtables, and good old fashioned media. There's lots of thought leadership opportunities out there, and a lot of this intersects with your PR work. So, for example, you could draft opinion pieces for different publications, you could get that thought leader to join an industry group if they're not on one already, find speaking opportunities, or even offer them up to be an expert voice, on key messages, uh, for different media outlets. Now, as I alluded to, like everything we do in comms, and I bang on about this all the time, your channels and tactics and messaging need to be tailored to each audience. So it will not be a one size fits all approach. And this means you'll need to set some expectations with your thought leader about how much time you're expecting of them. And also the fact that you will need to tailor their message. And in some case, really simplify it. Some people get, uh, quite a little bit attached to the big words and a little bit attached to their expertise once you try and simplify it. So for example, let's say you're going to tell them that you're going to aim for one media interview a month, three conference speaking gigs a year and one LinkedIn post every two weeks, something that's feasible for everybody to manage. And speaking of which, in some cases you may have to write and prepare everything for that person to begin with. So, for example, you might write a LinkedIn post reflecting on a recent media article and ask them to post it to their profile. Or it might be the case is that they do the first draft and just run it past you as they get more confident. It really depends on what channel governance you have in place. And of course that person's capability and confidence and the time that they have as well. Of course, don't forget to monitor, measure, continuously review, and improve your thought leadership program too. The biggest tip I have is you have to build mutually respectful and trusting relationships with the thought leaders in your business. You're asking them to do a lot of work they may not initially be comfortable with or to change the way they speak in a way that they're not comfortable with. And you need to be positioned as that strategic advisor to not just the speech writer or the media booker. So really work on that relationship and showcase your strategic mind. All right, it's time to recap today's episode. So let's get amongst it. Point number one, thought leadership as part of your comms strategy can be a very valuable and powerful tool because it's a powerful way to help you help the business achieve its strategic goals. Number two, there's four big steps to your Thought Leadership Framework. And the first step is to identify the one to three key issues that relate to your sector that you want to focus on and advocate for. Remember, do fewer better. Number three, the second step is to create your position statements on those issues and gather points of evidence to back them up. Now that position statement needs to be super clear on the issue, why it's a problem, your stance or solution, and a call to action. The third step is identifying your potential thought leaders and then setting them up for success through proper training, but also you can co create positioning with them. And the final step is the planning and delivery. So starting with getting very clear on your target audiences and then choosing the channels and the tactics to reach them and persuade them as effectively as possible. Okay. Hopefully that's given you some food for thought this week. Have a think about how you could potentially bring thought leadership into your comms strategy if you're not using it already. And remember, it can have a positive impact internally as much as externally. As always, if you have any questions or you have any topics you'd like me to cover on the podcast or the blog, get in touch. I am happy to take requests. I will see you back here next week for another fresh episode. In the meantime, keep doing amazing things and bye for now.