READY TO BE A THOUGHT LEADER?
How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Success
by Denise Brosseau
"Ready to Be a Thought Leader? is a likable, practical book for seasoned executives who have achieved financial success but now want greater influence.” -Harvard Business Review
“Denise Brosseau has done a great service by making thought leadership accessible to all of us. I'm going to recommend this book to my start-up CEO friends, as it will help them to get their ideas heard in an increasingly noisy market.”
—Aneel Bhusri, cofounder and co-CEO, Workday
How did Robin Chase, CEO of Zipcar, make the transition from running a
successful car sharing service to become an advocate for a green
economy? How did Nina Nashif, CEO of Healthbox, go from being a
healthcare consultant to founder of a nationwide accelerator for
healthcare startup entrepreneurs and a champion for healthcare
innovation? And what impelled Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre
Hospitality, to make the leap from successful hotel CEO to an evangelist
for a more meaningful way of doing business?
In Ready to Be a Thought Leader? (foreword by Guy
Kawasaki; Jossey-Bass; January 20, 2014), Denise Brosseau, renowned
advisor to Silicon Valley executives and cofounder of Springboard
Enterprises, a startup accelerator that has helped women entrepreneurs
raise over $6 billion for their companies, shows how these already
successful people achieved outsize impact by going beyond conventional
career advice (“keep your head down, work hard”) and made the transition
from leader to thought leader.
Based on her research and numerous interviews, Brosseau makes the case
that real thought leaders—unlike mere self-promoters—“galvanize others
to think new thoughts, modify the way they have always done things, and
embark on new behaviors, new paths, and new actions to transform the
world.” At a personal level, she shows readers how thought leadership
“unlocks a whole new level of professional achievement as well as
personal satisfaction.”
Using her own remarkable journey as a guide—from launching her first
company at the age of 26 to cofounding several women’s leadership
companies and organizations, and becoming an advisor to executives and
CEOs—Denise Brosseau distills the lessons she has learned along the way.
She describes a 7-step leadership path that is key to reinventing
yourself as a thought leader, including how to identify your unique
niche, telling a bigger story about yourself that really engages others,
and codifying the lessons you've learned so others can amplify your
impact and carry forward your ideas.
Brosseau shares inspiring stories of leaders, who have used these ideas
to transform companies and even whole industries from within,
successfully lobbying for their ideas, and creating momentum for
revolutionary change. Among the stories profiled in the book are:
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How Van Ton-Quinlivan, then chief of staff at PG&E, channeled
her passion for education and equal opportunity to build a more
diverse workforce development program that transformed the company’s
hiring culture, building programs to recruit and prepare members of
underserved communities, including veterans, for the company’s
well-paying positions. The program was successful not just in her own
company but across her industry because Van was able to garner support
from workforce organizations, community colleges, and veterans groups.
It also allowed her to make a bigger transition to managing workforce
development for California’s community college system. She is now a
national authority on career technical education.
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When Avinash Kaushik, a digital marketing expert at Intuit,
decided to write a blog, he just wanted to share his expertise in a
how-to guide for fellow marketers who were looking to navigate the new
world of web analytics and search engine optimization. The blog soon
became the platform that allowed him to build a huge global following,
land a new position as the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google,
write books and become a philanthropist—all while building a highly
successful career.
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Zoe Dunning, a reservist in the US Navy, was finishing up her
MBA at Stanford when she chose to be among the first to speak out
about her experience as a gay woman in the military. This led to a
long court battle for her dismissal, but when she prevailed, Dunning
became the first and only openly gay person allowed to remain on
active duty in the military prior to the end of the Don't
Ask, Don't Tell policy. For 17 years, she used her unique status
to advocate for the rights of gays and lesbians in the military by
speaking at rallies, talking to the press, lobbying members of
Congress and cofounding a legal defense network. She was instrumental
in repealing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy and stood with
President Obama when he signed the repeal bill.
Filled with these and other remarkable stories, resources and insights, Ready
to Be a Thought Leader? will empower readers to think big and spark
movements around their ideas rather than settling for incremental change.
For more visit: http://www.thoughtleadershiplab.com/
