Thought Leadership and Voice: Taking Risks

What you say is less important than how and why you say it.

When I became the Chief of Staff to a powerhouse CEO at a big brand, I hired a leadership coach to help me navigate my new role. I was struggling with having the confidence to speak up in leadership meetings because I knew I wasn’t at the level of the C-suite members of the team. The CEO, however, trusted me immensely so I always saved my thoughts for a private 1:1 meeting with her afterwards. Pretty quickly, the CEO started to push me to speak up at these meetings. She’d nudge me under the table, stare at me and nod in the direction of the slides being presented. One time when we were at an offsite she sent me a text and said “I know you have something to say. If you don’t speak up in the next 10 minutes I’m going to ask you to leave.” I thought this was cruel because I didn’t understand why I needed to say anything—I despise when people talk just to hear the sound of their own voice, when they repeat the exact same thing that the person before them said. (For all of you in corporate America, you know what I’m talking about!)

I brought this up to my coach and she gave me the perspective that would forever change the way I think. She said, “Amy, why do you think your CEO listens to you and trusts you so much?” 

I answered, “Because she knows how I think about things and she trusts that I think about them the right way.” 

“And how does she know what you think?” She prompted.

“Because I tell her,” I replied simply.

“Exactly. There is no trust without voice.”

Those words hit me hard because they’re true. How will anyone know how you feel about something unless you speak up? How are you supposed to gain trust with people if they don’t know who you are, what you stand for, and how you think about things?

This is where author thought leadership comes in, and it’s especially relevant for non-fiction writers.

I’m going to say something controversial: there are very few stories that haven’t already been told. There are a million business books with the same promises of wealth and success, a million self-help books guaranteed to move you through trauma and pain, a million memoirs about life’s ups and downs. Unfortunately, most people aren’t buying your book because they’ve never come across anything like it. They’re buying it because they believe in your ability to tell the story and they relate to and trust your voice.