All week, I’ve been focused on your followers: understanding them, establishing ground with them, manipulating them, choosing them, and so on.
But I’d like to wrap up the week by focusing on you, the Thought Leader.
There is one skill that I’ve never discussed here before that I want to touch on today before we kick off the weekend, and it’s an important one. In fact, if you don’t master this skill, nothing else matters.
It’s an easy skill to understand, but a terribly difficult skill for some of us to master. And I use the term “skill” kind of loosely in this context.
It’s the skill of self-respect.
I’m not mentioning this to help you feel better about yourself or whatever. I’m mentioning it because your market doesn’t really know how to valuate your worth in a lot of ways, and they’re going to take clues from how you value yourself.
For the most part, the market takes you at your word, until you give them a reason to not believe you.
Self-respect also means that you don’t allow people to treat you poorly. It’s not the skill of demanding respect, but commanding it. There is a difference, and when you do that, you’ll find that followers tend to shape up and fall in line or they go away because they’re not really looking for a Thought Leader. You will never miss them.
I’ve seen Thought Leaders make so many mistakes in this area. This is not the time for false modesty. It’s also not the time for bravado and posturing.
People want and need a confident Thought Leader. It’s your job to provide that.
I can’t let the week end without mentioning the help I give Thought Leaders and up and coming Thought Leaders every day over email. If you would like to get on the list and get daily wisdom on how to grow in your thought leadership career, just enter your email address in the form at You Can Be A Thought Leader and you’ll start getting support the very next weekday.