Ready to Be a Thought Leader: How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Success

"Ready to Be a Thought Leader?" sets out a seven-step plan to help you identify what excites you, rally supporters to your cause, maximize your impact, and ensure your work continues if you move on to something else.

So, who's this book for? "Ready to Be a Thought Leader?" has a really broad appeal, because it taps into a fundamental desire for fulfillment, satisfaction, and meaning, which often come from seeing our ideas recognized, or feeling we've made a contribution to the world.

If you're already a leader in your field and you want to take your career to the next level, you'll get a lot from this book. If your company has asked you to win more recognition for its brand or extend its influence, you'll learn some great tips to help you do this. This book is also useful for mentors and coaches. In fact, we think it speaks to anyone who's passionate about contributing to society or who's dissatisfied with the status quo – within a company, industry, local community, or in the wider world. And even if you don't think you have a passion or a desire to bring about change, the author will probably help you discover one.

Denise Brosseau has helped numerous leaders extend their influence and make a lasting impact – from the CEOs of startups, to directors of nonprofits, to Fortune 500 executives. She's the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Lab, which advises professionals on how to increase their visibility and credibility, and become thought leaders in their field. The White House named her a Champion of Change in 2012, and she speaks and blogs widely on this topic.

So keep listening to hear how to identify your driving passion, to learn how to push on through when the going gets tough, and to hear how to take your message to the masses.

Before we go any further, let's understand what the author means by "thought leader." She says a thought leader is someone who uses their skills and expertise to make a difference, and then inspires others to follow them and replicate their ideas to deliver sustainable change. A thought leader has an impact not just on their company or industry, but also on a wider scale, and they leave a legacy.

The advantages of becoming a thought leader are numerous. You'll gain trust, credibility, and a seat at the table – on boards, committees, and at global conferences. You'll have a voice. You'll feel a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and meaning. It may also lead to promotions, salary increases, and greater job security. Thought leadership is the best career insurance, the author says. By becoming a recognized authority and the go-to person in your field, you'll always be in demand.

There are downsides, of course. You'll be incredibly visible and in a position of responsibility. You'll likely have to give up some privacy, and your workload will increase. The author does mention some of the risks of becoming a thought leader – including her own experience of burnout – but she doesn't dwell on these, preferring to trumpet the positives and inspire readers to get their voices heard.

So let's look at how to identify the one thing that drives you.

Many of us are multitalented and feel passionate about a range of issues, but if we don't focus on one or, at the most, two big ideas, we'll dilute our efforts and struggle to make a difference.

To find your greatest passion, the author suggests a practical exercise involving a Venn diagram. You may remember the Venn diagram from your school days – it's a picture of circles that overlay each other.

The author suggests we draw three circles, labeling one of them credentials, another expertise, and the third, what you're committed to. The central overlapping area is our thought leadership intersection point, or our niche.

To "pen your Venn," as the author puts it, first list your credentials. Write down both your formal credentials – like your academic qualifications – and your status in your field, including your title or rank, and the size or reputation of your organization. Include articles or research papers you've written, awards you've received, and leadership roles you've held, even as a volunteer.

Next, focus on your expertise and what makes you unique. Include skills, talents, and areas in which you're knowledgeable, but also write down experiences that have turned you into the person you are today. Maybe you've survived or overcome something difficult, or lived somewhere unusual. Perhaps you're a great storyteller or public speaker.

Step three involves writing down what you feel passionate about. What do you stand for? What are you willing to give time to even if you're not getting paid? What problem do you want to solve? What puts fire in your belly? The author provides plenty more questions to get you thinking.

You may end up with a list of 30 to 40 items, and you're going to have to whittle this down, first to 10, and then to three. This might not be easy, but focus on where you feel willing to develop yourself into a thought leader.

Next, you need to identify what advertisers call "reasons to believe." Why should anyone listen to you on this topic? What credentials make you one of the best people to highlight this issue? You'll develop more reasons to believe as you go through this process.

It's now time to see where there's the most overlap. On a new piece of paper, write down the first item you're committed to, identify which credentials give you credibility on this topic, then write down areas of expertise and experiences that make you an authority on this issue. Do the same for the other two passions in your shortlist.

Now, take a step back and look at where your level of commitment, your credentials, and your expertise and experience come together in the strongest package.

Finally, it's important to make sure there's an audience or a market in your chosen area. Are people talking about this issue in the media or in social networks? Is there a real problem that needs addressing? Is there space for your unique contribution? If you can answer "yes" to these questions, you've found your niche. And, if you're unsure, you can check out your results with a trusted friend or colleague.

"Ready to Be a Thought Leader?" is full of practical exercises like this one, and we think it's one of the book's strongest selling points. A good coach or mentor would ask you to explore similar questions and come up with your own conclusions, whilst also suggesting you get feedback from your inner circle.

So, you've identified your niche and are all set to develop yourself as a thought leader, but what if those voices in your head start saying you're not good enough or smart enough to make a difference? When we try to make a difference, fear often kicks in, we run into opposition, or we hit bumps in the road that drain our motivation. So, how do we stay on track?

Resilience is the key, and the author offers more than a dozen tips on how to keep our resilience levels high, drawn from her own experience, other writers and experts, and the lives of people she's come across in her work. We haven't got time to cover them all here, so we've picked out a few.

Let's start with the inner critic – that little voice that says we'll never make it and we might as well go back to playing small. Most of us have this – what we need is a strategy to silence it.

You can be your own cheerleader, but it's often worth getting a mentor or a team of people on your side to affirm you're doing a great job. You might also want to explore different ways of working. Chip Conley, founder and former CEO of the boutique hotel chain Joie de Vivre Hospitality, found the best way to silence the committee in his head was to wake up and start writing at around four in the morning, when his brain was awake but his inner critic was still asleep. He managed to write four successful books while working full time as CEO, the author says.

Rising before dawn won't be for everyone, but perhaps your inner critic is quieter after you've exercised, or late at night. It's about finding out what works for you.

Another tip is to use the phrase "up until now" when you're tempted to put yourself down or make excuses for why you're not good at things. So when you say, "I'm no good at delegating," or "I'm terrible at asking for help," add "up until now" at the end, and make a commitment to leave the negative thinking and excuses behind.

Another suggestion is to focus only on what you need to get done in the next 24 hours. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by your to-do list or the magnitude of the task ahead. Taking one day at a time helps reduce the pressure.

Finally, ask yourself if what's troubling you – what your inner critic is saying – is worth taking seriously. Is it worth giving up your dream for? The chances are you'll decide to push through. But that doesn't mean it's always wrong to give up on an idea. We like the fact that the author says we sometimes need to throw in the towel and take a different path.

You heard earlier that being a thought leader is about leaving a lasting mark, and building a community of followers who'll continue your work when you've moved on. We can share our ideas via Twitter, Facebook, websites, blogs, video, and speaking events, and the book has reams of advice on how to do this. But true influence comes when other people start spreading our ideas to a bigger audience.

This will happen naturally if we have something interesting to say – people will want to share our tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, and videos. But we can also take steps to amplify our voice and leave a legacy by sitting on boards, committees, and councils, actively creating a community of followers, and developing training materials, courses and certification programs to empower others to carry our work forward.

The author uses a few examples of people who've achieved this.

Robin Chase is the founder of the car-sharing company Zipcar, ride-sharing company GoLoco, and peer-to-peer car rental firm Buzzcar. But she's much more than a successful entrepreneur. Her passion is to create a more collaborative economy, and she shares this message in newspaper op-eds and on blogs. She also takes part in conversations at the World Economic Forum, and advises the United States government on transportation issues from her seat on commissions and committees. She's doing her best to make a long-lasting impact.

Or take Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, who created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator psychometric questionnaire. They partnered with leading people in the field, created a practitioner program, formed a membership organization, and set up a foundation. Today, their personality test is administered more than one and a half million times every year, including to employees of some of the world's leading corporations.

So, think about how to create a community to share your ideas, perhaps through a membership organization, or a networking group. Can you write training materials, run courses, or design a certification program to get the next generation to spread the word? Can you host an annual conference for followers or practitioners? And can you host award ceremonies to bring people together, and celebrate those who are making the biggest contributions in your field?

This may sound really ambitious if you're not at that stage yet, but the beauty of this book is it really does encourage you to dream big, and it gives you the tools you need to turn those dreams into reality.

The author shares a few personal setbacks and points out some possible pitfalls on the journey to becoming a thought leader, but her message is overwhelmingly positive. We'd have liked a bit more discussion of the downsides and challenges of taking this path to add balance. But we love the author's "can do" attitude, particularly since she backs it up with practical steps, exercises, and inspiring case studies.

So, if you want to take your ideas to the next level, make a difference to others, and create sustainable change, you'll get a lot of valuable insight from this book.

"Ready to Be a Thought Leader?" by Denise Brosseau is published by Jossey-Bass.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.