This is the first in a six-part series on researcher thought leaders and how those just getting started should think strategically about improving their skills and impact in communicating with non-experts. If you haven’t already, please take my health assessment for researchers — it can provide you with a baseline that you can use to guide your development as an authority. Please also send me your feedback and read the other pieces in this series.
“Thought leadership” is a fraught and ill-defined term. Everyone defines (or despises) it in their own way.
I decided to do something about that imprecision.
My website has a five-minute, nine-question survey that you can take to give you a snapshot of your relative public impact as a researcher thought leader. (Some of you are on this list because you’ve already taken it.)
The assessment crunches your answers to questions about your thought leadership activities and markers — everything from writing op-eds to podcast appearances to how often your org or institution asks you to help raise money for it. You get two things:
1) A rating of the value/impact of your thought leadership on a scale of 1-5, from Resident Subject Matter Expert (Level 1) to Global Superstar (Level 5). Thought Leader 1 is an SME with no recognition as a thought leader beyond their organization and where Thought Leader 5 represents SMEs who are known globally for their thought leadership as well as their research achievements.
2) A white paper tailored for your level — what being at your level of thought leadership means, what impact you can expect from your activities, some of the benefits of getting to the next level for your career and organization, what might be the obstacles to doing that, and ways your institution or organization might help you get to the next level.
Let’s say you take the assessment, and you find out that you — like 99 percent of researchers — are a Level 1 or Level 2, and you want to improve. Or you have researchers at Level 1 or Level 2 in your organization — and you’d like to get them up to Levels 3 or 4.
Where do you even start?
This week, I’m going to walk you through my experience of researchers at those levels — their skills and competencies at communicating with non-experts. And I’ll give you the general recommendations I make to those researchers for moving up to Level 3 — where their thought leadership activity can really start to impart outsize value to their careers and organizations.
Tomorrow: What does Level 1 and Level 2 Researcher Thought Leader mean, anyway?
“Thought leadership” is a fraught and ill-defined term. Everyone defines (or despises) it in their own way.
I decided to do something about that imprecision.
My website has a five-minute, nine-question survey that you can take to give you a snapshot of your relative public impact as a researcher thought leader. (Some of you are on this list because you’ve already taken it.)
The assessment crunches your answers to questions about your thought leadership activities and markers — everything from writing op-eds to podcast appearances to how often your org or institution asks you to help raise money for it. You get two things:
1) A rating of the value/impact of your thought leadership on a scale of 1-5, from Resident Subject Matter Expert (Level 1) to Global Superstar (Level 5). Thought Leader 1 is an SME with no recognition as a thought leader beyond their organization and where Thought Leader 5 represents SMEs who are known globally for their thought leadership as well as their research achievements.
2) A white paper tailored for your level — what being at your level of thought leadership means, what impact you can expect from your activities, some of the benefits of getting to the next level for your career and organization, what might be the obstacles to doing that, and ways your institution or organization might help you get to the next level.
Let’s say you take the assessment, and you find out that you — like 99 percent of researchers — are a Level 1 or Level 2? Or you have researchers at Level 1 or Level 2 in your organization — and you’d like to get them up to Levels 3 or 4? Where do you even start?
This week, I’m going to walk you through my thoughts about researchers at those levels and the recommendations I make for moving up to Level 3 — where your thought leadership activity can really start to impart outsize value to your career and organization.
Tomorrow: What does Level 1 and Level 2 mean, anyway?