Rule #1: It's Not Just About You

A lot of professionals begin writing and public speaking to advance their careers and raise their profiles.

The good news is that these thought leadership activities can help them do that.

But here’s the bad news. If you pursue thought leadership solely with those intentions, you will likely fail.

Here’s are three reasons why:

You’ll self-edit your best thoughts: Creating good content takes guts. It means putting yourself out there, and at times opening yourself to criticism. It also means taking a chance on sharing ideas that sometimes aren’t fully baked. If you’re constantly scheming how your thought leadership content will accelerate your career path, you’ll end up sharing stuff no one wants to read in the first place.

You’ll horde the good stuff: You can get greedy when your primary motivation is self-promotion. That can cause you to cling to your best ideas, waiting for the opportunity to share them when they can benefit you the most. The trouble is, that opportune time may never come, or by the time it does your innovative thoughts might be yesterday’s news.

There is nothing wrong with planning ways for your thought leadership to reach the largest audience, or be tied to a specific event or happening. But your primary goal should be to help the most people possible, not helping yourself. 

Your audience will see through you: With the avalanche of content out there, readers and viewers have become savvy. They can tell when you’re not authentic, and will figure out quickly if you’re trying to sell them something, including if that something is you.

Your audience wants advice on how to solve their problems and insights on how to navigate the path forward. As such, they care less about you, and more about how your advice and insights can help them.

Plato cautioned that great leaders were “lovers of wisdom.” He was dissatisfied with leader who lacked the knowledge and moral strength to act for the common good.

In short, leaders motivated by self-interest were not strong leaders at all.

View thought leadership as a means of sharing your knowledge, experience and insights as a means to help others — regardless of the medium.

Over time, you’ll find that’s the very best way to help yourself.