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:50 shades of thought leadership of Thought WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a thought leader? Thought leadership, if you take it in its purest sense, is really where by advocating an idea or a product you start to convince others to your way of thinking by establishing yourself as a credible source. Thought leadership can also be used to drive your brand. So the question then lies: where is the line between thought and cult leadership? When does a business leader go from speaking with an apparent voice for change and influencing their followers to subscribe to their ideals, to inadvertently just trying to sell a few frocks? An example of this fine line is Just Water founder and CEO, Tony Falkenstein, who in mid-2012 inadvertently drove his brand through some excellent publicity gained by endeavouring to solve a health problem around obesity in South Auckland. Just Water set out to entice South Auckland home owners to replace the fizzy drinks their families were drinking at home with Just Water containers. In an article Tony wrote that was published by the New Zealand Herald, he proposed a sugar-tax making reference to the OECD obesity statistics (June 2011) which named this country as the third-fattest nation in the world. There are two schools of general thought in this exercise. Firstly, those who would commend him for doing something good for the Maori and Pacific Island community in South Auckland and therefore perhaps even consider him a thought leader. Secondly, people like myself that perhaps also applaud his business motives in driving his very relevant product into this demographic. This certainly wasn���t my agenda with my first foray into political discourse, although it was 52 | www.h e rmagaz i n e . c o. n z a bonus to receive emails from my store girls telling of ladies coming in buying and loving my take on social policy. I was first introduced to the concept of thought leadership after the Auckland To be thought leader, you must first occupy a platform or subscriber base that allows your opinions to be heard. Actress, Lucy Lawless, is a great example of this. If anyone else was to strap themselves to University MBA class organized a trip to China to which I was invited to join. After the duration of the five-day trip, I was asked to present to the MBA class. I agreed, thinking the topic of discussion would be the educational excursion. I was wrong.��� Instead, they asked me to speak on thought leadership - something I knew nothing about. So I Googled it (Google is the new business card after all) and was enlightened to find that by default a lot of what I do in the daily scope of running my business is defined as thought leadership. I found there are many platforms that a thought leader adopts to drive their ideas and concepts including media, books, blogs, presentations ��� all things we engage in daily. a mast of a boat to get their message against Shell���s Arctic drilling across, I doubt that they would have received the same substantial media coverage that Lucy did. She was an incredibly valuable voice for Greenpeace because of her celebrity status. It is empowering to know you can actually start conversation and make change through your ideals. It is said that with influence comes responsibility, so for me it���s really important that we use thought leadership to drive tangible and real change. Regardless of the outcome I will continue to have this voice as I believe in its importance. This is especially effective during times where, like social policy, people simply don���t want to talk about the real issues. They���d much rather talk about mindless babble contained in books