Thought Leadership

Merydith Willoughby

• Publisher: Green Hill Publishing
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781922527226
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

It seemed insane to me that the brilliance of leadership was considered by mainstream for only those at the helm.Every person can learn how to think like a thought leader.

Thought Leadership is not about me. It is about you. It has been written for the specific purpose of sharing the knowledge I have acquired over many years. It has been designed to assist you to unpack who you are, to understand that the terms: inner leader and thought leader, are as relevant for you as they are for senior executives, presidents, governors, waged, non-waged, and people at any ability level.

I want you to know and learn how to step into your power and never, ever allow anyone or anything to take it away. To know that your past experience does not determine your future. To know that you determine your future every second of the day, every day of the year, every year of your life. When you falter - as we all do - you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get on with it, having learned from that experience.

I want you to know how important it is to stop, think about and reflect daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, as to how and where you are really going in your life. And to ask: does this reflect what you really want to do with your life, or are you just filling in time and doing what other people want you to do or what you think society expects and demands of you?

I want you to know how important it is to mentor yourself daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and to talk to yourself and think about how you just did in specific situations and in your daily life. What worked well, what will you acknowledge yourself for, what will you congratulate yourself for and what would you like to do next time, perhaps a little differently to improve the outcome.

Over time, you can learn how to ride the rocky bits of life and be comfortable with the notion that while you don’t put your hand up to experience the tough periods, every human being goes through them and indeed, they can assist you to develop a strong character and give you the guts to keep going throughout your life. It doesn’t matter whether you come from a rich or poor background - whether you had much support - or none. This is your life and you can learn how to make the most of it. You know that your life counts just as much as anyone else’s does. You are valued and important and a key member of your community. Just as organisations refine their systems and processes and restructure - so do you.

As John Lennon’s song says - Imagine. Imagine what you would love your life to be like and set about creating it. Don’t give up until it’s done.

When you live your life this way, you can learn how to be powerful and a mentor to others. You may not even realise it, but people watch and learn and admire when someone lives their best life and doesn’t give up when it gets tough. It gives them the courage to keep pushing through their own barriers. There is a language that comes with this type of person. They are positive and focus on the good aspects of their life and life in general. No whinging for this group and if they do, it is short-lived.

You learn not to allow anyone else to determine who you are or who you can be. Although of course we are all affected by other people and the society in which we live.

I do not want you to take what I say in Thought Leadership as gospel.

I want you to think about what I have said in each chapter. Perhaps it may consolidate what you have been thinking about, or it may be foreign to you at this point. You will be able to examine how you have been socialised and conditioned and determine changes - if any - you would like to make in order to achieve your potential over and over again and to contribute significantly and positively to yourself, your community, your society, those you love and to the wider global community. Doing this over and over and over again and all throughout your life is what makes you - YOU - and assists you to unpack the treasures within yourself which may have been latent for generations.

I want you to develop yourself as a human being, develop your inner leader at every level of your mind, body, emotions and consciousness and contribute what you have to the rest of the world, knowing that what you think and know and feel is as important and as valuable as what anyone else thinks, knows and feels. I want you to fill your unconscious mind with many different aspects of life - and to do it often, so that it becomes a friend to you. So that you can experience the wonder of this incredible piece of machinery.

I want you to experience what I experience when I am writing but in your area of expertise. This type of living does not allow fear to dominate and control; it enables you to continue to develop your intelligence in areas that are important and to continue to challenge yourself in many areas - not just the ones you favour and are interested in. Interesting people educate themselves in many areas and if this doesn’t come naturally, they push forward until they are comfortable doing it (CBT process).

For the majority of people, the terms inner leader and thought leader are not something they would have ever considered relevant. Indeed, some squirm at the very thought of thinking this way. That I’ve dared to put you in this category may be confronting. It’s not for you, you may ponder; it’s for the upper echelons of society. Only for the important people of the world and society - the ones who lead corporations, government, community, institutions. Over the course of your life, these terms may have alienated you as they have done in society for countless others and since time immemorial and this thinking may have stopped you from stepping into your power. Being all of who you can be.

Let me tell you that this isn’t so. These terms are for everyone.

You never know what you are capable of until you regularly update your thinking; keep pushing your limits, unpacking who you are. This is what it means to develop your inner leader and how to live your life through a thought leader lens.

There are many interesting components to leadership.

You never know what
you are capable of
until you regularly
update your thinking
and keep pushing your
limits and unpacking
who you are. This is
what developing your
inner leader means
and how you live your
life through a thought
leader lens.

I have discovered this throughout my life and more broadly since working in the industry. I have had the pleasure of working with many fine leaders, all decent, good, kind people; and when working with them, I have discovered that the process they were learning and fine-tuning in order to take their organisations, their people and themselves to new heights was what we all needed in our life.

Every one of us.

It was confronting to meet so many fine people at this level because I had been socialised to think that they would not be of this ilk. It was a pleasure to be able to assist them to become more powerful in their role and each time I worked with them I learned as much from them as they learned from me.

The learning was clear.

Assisting leaders at this level to develop and fine-tune their systems and processes seemed logical and illogical that the rest of the world did not think it relevant to them. I saw the significant benefits that organisations attained - size or sector not relevant - when they consciously adhered to implementing a systems and processes approach and to always maintaining and monitoring and improving it. I also saw the way that I was able to assist leaders to realise that a systems and processes approach in their personal life made as much sense as it did in their professional life. They were often surprised as to how much difference it made to them and to their family and others in their private life and how it freed up time where they focused on what was most important.

It seemed that this information was not considered relevant to mainstream and this is why I am intent on sharing it because the difference when we apply this approach to our personal and professional life can be phenomenal. Hence, all the writing I do, discussions I have, unplanned chats all around this wonderful world and on any form of transport I happen to be travelling on at that moment. It is exciting and it can change lives. It can help the person to turn theirs around as it has mine over many years and as it continues to do because this way of thinking and living provides me with focus, clarity, determination and the ability to consolidate and focus on what is important to me each and every day, month, year.

It seemed insane to me that the brilliance
of leadership was considered by
mainstream for only those at the helm.

I like to speak about this concept and link it to the incredible human machine and discuss this throughout the book. I do not understand why we all don’t do this. That it is not standard operating procedure for conversations at every level of society does not make sense.

You can see by this explanation and way of thinking and behaving and living your life that the leadership terms which have dominated our way of thinking for far too long have nothing to do with the authentic leadership role or that only those with the title have access to this way of thinking, behaving, operating because they are the chosen few, belong in a workplace or are in the top-job.

The term leadership has been hijacked.

Because of this the majority of us go through life having no understanding of how powerful we can be if we learn how to think and behave differently and to step right into the brilliance of our human machine.

It is a mindset and a way of living, thinking and behaving.

It means that whatever we do will be done to the best of our ability. We will naturally think how we can do it better. We won’t take the words of the media or from anyone else who says something for gospel. We will determine if the information we have been given is relevant to us and indeed, authentic. We will support other people to do the same. We will help those less fortunate than ourselves. We will have a global commitment to this and we will naturally want to assist developing countries to get a leg up and to have the basics that we in developed countries take for granted.

Those of us in developed countries will consciously and deliberately stop expecting more and more and stop nit picking when minor things are not done as we expect or have been selfishly conditioned to think that they should be a certain way. We will learn when to simply shut up and say nothing because we can add no value to the current conversation or situation. We will give our ego a rest and at times, knock it on the head.

This is how our life can roll out if we work hard, live consciously and make deliberate, focused, functional, worthwhile decisions. If you take a step back and think about the information in this book, you may become aware that you already think and behave like a thought leader and that you naturally develop your inner leader.

That it may be your standard
operating procedure.

It took me much time to become aware of what I am sharing with you and only occurred because of all of the different areas I have worked in and because of my commitment to continually unravelling my incredible human machine.

Observing the human condition is a marvel.

Insights, wonderful insights combined with hard work and tenacity can move mountains.

Human beings can be fragile emotionally and it can be tough to be human, however smart and hard working we are. This is not recognised enough and when it is, it is shoved into silos where we are diagnosed and treated accordingly by someone we think knows more than we do and who will put us on the right path. This may or may not be accurate and this conditioned response is a bit like Pavlov dog’s theory. The process can disempower us. This current way of thinking and operating does not understand or respect the incredible capacity that the human machine and infrastructure has to repair itself and to become whole again over and over and over again.

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Thought Leadership
• Merydith Willoughby
• Books by the same Author
• 1 Nuts and Bolts
• 2 Upside down Thinking
• 3 Infrastructure
• 4 New York City Brain
• 5 Incredible Human Machine
• 6 Creative Process
• 7 John Lennons of the World
• 8 Introspection