Join us today as Bill Sherman, COO of Thought Leadership Leverage and Verity Craft, General Manager and Storyteller of Intelligent Ink talk about comfort zones in thought leadership!
Transcript:
Bill Sherman: So one of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about is the concept of comfort zones. And there’s two pieces that you have to think about. Your comfort zone in your thought leadership practice. When are you comfortable with your content? It’s something that you’ve worked on for years and years and you could recite it in your sleep or it’s something where you’re thinking deeply on it now. The stuff that’s new, you’re going to feel less comfortable with because you’re still thinking about it. The stuff that you’re very familiar with, that’s old hat. What I’d recommend is choose a modality where you’re comfortable if you’re working on new ideas. And then, for the stuff that your experienced delivering, you can use a modality which might feel a little bit more of a stretch for you.
Verity Craft: Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s so important because yes, we should all be pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone and particularly for thought leadership because it’s about moving conversations and ideas forward. But you also have to do that in a way where you’re not, you know, going to put yourself off doing it entirely. So if you can match that level of comfort with the content that you’re talking about and the modality then that’s a really effective way of doing it. And I think of, you know, when somebody writes a book those are ideas that they have to be wedded to for a long time. But once they’re comfy with those ideas, then they can start pushing them outside of themselves, outside of their comfort zone with things like speaking — if that’s not what they’re great at — or with going on podcasts or whatever it is because they’re already ideas that they’ve developed really strongly. Whereas with something new, it might be better to just put it in a LinkedIn post. For example, where they don’t have to feel kind of pushed out of your comfort zone.
Bill Sherman: And then, as you’re thinking about it also think about your audience. If they’re experiencing an idea for the first time, guess what? They’re likely to feel uncomfortable with the idea. And so, if you’re communicating to them in a modality, they’re not comfortable with, you’ve just raised the difficulty level all the much harder for them. And so, sometimes you really have to consciously tailor how are you delivering your message. Especially if it’s a new one, in a modality that your audience will find easy to approach.
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