“They told me I had to become a thought leader or I’d never achieve great success as a professional.” This is what a leader at a professional services firm told me recently that a marketing consultant told him.
He didn’t say this to me matter-of-factly either. He said it with a mix of fear, skepticism, sadness, and hope.
- Fear. Because he can’t write and doesn’t have much “new” to say, and neither do the rest of the folks on his leadership team.
- Skepticism. Because he didn’t think it was true that thought leadership was now a requirement, but he was starting to hear it so much he thought maybe the tide had turned and it now was.
- Sadness. Because he liked his job selling, delivering, and managing and didn’t want to become, as he put it, a “professor type”.
- Hope. Because he was hoping I’d say what he wanted me to say: that it was not true.
He was…
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