Develop Your Fame

To this point, you have determined that you are committed to thought leadership for yourself or your company and you have done a thorough evaluation of your potential for success as a thought leader. To continue our series for preparing yourself for thought leadership, we come to step 3 - develop your fame.

Think of this as building your resume for thought leadership. Do you have the credentials and experience to be recognized as a thought leader or are you just another vendor who wants to speak at the breakfast. Here are essentials for developing your resume.

• What are your credentials for leadership on this topic?
• Who recognizes you as a leader?
• Are you already published?
• Where have you already spoken?
• What kind of training do you need?
• What kinds of tools do you need?

So, is your thought leadership resume full? Are you a regular writer and have spoken at the convention of your peers for each of the last three years? Or is your resume blank? If your resume is blank, this was probably identified in your evaluation stage. Now you need to get to work. Building this resume is what makes the difference between introducing the speaker and being the speaker.

Evaluation

Okay...you have determined that you are committed to thought leadership. So what's next?

We suggest evaluation is the next step. In this step, you are trying to determine if you are a leader or just have thought. Everyone has an opinion but that doesn't make them a thought leader. You may be an expert but not a thought leader - yes, there is a difference (referenced in earlier post). You may have great insight but no interest in sharing it with others (competitors), or you're just not ever going to write or speak in public. You may have such advanced thought that no one is ready to listen. Here are some questions to examine in the evaluation stage of thought-leadership preparation:

• What makes you a leader? In what subject(s)?
• What makes your thoughts provoking/different?
• Are you published?
• Are you a speaker?
• Do your peers listen to you?
• If you were a teacher, what would you teach the world (your audience) to do better?
• What do you like to do best?
• Have you been honored in this topic?

The evaluation step is so important to the success of a thought-leadership campaign that we suggest you go through it with an outside source - a pr consultant, a business coach, a trusted business peer. Because you are either likely to be too critical of your abilities or not entirely realistic to the value that you have to offer. An outside, honest point a view will help make this process a success.