The holidays are good for lots of things… Getting to spend more time with family (if you like them), reading good books, making great food, spending time at the beach or in nature and thinking without the pressure of outputs. We love being on holiday because, for the most part, we get to choose how to spend our time. And when we do, we end up whiling away the days in ways that fill our cups.

The summer break in New Zealand is also ripe with hopes for the year ahead and plenty of space for reflection, so it’s of little surprise that more of us are thinking about how we can structure or engineer our lives, and our work, to allow us to do more of the things that fill our cups.

Life by design

The concept of living ‘life by design’ isn’t new… It was first articulated by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans from Stanford University’s d.school in their 2016 book ‘Designing Your Life’ that promises a method for building a well-lived, joyful life. The original idea harnesses design thinking methods to help people tackle the big questions and major decisions they face. Whether you go all in on following this methodology, there’s no denying that, in the years since, the idea that we can consciously curate our experience has gained currency. Many of us feel the pull towards intentionality, and the desire to feel purposeful, excited and alive.

There’s some overlap, of course, with this drive and those who are self-employed or in the ‘gig economy’. While measuring the size and rate of growth of the gig economy is difficult, Inc.com reports that as the pandemic turned the traditional workforce upside down, the gig economy grew by over 30%. Whichever way you look, it appears that more and more people are calling their own shots and consciously crafting their work to work for them.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the people that we talk to about thought leadership fit this description.

For practical reasons, this connection makes sense.

Thought leadership can be a vehicle to getting you there

We often think of thought leadership as being about impact – and it does remain primarily about that. The best thought leaders are focused on the impact that their ideas can have for the people they exist to serve and they commit to providing value to those people in a number of ways.

Practically, there is also the impact that building thought leadership has for the thought leader in terms of elevating your reputation and authority, helping you own a position in the market, and allowing you to charge a premium as a result. All good outcomes.

However, building thought leadership also enables you to build out your options. When you lead with your thinking, you open up other opportunities. Other avenues that you can use to commercialise your thinking (and correspondingly, increase your income). Other modes that allow you to increase the impact you’re having out there in the world, while not necessarily working harder or longer.

Picture this: You’re currently working as a coach or consultant, and do most of your delivery one-on-one with clients. You earn a decent income, get to do work that you love, and get great results with your clients too; they love you. That’s a pretty good deal!

However, your income is a direct reflection of your calendar – namely how much ‘contact time’ you spend with billable clients. More client sessions = more income, but you’re constrained by how many of these you can book in a week. You want to have a bigger impact, but you physically can’t if you don’t want to work all the hours under the sun. This is a familiar scenario for lots of the people that we talk to.

Now picture an alternate scenario – one in which you have different modes for delivering your ideas. You’re still working closely with clients; you love that and wouldn’t want to give it up. It’s also a first-hand and fertile testing-ground for your ideas. In your client work, you get to see the frameworks that you’ve developed applied, and tweak and improve them as you receive feedback.

Alongside your (chosen) client-load, you’re speaking to larger groups (and being paid to do so). You’re being sought-out and asked for opinions about your area of expertise, which is leading to further opportunities. You’ve got people engaging with other programmes and online offerings that you’ve created. Still others are reading your book and the prolific content you’re putting out there. This content flows easily because you have the space for thinking and development. Your income has never looked better.

It may sound busy and like a lot of work, but there’s a lot of leverage across what you’re doing so you’re working smarter (not necessarily harder). You get to design your days in the way that works for you – managing what you do to best match your energy levels. And the impact your ideas are having in the world has never been better! You are living and working ‘on purpose’.

Don’t worry if this scenario isn’t where you are yet, or still sounds like a pipe dream. Leveraged thought leadership – the scenario described above – is the third stage in a journey towards building thought leadership. To find out more about the levels of maturity in the thought leadership journey and how you can best move through them, follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our regular #intelligentthink emails.