thought leaders

Let’s face it. It’s hard not to jump on the gratitude wagon this time of year.  Research, we know, supports it. But research aside, I’m feeling it. And thought I’d share.

Between latkes and turkey leftovers, please join me in a collective shout out to ten feminist thought leaders in our midst. They are PhDs, soon-to-be PhDs, and/or serious mavens, all with a keen eye for popular debate, and they’re the current crew of active bloggers here on Girl w/Pen. Check out their latest, read all about them, and post a note here or at my FB page about who you’re feeling particularly grateful for in this realm. I’m always searching for models of thoughtful thought leaders, particularly in the zone of feminist public conversation. And additionally, we are always happy to induct new Penners into our crew.

So here we go. For their mind-bending, evidence-based, eloquent, witty, and pithy feminist dazzlery, I’m thankful for:

Veronica Arreola, who is currently pursuing her Ph.D., directs an academic support program for women majoring in STEM and is a longtime mover and shaker in the Chicago feminist community and nationally. Veronica taught me how to blog and is now my terrific colleague in my new hometown, where we frequently find ourselves sharing a stage. Veronica pens Science Grrl, a column exploring the latest research and press on girls and women in science & engineering.

Susan Bailey, who served as Executive Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) and a Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies and Education at Wellesley College for 25 years, and as principal author of the 1992 AAUW Report: How Schools Shortchange Girls, is a thought leader whose insights fostered national public dialog on gender in K-12 education and someone I’ve long admired. She pens the column Second Look, offering her reflections of where we’ve been and where we need to go. Take a second look with her at the work unfinished in the realm of girls and sports.

Kyla Bender-Baird, author of Transgender Employment Experiences: Gendered Perceptions and the Law, is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and GWP’s fearless Managing Editor. Kyla pens The Next Generation, a column featuring young feminists under the age of 30 who are not yet established in an academic career. Kyla and I met when she was my intern at the National Council for Research on Women—and now, like so many former interns, I learn from her.

Tristan Bridges, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The College at Brockport, State University of New York, book review editor at Men & Masculinities, and editorial board member of both Gender & Society and Men & Masculinities, pens the column Many Musings, with CJ Pascoe, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon, and chair of the American Sociological Associations section on Sex and Gender. Together, they share thoughts on masculinity, inequality, and everyday life. They’re our newest addition, and I’m beyond grateful to have them with us. Check out their recent post on bro-porn (think: naked rowers) and the heterosexualization of straight men’s anti-homophobia.

Heather Hewett, who writes about women, feminism, and culture in the U.S. and globally for both academic and mainstream publications (including The Washington Post, CNN.com, The Christian Science Monitor, Brain, Child, and The Motherlode at the New York Times) and numerous anthologies, is an Associate Professor at SUNY New Paltz and a dear old friend without whom I would have probably given up writing a long time ago. Heather pens the Women Across Borders column, offering us a transnational perspective on women and girls. Read what she has to say about the complications, and the promise, of the global girls movement, and what she did on the International Day of the Girl this year.

Elline Lipkin, a scholar, poet, and nonfiction writer who has also worked as an editor for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and journals, is a girls’ studies guru who explores the state of contemporary girlhood in the United States and how gender is imprinted from birth forward.  Her book, Girls Studies, is a guidepost in the field. She pens the Off the Shelf column, offering book reviews and news, and more. Read her latest (and we mean latest) on the GoldieBlox controversy.

Dara Persis Murray, who writes about the intersections of beauty and feminism as they occur online and in consumer culture (branding campaigns, advertisements, television programs) and whose work has appeared in the academic journals Feminist Media Studies and Celebrity Studies, and in edited collections, pens the Mediating Beauty column, where she muses on the intersections of beauty and feminism as they appear in consumer culture and digital culture. Dara and I met when she was my intern at the National Council for Research on Women; she then became my research assistant, and now I, too, learn from her. Read Dara’s take on Miley’s embrace of the f-word.

Adina Nack, who has been researching and writing about health, sexuality and stigma since 1994 (and winning myriad awards as she goes!), is author of the book Damaged Goods? Women Living with Incurable STDs and has covered topics including STD stigma, sex education, and HIV/AIDS in venues including Ms. Magazine, academic journalis, and anthologies. Adina is largely responsible for getting us over here to The Society Pages, where we are so happily at home. Adina pens Bedside Manners, in which she applies the sociological imagination to medical topics, with a special focus on sexual and reproductive health. Check out what Adina recently had to say about Miley Cyrus, sexuality, and her alma mater.

Virginia Rutter, who has been working at the intersection of academia and media for two decades: first in DC in Congress and at a mental health organization, and (during and after her PhD at the University of Washington), is a sociologist translating academic ideas to general audiences. The author of two books (The Gender of Sexuality and The Love Test, both with Pepper Schwartz) and numerous articles for Psychology Today, Virginia has written on topics including divorce, marriage, gender, sexuality, stepfamilies, adolescence, infidelity, depression, women in science, psychotherapy research, couples therapy, and domestic violence. Virginia is mentor and guiding light to many (including me). She pens the column Nice Work, sharing insights on social science in the real world.

Natalie Wilson, who is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author who teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in the areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, militarism, body studies, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of Seduced by Twilight and Theorizing Twilight and is currently co-authoring a book examining contemporary representations of zombies, witches, and ghosts in popular culture. She also regularly writes film reviews for Ms. Magazine and pens our Pop Goes Feminism column, where she ponders all things popular culture from a feminist perspective. Read her take on the feminist pull of Gravity.

I am also ridiculously grateful for GWP bloggers emeritus currently on hiatus or who have blogged with us in the past: Avory Faucette, Alison Piepmeier, Allison Kimmich, Gwendolyn Beetham, Shira Tarrant, Leslie Heywood, and others, who we welcome back anytime – once a Penner, always a Penner, they say.

Thank you, all, for sharing your minds, passions, and words–you all utterly make my day.

Follow Deborah on Twitter @deborahgirlwpen,“like” her page on Facebook, and subscribe to her quarterly newsletter to keep posted on workshops, offerings, writings, and talks.

Attention all those of you writing a book…

In this age of the social author, those writing for broader audiences need to see themselves as disseminators of spreadable messages and sticky ideas. But how do we best position ourselves as substantive public spokespeople? What do editors really mean when they say “platform,” and how can serious writers, often more focused on content than sell, tell (and sell) the story of our expertise? How does one craft an authentic public identity by connecting connect story, self, and idea?

These are some of the questions we’ll be tackling in a 3-week webinar series I’m leading at She Writes, Thought Leadership for Writers! on Oct 1, 8, 15 @4pmPT/7pmET. Special guests Susan Cain (bestselling author of Quiet) and Christina Baker Kline (bestselling author of myriad works of nonfiction and fiction) will join me, and She Writes Press publisher Brooke Warner will be hosting. Here’s a taste, from the free sample I offered last week. The full-fledged description is below. I hope some GWP and TSP readers will join me. And thanks, too, for passing it along.

3-WEEK WEBINAR – THOUGHT LEADERSHIP FOR WRITERS!

Storytelling is the writer’s superpower. But often, we feel far less adept when it comes to broadcasting the public story of our self and our idea.  Whether we call it presence, platform, or public thought leadership, the need is the same: behind every successful author is a compelling idea to share—and the compulsion to be heard.

Join us for this 3-week online seminar with Deborah Siegel, one of the co-founders of She Writes. Siegel is an author, blogger, journalist, TEDx speaker, and coach who has tested the waters of platform-building firsthand. She  will change the way you think about platform by showing how thought leadership can organically unfold.

Join Deborah and two guest speakers (more details below) to harness your ideas and strategize an action plan that works. REGISTER HERE.

DURING THIS WEBINAR SERIES YOU WILL LEARN:

•    Ten things genuine (as in sincere!) thought leaders do
•    The power of authenticity, generosity, and “test balloons” when building your path to presence
•    How to decide which social media platforms work best for you
•    How to work on multiple planks simultaneously, without losing sleep
•    What your first, or next, step toward your Public Thought Leadership Action Plan might be
•    Why platform is a marathon, not a sprint
•    How to break through your sense of social media overwhelm
•    Best practices from leading fiction and nonfiction writers who publicly and successfully interweave self, book, and idea

CLASS 1 (Oct 1). Behind Every Successful Platform Is an Idea Worth Spreading

Special Guest: Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet and renowned TED speaker
• “Thought leadership,” a term historically applied to innovators in business and now cavalierly applied to anyone with a Twitter account, has become an essential element of authorial platform building. But what does “thought leadership” mean, and what does it have to do with writing, and selling, a book?  How can writers create authentic platforms that distill and spread the essence of their best self and their best ideas? We’ll start the session by learning from a master: Susan Cain.

Optional assignment: Why Me (a 1-pager describing your platform)

CLASS 2 (Oct 8). What’s My Platform? A Builder’s Guide, Board-by-Board

• The dictionary defines “platform” as follows: 1. Stage for performers or speakers 2. Flat raised structure 3. Particular policy of party seeking election 4. Opportunity for doing something. In Class 2, we’ll break it down, board-by-board, and discuss strategies for beginning or continuing our build.

Optional assignment: Thought Leadership Action Plan

CLASS 3 (Oct 15). Do’s and Don’ts: Thought Leaders Made and Born

Special Guest: Christina Baker Kline, bestselling author of Orphan Train and myriad other books
• In Class 3, we’ll take a tour through some of the most exciting current examples of author platforms and why they work. We’ll look at those who use a book to build their brand/business, and those who use a brand/business to build their book. We’ll end with targeted tips from another master, one who traverses fiction and nonfiction: Christina Baker Kline.

REGISTER HERE.

(Or, What All Good Thought Leaders Can Learn from Academics, and What Academics Can Learn from Business, Too)

When LinkedIn launched its thought leaders feature in October 2012 (Follow Richard Branson! Follow Barack Obama!), they were flooded with aspiring contenders who self-nominated, then closed off applications once they reached 150. No matter that the list seemed to skew (ahem) male. Some LinkedIn members created forums to figure out the formula to get in, to no avail.

But if you want to know who has really cracked the code (or, a piece of it, anyway), look to academics.  Academics are the original, not to mention some of the most original, thought leaders. They lead with their thought—always have, and hopefully, always will. The time is ripe to learn from the masters. Because as the term “thought leadership” becomes more and more widely applied, some important principles continue to get lost.

How did such a lofty term become DIY, and what does “thought leadership” actually mean, academic colleagues ask me these days, in a business sense? Coined in 1994, according to an oft-cited Wikipedia entry, by strategy+business editor-in-chief Joel Kurtzman, the term “thought leader” initially referred to interview subjects covered in his magazine. Used here and there over the next decade, “thought leader” fast became one of the cool-kid buzzwords of the 2010s, so much so that we are now seeing a backlash against the term.

In the iconoclastic spirit of Colbert, “I can thought leadership, and so can you.”

Definitions abound. Last year, Social Strand Media’s Tracy Sestili published a list of 21 of them.  In May 2013, Mashable’s James O’Brien offered a longer “true history” of thought leadership tracing the term’s origins back to McKinsey Quarterly circa 1964 and noting that while social media has since brought about an incredible democratization, it has also wrought a dilution. Self-nomination in the Twitter-sphere and on the conference circuit does not a thought leader make.

But what does?

Two core traits, I believe, define thought leadership, at heart. And academics know these traits well.  They are:

1. Long-term commitment

To all those seeking a quick fix, remember that thought leadership is cumulative. “Rather like achieving academic tenure,” says Rebecca Lieb in Mashable, “[t]hought leadership requires a continuum of wisdom, accomplishment, and a body of published work that stands the test of a degree of time.”

There’s no fast track. It takes work. And so, thought leadership can hardly be monetized right away.

2. Authenticity

Thought leaders are not manufactured. Instead, they lead from within.

Lewis Howes, who literally wrote the book on LinkedIn writes over at Clarity blog: “Thought leaders are indispensable because they’re custom made.  Their unique experiences and choices have shaped who they are and how they perceive their environment, which makes them one of a kind.”

Big agree. And more on that in a future post.

But back to my point. Aspiring platform creators, idea entrepreneurs, social entreprises, and businesses can, in cultivating authenticity and commitment, take a page from a professor’s book. In all fairness, can’t an academic (and other expert individuals seeking a public voice) learn from industry-driven thought leadership gurus, in turn?

Yes.

From Sestili’s compiled list of 21 definitions, all of which come from the business realm, here are five that I believe academics seeking a platform beyond academe would do well to absorb*:

1. Shel Israel: A thought leader is someone who looks at the future and sets a course for it that others will follow. Thought leaders look at existing best practices then come up with better practices. They foment change, often causing great disruption.
2. Jeanine Moss: Thought Leadership is the ability to aggregate followers around ideas to educate, influence and inspire.
3. Tom Paul, COO Pop-Art: To be a company that exemplifies thought leadership, you need to have an idea engine, a concept forge, AS WELL AS [sic] an outward-leaning communication stance combined with a desire to raise the playing field – a capability to not only learn new things, to not only discover them for the first time, but to educate others – selflessly.
4. TechCrunch: (on being a thought leader) someone who notices things so big and so obvious that everyone else manages to overlook them.
5. Scott Ginsberg: A trusted source who moves people with innovative ideas.

In other words, for scholars to be thought leaders in the more popular sense of the term, they need to develop a wider platform, accrue followers beyond their students, embrace forms of communication that may be new to them, and—my personal favorite—move people, publicly, with their ideas.

How do you define “thought leadership”? Do you bristle at or embrace the term? Drop me a line in comments, or tweet me @deborahgirlwpen. I’d love to hear.

*For one of the more thoughtful takes, in the business realm, on creating thoughtful thought leadership, see this piece by Daniel W. Rasmus at Fast Company.

Image source: Yagoshi