Why is Everyone a Thought Leader Now?

Daniel Monehin’s thought leadership journey started on a simple stage. It was 1998: He was an ambitious young banker, eager to raise his profile within his company, and absolutely terrified of public speaking. So, when he was invited to address a group of colleagues with insights on what he’d learned during a recent course, it wasn’t exactly an opportunity he relished—but he felt compelled to pursue it all the same. Through practice, grit and a lot of early internet research, he was able to deliver a killer presentation. And his career took off. 

“I realized communicating my expertise was a learnable skill—and that it was a valuable one,” says Monehin, MBA’06, who went on to build a successful corporate career before shifting gears in 2019 to launch Resolut Consulting, which provides leadership development for managers and executives.

If Monehin were starting the same journey today, he might still take that stage—but he might also have a YouTube channel, a podcast, an e-book, a few papers and a library of LinkedIn posts. Instead of reaching an audience of a few dozen peers, he’d be targeting any online professional algorithmically determined to be interested in the topic at hand. He’d be seen as more than a sharp guy with a microphone: He’d be a thought leader. And he certainly wouldn’t be the only one. 

The business world is currently in the throes of a thought leadership boom. If you spend any time online for work, you’ve probably noticed it: More and more professionals are leveraging digital platforms to share their ideas and insights with contacts and strangers alike. Most aren’t at all coy about it, explicitly positioning themselves as authorities on all manner of matters. (There are now tens of thousands of people with “thought leader” in their LinkedIn profile headline—and far more who’ve embedded it in their longer bios.) They’re building followings, generating clout and creating connections—often, on top of their day job. Think of them as online influencers, but for the business set.

You might wonder why busy professionals would bother adding content creation to their likely oversubscribed to-do lists. But as Smith Business Insight contributor Deborah Aarts found out talking to Smith alumni who work in the space, there are some very good reasons so many people are trying thought leadership. 

The gatekeepers are now gone

Thought leaders have not always been called thought leaders, but savvy professionals have been using content to burnish their credibility since Dale Carnegie first told us how to win friends and influence people. For decades, you could find them lecturing behind podiums at industry conferences or penning op-eds for the business pages. But it was a pretty exclusive game: There simply weren’t that many stages or TV spots or column inches to go around. “A few decades ago, if you were given a platform to share your thoughts or point of view, you were part an elite group,” Monehin explains. “Today, everyone has a platform.” 

Credit the internet. Notably—though not exclusively—the 2003 debut of LinkedIn, which has ballooned from a utilitarian professional networking website to a platform that now serves more than a billion people some 1.6 million user-generated feed updates per minute. A whole new ecosystem has emerged for business and professional content—one in which almost anyone can be an expert.

It doesn’t have to cost a cent to write a LinkedIn post (or create a YouTube channel or record a podcast). Audiences—often hyper-targeted ones—can be just a few clicks away. Furthermore, there are almost no gatekeepers to approve who gets to say what—and how, when, or where they do so. “This digital democratization makes it much easier to hang out your shingle as a thought leader,” Monehin explains. “The pool of people that can participate—and who can, therefore, share useful information with others—has grown exponentially.” If you have a good idea or a smart observation, there is now very little stopping you from sharing it with, quite literally, the entire working world.

Audiences now trust people more than institutions

There was a time when the ideas of a single professional wouldn’t seem particularly relevant, beyond their immediate circle of colleagues and clients. What one person had to say might not carry a lot of weight—especially compared to the reputational heft of their employer or affiliates.

That’s changed. “People are increasingly drawn to human voices over something that might be coming from a large corporation or institution,” explains Claire Carver-Dias, MBA’21, a facilitator, coach, and communications consultant at The Trium Group and Clearday Communications who helps senior leaders develop their executive presence and personal brands.

Why? As the most recent Edelman Trust Barometer quantified, folks are putting less and less stock in the authority of institutions. Many people (most, according to some surveys) now trust the advice of individuals—even those they’ve never met—more than they do that of companies. Because many of us are so overwhelmed by information, and because we can’t possibly synthesize it in a timely or productive way, we’re increasingly drawn to other humans to help make sense of it all. As University of Portsmouth Psychology Lecturer Erik Gustafsson put it in this 2022 article: “We have no choice but to defer to others.”

Individual thought leaders can also combine proof points and data insights with something corporations and institutions struggle to get right: personal storytelling. It’s now common for posts or videos or keynotes from professionals to open with accounts of lived experiences—often confessional, sometimes funny—before getting into brass-tacks advice, creating a sense of relatability that no corporate paper or statement could ever match. “There’s a robust appetite for thought leadership that is both authentic and of high quality,” Carver-Dias says. “People can now prove their expertise in a voice that is their own, and that democratization can be a wonderful thing.” 

The ROI can be real

Of course, there’s another reason so many working folks are entering the thought leadership game: It can often deliver a return on investment. Good content can catch the attention of everyone from customers to financiers to partners—and convince them to work with you. “It can really build your business,” confirms Susan Kates, MMIE’21, who—as a marketing consultant, startup coach and professor of entrepreneurship—helps a wide range of businesspeople build their profiles on platforms like LinkedIn.

There are also career benefits. Consider the so-called “babble” effect—a 2020 hypothesis that the more leaders speak up, the more they get ahead. Thought leadership helps ambitious professionals to not only articulate their value proposition on their own terms, but also show their work. And it gives recruiters—nearly 90 per cent of whom now use LinkedIn to scope out potential hires—quick and easy-to-vet evidence of initiative, expertise and communication chops. “Whatever you’re looking for in your career—whether it’s a new job or a promotion—you have to develop a personal brand,” Kates explains. “And if that brand centres on thought leadership, you can start to be seen as a subject matter expert, which can be a differentiator.”

Success is no guarantee

If this all sounds too good to be true, take note: Even in these fertile circumstances, success as a thought leader is far from guaranteed. After all, there are now millions of people posting their ideas every day. There are not millions of Adam Grants, Brené Browns or Angela Duckworths.

The same tools that make thought leadership so accessible also make it easy to misstep—and there are plenty of ways to do so. By overstating your expertise, for example. Or by passing someone else’s ideas off as your own. Or by failing to back up your claims. Or by flooding your feeds with content that is repetitive, sloppy or unclear. (Those who lean a little too heavily on ChatGPT might want to pay particular attention.)

You can get away with some of these habits, some of the time. But experts stress that if you want to build a durable following—the kind that can open opportunities and deliver results over the long term—there is no substitute for quality and no shortcut for consistency. “Audiences are more discerning than you might think. They want actionable insights, they want facts and evidence, and they want proof of experience,” Carver-Dias explains. “You can’t just show up and proclaim to be an expert in something. You still have to build that reputation.”