YOUR THOUGHT LEADER ARCHETYPE
Networked Educator
Your thought leader archetype helps you identify your unique skillset and your greatest leverage to achieve your goals.
Guiding others towards success is where you shine, and you find fulfillment in the role of educator and mentor. Leading small groups allows you to impart your expertise and ideas, fostering growth and development among your peers and students alike. Your dedication to expanding your impact through workshops and courses underscores your commitment to empowering others to reach their full potential.
Your connections to esteemed institutions and organizations offer a significant advantage, whether through academia, professional associations, or a robust network of peers. Leveraging the brand and platform of these entities provides a powerful platform to amplify your voice and ideas.
Finding harmony between personal brand and organizational affiliation can be a strategic challenge, but it holds immense potential. By strategically aligning your personal brand with the values and mission of the broader organization, you can harness synergies to expand your influence as both an individual thought leader and an integral part of the collective.
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5 Biggest Mistakes You’re Making as a Networked Educator
Wherever you are in your thought leadership journey, these are the most common pitfalls of being a Networked Educator.
1.
You sell your time, not your expertise.
You are so adept at teaching and communicating ideas that you fall into the trap of teaching anything that anyone asks of you, instead of selling the combined value of your expertise plus your communication skills.
Your offerings can quickly become a commodified service because there is no differentiation. It is a common mistake for Educators to lean on the utility of their skills, instead of their thought leadership. You have an area of expertise, a point of view, and a body of experience that deserves to be shared. And you deserve to be known for it.
Having a well positioned brand and clear platform helps you communicate your true value proposition as a thought leader and educator.
2.
You decide to wait on your thought leadership brand and digital platform until you know what to do with it.
They say that the worst mistake you can make in investing is not starting sooner. And the same is true of investing in your professional brand. The earlier you start building your thought leadership, the greater returns you will reap over time.
Professionals put it off for these common reasons:
“I don’t have time.” Here, let’s go back to the investing principles. Saving even a little bit every month starting in your 20s will reap enormous rewards that are very difficult to replicate if you start in your 40s. Same principle applies here. You may have a long list of other responsibilities and priorities taking up your time and energy, but if you’re professionally active or you have valuable ideas and insights to share right now, it is a mistake to put it off.
“I don’t know what the ROI would be right now.” When you are stretched thin with all your other responsibilities, it’s understandable to put off anything that isn’t urgent and knocking at your door. But building your brand and platform as a thought leader is not a means to a very specific short-term goal. It’s the foundation for your professional career writ large.
Consider this: They say that we will change careers or jobs an average of six times in our lives. But there’s one common denominator that will never change — our professional brand. And there’s one sure asset that we have agency over that we can take with us where we go — our professional platform.
Investing in the one asset that you’ll be tied to for the long run will yield enormous returns across many facets of your life and career.
“I don’t know what I want to be known for.” This objection seems legitimate on its face. Thought leadership that is neither valuable “thoughts” nor true “leadership” is just… noise. But in reality, those who bring up this objection are usually those who are in the position of having too many areas of expertise. They are paralyzed from the fear of commitment and being pigeon-holed.
But consider this: The most insightful minds with truly original, creative ideas are people who naturally have immense intellectual curiosity and drive that they can (and do) apply to many different domains. If you invest in your own name and platform, you have agency to deploy the strategy to gain recognition in the ways you choose. And even if you put the spotlight on one area of expertise to start, you can remain in the driver’s seat and take that platform in new directions.
Fear of being pigeonholed is simply a fear of not having agency. And ironically, the most impactful way of having agency over your work is to commit to investing in your thought leadership and platform.
3.
You’re on all the social media channels.
In our current media landscape, there are a million ways to show up online. And if you’re in the position of trying to grow your audience and impact, you may think you need to be everywhere, all the time.
Perhaps you’ve set up all your accounts and tried to streamline your content sharing so that it shows up across all channels. Or you are simply overwhelmed by it all that you’re stuck in paralysis. Either way, you’re spinning your wheels without much to show for it. There are three important reasons why this is a big mistake.
First, unlike commercial brands, your brand as a thought leader is valued for being human. And especially when you’re starting out or in early growth stages, it’s hard to be everywhere all the time online and still be a compelling human.
Second, most audiences are not meaningfully engaging on more than one or two social media channels. The first rule of growing a brand is to be laser focused on who your audience is. And if you’re doing it right, you’ll likely find most of them on one main social media platform.
And most importantly, social media is not the end game. It is, at best, a tool that can be tailored to help you meet your goals as a thought leader, but only if it is deployed in an intentionally designed digital ecosystem that is built specifically for your brand and your goals.
Successful thought leadership does not involve becoming a social media influencer; it requires deploying a digital strategy and platform that is tailored to your specific goals.
4.
You have an outdated (or non-existent) digital presence.
There’s certainly a brand of thought leader (perhaps in academia) who intentionally avoids engaging in the online world. And for many years, this may have even been a sign of credibility. You may be in a certain industry or from a certain generation where putting up a shingle in the form of an “online presence” was considered tacky or sales-y.
But today, digital natives (generally speaking, Millennials and Gen-Z) make up 38% of the workforce, and by 2025, they’re expected to make up the majority. If you have any intention of being engaged in public discourse, it is a critical mistake to allow your digital presence to be outdated (or nearly non-existent).
Here are some signs that your digital presence is outdated and may be hurting your impact and legacy:
When people google your name, the photos that show up on the first page are mostly from more than 5 years ago.
You have published articles and books, but they are hard to find online and recent ones are not on your website.
There are different iterations of your name online, causing confusion.
Your current profile picture used on different platforms and sites vary significantly (different hair, different time period, different style).
Your headshot was taken more than 3 years ago. (There may be some exceptions to this, but 3 years is a pretty good cadence for getting your headshots redone.)
Having an outdated online presence is the professional equivalent of having a boarded up storefront. You’ll turn people away.
5.
You hide behind your institution or organization’s brand.
Founders, Executives, and Partners
Running a start-up or being the primary leader of any organization involves wearing a lot of hats. It is undeniably challenging, and it is understandable that founders are sometimes hesitant to be visible as thought leaders in their own name.
But this is a huge mistake.
First, small and early-stage companies have limited brand awareness to begin with, and leveraging a founder’s story and personal brand is an enormously beneficial tool for getting traction, whether you’re B2B or B2C.
Second, if you’re a founder, you are 100% committed to your current project. And there’s certainly a chance that you will remain at this organization for the remainder of your career and life. But for the vast majority of founders, this is just one chapter of their journey. Establishing and nurturing your personal brand as a thought leader will not only help your current brand, but will ensure that you will maximize future opportunities if and when you move on from this current role.
Academics, Writers, and Journalists
In your profession, the institution has traditionally been considered the source of prestige and credibility. If you’re a professor, your university is the center of gravity. If you’re a journalist at the New York Times, you don your NYTimes credentials everywhere you show up. But it’s a mistake to have your name and professional reputation completely synonymous with that of your employer.
First, your employer doesn’t want that. They want to strengthen their institutional brand and reputation, and their decision to bring you into their fold is a mark of confidence that your unique voice and point of view will be a net gain for them. Institutions want and need their individual contributors to bring something unique to the table, not just a mirror image of the institution. You are ultimately in a brand partnership, and if their Nike, you have to have a little Michael Jordan.
Second, the world of academia and publishing is evolving at a rapid pace. And sure, the most elite of academic and publishing institutions will continue to thrive, but the future is uncertain. Your most valuable asset is your name, your professional reputation, and your body of work. With the right strategy and platform, you can ensure that you will always have a career doing what you do.