Leveraging Thought Leadership

What role can yoga and meditation play in the business world? Can leaders use these unconventional methods as an epic spiritual guide? How do you use empowering techniques to coach executives and corporations toward greater success? Today our guest is Kristoffer "KC" Carter, author of Permission to Glow: A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership, which outlines the first of four permissions that will create a long-term framework for Kristofer's works. He's the author of Permission to Glow: A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership, as well as an international speaker and retreat leader who teaches at the intersection of consciousness and business. We begin our conversation by exploring what KC means by "spiritual leader," and how meditation connects to business and thought leadership. Techniques like yoga and Transcendental Meditation are being used by high-profile CEOs around the world, and KC's methods bring those insights into the business world. KC discusses the ways that spirituality and meditation are critical to business leadership, and how he's pushing past the barriers of skepticism to bring deep insights to leaders from the Fortune 100 as well as newly-minted start-ups. He uses mindset to help leaders find clarity, and commit to the things that energize, inspire, and ignite them. KC's deep knowledge of instructional design is being put to good use, creating a strong thought leadership IP that is teachable, and requires only 15 minutes a day for leaders to change their lives. He shares details on his coaching certification program, allowing others to manage relationships within their organization and take back control of their lives. If you are curious about how spiritually can give your business a boost, KC's insights and thought leadership are a great place to start. Listen in, and it might just make your life epic, too! Three Key Takeaways: · Help organizations justify the expense of bringing in your thought leadership by providing benchmarks, methods for measuring success, and hard data to back up your content. · Creating a program of certified coaches to deliver your Thought Leadership is a great way to take your message to scale. · Without proper instructional design, your thought leadership programs could feel like nothing more than speaking notes. Take some time, and prepare for success!

It has become a tradition to start the new year off with a look back at a few of the great episodes and most inspiring guests of our previous year's podcast. For 2021, we hope you'll enjoy great advice from: Doug Conant, best-selling author of The Blueprint and CEO of Conant Leadership. Doug shares insights about balancing his time as a thought leader and a CEO, and ways to make time for self-reflection. It's important to ensure that the things which matter most are never forgotten in the press of less-important burdens. John Warrillow is the Founder of the Value Builder System and Best-selling author of Built to Sell. John talks about the best parts of coaching, and opens up about the psychology of selling to entrepreneurs vs. enterprise, and the need to find the niche that works best for you. Lisa Bodell is the CEO of FutureThink and author of the best-selling book Kill the Company. In our conversation, we explore the meaning of her term "futurist," and how Lisa found a way to guide people to their potential and teach change through a structured format. Tom Schwab is the founder of Interview Valet and the author of PODCAST GUEST PROFITS. Tom sheds light on proper etiquette as a podcast guest, and talks about ways to turn guest speaking on an episode into a relationship that can help you attract and keep engaged customers.

How do you grow a movement from a backyard enterprise to a global mission reaching hundreds of thousands of people each day? Today, we discuss the ongoing 50+-year mission of the Special Olympics with Jacqueline Jodl, Senior Vice President of Global Youth & Education and Haylie Wrubel, Director of Global Unified Champion Schools. We start our conversation by discussing the way Special Olympics is bringing together people with and without intellectual disabilities to share experiences and build a common language. Their goal: create an understanding of the value of social and academic inclusion. One of the methods by which they achieve this goal is through creating Unified Champion Schools, a worldwide network of schools with inclusive programs, both sport and academic. Together, they bring people with differences together to build friendship and create leadership. Taking a grassroots idea to scale is never easy, but is exactly what the Special Olympics has done. Jackie and Haylie share some of the methods they've used to create an impact on a global level. We discover how thought leadership resides at the intersection of research, policy, and practice, and how creating that thought leadership is at the heart of their work. In addition, we learn how a focus on storytelling and sharing the real-life stories of individuals and schools can resonate with policymakers and move the needle on a global scale. In addition, Jackie and Haylie discuss how they go about cultivating allies and ambassadors for their movement. They explain why you shouldn't be too narrow while identifying allies, how you can co-create content, and how you can turn followers into allies and ambassadors. This is a fascinating look at how the Special Olympics has grown, and continues to grow, across the world - creating a positive social impact for everyone. Three Key Takeaways: Scaling thought leadership can be done by using a policy that works in one area and modifying it to suit another. Thought leadership is more authentic when you give voice to those it is intended to impact. Creating thought leadership for a global movement involves having an infrastructure with staff and volunteers in the communities they are intending to work with.

With so many brands in the marketplace, how can you elevate yours? And how do you stay unique, eye-catching, and authentic to your vision? To help address these questions, we turn to Denise Blasevick, CEO and Founding Partner of The S3 Agency. The S3 Agency provides advertising, marketing, and PR for companies seeking stronger strategy and an authentic voice that differentiates your brand from all others. Denise shares how thought leadership can make your business stand out, and earn trust. She was the on-air marketing make-over expert for an MSNBC program for nearly a decade, and that exposure allowed her company to compete with larger firms and punch above their level. She offers tips she learned staying true to her vision in a sea of competition, and how she found people that shared her breakthrough point of view. In today's society, your brand must be authentic. Some choose to lean into (or away from) certain political issues, but Denise used her unique perspective to guide her brand's voice. Today, she walks us through the reasons how and why a brand should engage in the conversation about difficult topics. Further, she reminds us that leaning into a cause means more than giving lip service to your views; you must act on them, or your audience will call your authenticity into question. The S3 Agency has helped clients, from BMW Motorcycles to Tetley Tea, develop their brands. Denise explains the Brand Elevation Process used to collaborate with clients and help them reach the next level. She explains how she broke years of gut instinct down into small, measurable parts, then used her insights to build a codified process that allows brands to scale their business. Whether your brand is big or small, this conversation can help you find clarity and meaning - and find success! Three Key Takeaways: When codifying your thought leadership, break it down into its most basic pieces. Then, of each part, ask "Does this really matter?" For thought leadership to change the world, it must do more than talk about it. You must stand for something, take action, and be the change you want to see in the world. The only way to scale thought leadership effectively is to create a process that allows others to replicate your results.

Once you realize that your company needs a full-fledged thought leadership role, how do you make that vision a reality? What information should be included in your proposal? Who do you need to buy-in, and what would the role entail? These are some of the questions we explore in this episode. Our guest is Erica James, Director of Customer Marketing and Thought Leadership at Medallia. Medallia's award-winning SaaS platform, the Medallia Experience Cloud, leads the market in the understanding and management of experience for customers, employees, and citizens by utilizing a proprietary AI technology to turn personalized and predictive insights into tremendous business results. We explore the journey Erica has taken; from her instinctive talent for thought leadership, to pitching and developing her formal position as thought leader at Medallia. Erica describes how she knew the position would benefit the company, the way her personal love of thought leadership played a part in getting executive buy-in, and the way her new role increases employee satisfaction throughout the entire organization. Erica shares with us the way feedback from current clients is a source of inspiration, as she takes their requests for information and turns that into a drive that shapes content. She discusses the many people who have come out of the woodwork to work with her now that her position is formalized, and how she shines the spotlight on them (both internally and externally) to develop their brand. Finally, we discuss the methods of coaching Erica employs to move others along the thought leader road. By using an apprenticeship model she is able to make meaningful relationships and then by breaking down thought leadership into bite-sized chunks, she makes the task manageable and more comfortable for new practitioners to accomplish. This episode gives amazing insights and pathways toward standing up a new thought leadership role inside an organization, and will be useful to those looking to become thought leaders as well as to executives wanting to create a thought leadership function inside their organization. Be sure to listen in! Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leadership is like a marching band. Everyone on the team has a unique role that adds to the harmony of the music. When adding a thought leadership function to an organization, start with the question, "What outcome are we trying to reach?" People are seeking thought leadership content that is authentic and approachable. The personal touch can carry you far!

Today's guest is Michelle Mellon, Thought Leadership Director at SalientMG, a strategic marketing firm that creates custom programs for clients seeking to spur new business, create awareness, or get recognition as an industry leader. Michelle is also an accomplished short-fiction author; her work can be found in compilations like The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction. She's an expert in using creative storytelling to drive insights and make thought leadership accessible and powerful. When writing a work of fiction, Michelle often starts with the question of "What if?" And, indeed, as she tells us today, that question also forms a powerful intersection between fiction and thought leadership. Michelle explains how her thought leadership goes deeper. She looks at trends, listens to her audience, and crafts stories that will both educate and entertain. In our conversation, Michelle explains the basics of storytelling, and how the elements of fiction can also empower good thought leadership content. Michelle walks us through the best practices of crafting and telling engaging stories about leadership, brand, and mission, and explains that by following and even sometimes breaking the rules of basic storytelling, one can capture and inspire an audience. Every author has to find their voice and stay true to it. Michelle explains why an authentic voice is necessary to craft good thought leadership. In addition, we discuss ways to develop the mind's ear, and how to use voice and language that is specific to every audience. Having a distinct voice will only carry you so far - if your audience doesn't understand or isn't interested in what you are talking about, your thought leadership won't stick! This is an insightful episode for creative writers entering the world of thought leadership, and for those seeking to breathe life into an idea and share it with others. Listen in! Three Key Takeaways: Thought leaders should embrace the speculative and look into the future as they craft their content. Your ideas don't have to be 100% right; they just have to be engaging and enlightening. It's a fallacy to think that long-form content has more prestige. Convey your thought leadership in a variety of formats, and you'll reach a wider audience. Thought leadership needs to tell your personal story, share your experiences and your mission, but it must also inspire others - and to do that, you must share it in a way that they can understand.

There are two popular roads that can be taken when building a consulting firm. The first is intense specialization; becoming the gold standard in a particular domain. The other is to have a more general focus, relying on a broad variety of topics that can be combined and recombined to solve many different problems. But what happens when the truth of your brand lies on both roads? Niko Canner is the Founder of Incandescent, a firm which has many talents: it serves as a thought partner to leaders of large enterprises on strategy, organization and innovation; advises founders on the development of their ventures; and partners with foundations and non-profits engaged in systems change. Prior to founding Incandescent, Niko was co-founder and Managing Partner of the consulting firm Katzenbach Partners. In our conversation, he recalls his struggles to properly but concisely describe their firm to the market, and how many potential buyers walked away without properly understanding their value. Niko also shares how the term "Breakthrough Organizational Performance" was the key that let them go to market as both specialists and generalists, and find buyers competing for their attention. Niko shares the conversations that took place prior to that acquisition, how to find a good fit for both acquiring and acquired company, and explains the factors anyone hoping to see their firm acquired someday should be considering now. Three Key Takeaways: In order to successfully market your thought leadership, you need a platform that is succinct and resonates. If your thought leadership brand is too general, you can get lost in the crowd. Get too specific, and you could become irrelevant to most. Find the path between! When looking to have your thought leadership firm acquired, you need to establish a relationship and prove that you are a good strategic fit to your buyer.

Today's guest is Everett Harper, the Founder and CEO of Truss. Truss is a software company that works with teams to design, build, and scale software and tech infrastructure to give them the tools they need to excel. Everett is also the author of Move to the Edge, and Declare it Center, a book that helps people lead organizations, solve problems, and sustain company growth with effective practices for complex, uncertain, and unpredictable environments. Many CEO's want to write a book about their experiences, but doing so can be an expensive and time-consuming process. How do you know it's the right time to write a book? What insights and experiences should you share? In Move to the Edge, and Declare it Center, Everett discusses a moment of disquiet in 2020 that compelled him to write - and how that moment has gone on to inspire others through his book. Everett also describes the process Truss uses with their clients, interviewing not only the leaders of a project but also software operators, end-users, and partners, in order to gain the widest view of complex problems. With that information in hand, they create an infrastructure to help the designers of a software system understand the needs of its end users, and keep both involved throughout the entire entire development cycle. Three Key Takeaways: Nobody knows everything, and not knowing can feel frustrating. Great thought leaders manage that feeling and find a way forward. Complex problems don't always have linear solutions. Thought Leaders can make amazing discoveries by keeping an experimental mindset. A good thought leadership book can get you recognized, and bring your insights respect - giving you an edge on the competition.

Have you ever had to onboard a new hire, or explain a complex task to a colleague not in your field? How can you get a novice up to speed without giving them a doctoral-level lecture? Today's guest is Ashley Faus, Content Strategy Lead for Software Teams at Atlassian. Atlassian is a software development company that creates tools which are used worldwide to unlock the potential of high-functioning teams in the workplace. We start our conversation by discussing frameworks for thought leadership, content, and broad ideas, and how building a content framework can make even complex ideas accessible to learners of all levels. Ashley goes on to share the four pillars of her framework: Credibility, Profile, Prolific, and Strong Depth of Ideas. She explains how frameworks can be a tool to assess areas of specific challenge or difficulty, and how to use them to create a stronger focus to improve. In addition to her four pillars, Ashley shares how she arrived at the idea of the "Content Playground," and how she builds on her experience in content marketing to turn ideas and inspiration into learning journeys. An audience can be engaged by allowing them to choose their own path through content, discover insights that speak to their personal perspective, and grow through the novelty of play. Ashley explains that trust is an essential quality of thought leadership, and that to be a great leader, you must be open, honest, and vulnerable. Organizations, too, need to manifest those traits, remaining consistent and authentic in their actions and messaging, so that audiences understand and believe in the brand'. Three Key Takeaways: A well-built framework can be a great way for others to more easily grasp the core of your thought leadership. Thought Leadership can be used for content marketing, but that should not be its main goal. Thought Leadership is a long-term play, unlike most marketing, and should be constructed and utilized to withstand the rigors of time.

When you can't gather in person, how do teams manage strategic planning, maintain role clarity, and build both alignment and consensus? Today's guest on our podcast is Dr. Sharon Lamm Hartman, the Founder and CEO of Inside-Out Learning. She talks to us about the content of her book, The Authenticity Code: The Art and Science of Success and Why You Can't Fake It to Make It, and how she helps clients, professionals, and leaders to be real and authentic no matter what communication obstacles they may face. Having a published book codifying your thoughts and processes can be a useful tool as a thought leader. Yet, in our present environment, buyers often have different expectations of virtual programs and how they will put forward the information and insights in the book. Sharon helps us understand those expectations, and talks about the ways thought leaders can both meet and exceed them, giving your thought leadership book even more staying power. Further, we explore the way relationships develop differently in a learning environment than in a typical working one, creating stronger teams and closer community. In addition to utilizing virtual programs to support her book, Sharon's also added the power of an easy-to-use app to her arsenal. The app guides readers through the 5 habits and 15 steps of her thought leadership, standing beside them every step of the way. It provides easy access to her content, and quick reminders that keep leaders on track. Buyers of the book unlock the app, and receive information about 1 habit and 3 steps for free. Then, the remainder of her content is accessible as an additional unlock, providing access to a community of leaders on the same journey. Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leaders need to be real and authentic in their work, both with clients and in content creation. If you are moving your thought leadership programs into a virtual model, you need to ensure they are engaging and interactive in order to meet buyer's expectation. Developing a companion app is an incredible value add to any thought leadership book.