My View Point on ' Thought Leadership '

I was amazingly fascinated by word – “Thought Leadership”. As per definition, Thought Leader is a person who is recognized among their peers for innovative ideas, demonstrates confidence to promote & share those ideas, drives & mentors team towards idea implementation. Initially, I was wondering how different is this jargon from traditional management concept – “Leadership” but took some time to understand & unearth benefits of it on my own.

Although I was convinced about theoretical concepts & meaning of Thought Leadership through web sites & magazines, I never realized the importance of it. After a successful long project execution (project spanned across 14 months with 50 team size) I realized the fact that how ideas implemented contributed to project success in a big way.

From my experience, everyone is a thought leader in their own ways. Anyone who advocates an innovative idea, leads by example, encourages & drives the team towards problem solving or better solution, appreciates ideas by others, solves day-to-day problems is a thought leader.

Traditional Management that focuses on Leadership gives more importance to communication, inspirational influencing silks, inter-personal skills etc to become an effective leader. On the contrary, thought leadership focuses on innovative ideas that make day-to-day impact.

From my experience, to become a thought leader, you don’t need great communication or interpersonal skills but a conviction to demonstrate an idea, confidence & a strong will to implement it and benefit the project or team or organization in whatever way possible.

During my recent project execution phase, I worked with many junior team members who could not speak well or express their thoughts but demonstrated ideas through logic ( java programs) & prototypes ( html pages). Idea we implemented had an impact on overall project in terms of way we addressed or solved common business problems.

According to me, thought leaders focus on smaller scale changes – be it within team or project. For example - an idea implemented in a ‘build process’ can improve overall build cycle time & make life easier. An idea implemented in a ‘project life cycle’ can insulate risks. Finally what counts is an ‘Idea’.

To become a thought leader one needs to immerse in their professional domains, understand problem domains & see if an idea can contribute to project success or reduces time & effort or increases productivity or saves cost or a value add.

People at middle & senior management levels should encourage ‘thought leaders’ & provide them an opportunity to generate & implement ideas. For a large project, project managers need to generate many thought leaders within the team so that at all levels leaders drive the team to common vision – “Successful project execution with quality”. Remember, “Speed of the BOSS is speed of the TEAM”. If you can successfully generate future thought leaders, you have followers who will become tomorrow’s potential thought leaders.