9 great ways to avoid being a thought leader

• Share
• Tweet

Nine ways you can avoid being a thought leader

If the word thought leader gives you cold chills, you don’t want the limelight, you don’t want anyone to know about your expertise and you are dead set on hiding your light under a bushel, here are nine ways to go about it…

1. Don’t say anything new and if you do have new thoughts about your business sector or your niche area of expertise, please do everyone and yourself a favour – keep them to yourself.
2. Immediately cull any inquisitiveness you have around your clients’ or customers’ issues and challenges.  If you do find out anything valuable, keep it to yourself and don’t do anything about it.
3. Don’t share any of that latent intellectual property – you cannot afford to have anyone know that you have unique insights to share.
4. Put away any thoughts of research that could shed some light on topics of interest to your client.  You may stumble across something that vaguely positions you as someone with insight and you can’t afford for that to happen.
5. Don’t ever scan your competitors to ascertain where the gaps are that you could fill with your expertise and insights.  This is a long, slippery slope to being recognized as something in a thought leadership position.
6. Never deep dive on an issue or topic of concern to your clients and if you do, make sure no-one knows.  Be extra careful for once you’re labeled as a thought leader it’s very difficult to shake that perception.
7. Steer clear of packaging your content in any way that vaguely says to the market you have anything new or insightful to share.  Heck, they may turn to you for advice and then what will you do?
8. Keep a very low social media profile.  If you do have one keep it personal and don’t let on that you’re an expert in anything.
   Remember there’s no digital eraser and you don’t want rumours spreading online that you could have any insights to share.
9. Finally, it was Andy Warhol who said we will all have our 15 minutes of fame. You face a conundrum.  Make sure your 15 minutes aren’t about your expertise at work – you may need to seek your 15 minutes elsewhere.  It may be that you are the world’s best Mom or Dad but even then be cautioned you can’t write about or speak about it…after all you may find yourself on the speaking circuit or being interviewed on Breakfast TV as the modern day guru on parenting. And we can’t have that now can we?

If you have any other tips on how to avoid beinga thought leader let me know.  Please download my free e book top right of this page. Follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and join me on LinkedIn.

2 Responses to “9 great ways to avoid being a thought leader”

1. Alan Vitberg says:

   January 19, 2012 at 03:52

   Here’s a few more to add to your very well thought out list based upon my experience with professional services firms:

   10. Avoid any risk or controversary and let your competitors take the lead and be the first to market with an observation or insight
   11. Keep your reluctant rainmakers making phone calls (which they hate) instead of leveraging their subject matter expertise (which they love)
   12. Be 100% billable so you don’t have to devote any time or energy to producing thought leadership materials.

   Alan
2. craig says:

   January 19, 2012 at 06:24

   Fantastic thanks Alan – love your three extra points.