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Thought Leadership

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Goleman (1998) and McCrimmon (2005) Summaries

Thought Leadership: A Radical Departure from Traditional, Positional Leadership by: Mitch McCrimmon.
In this article, McCrimmon (2005) presents two forms of leadership, thought and positional leadership. He describes thought leadership as a brainstorming mechanism that births new ideas and innovations. In comparison to positional leadership that can be described as a managerial system that helps an organization achieve a targeted goal or initiative.

What is thought leadership?

Thought leadership originates from simple thinking skills. They are unwarranted and unsolicited ideas that McCrimmon (2005) says are “uncontaminated by the managerial element.’’ (p. 2). A thought leader has no desire to climb the totem pole. However, they desires to present new ideas and concepts that could possibly help implement new systems- big or small. Mccrimmon (2005) says its” simply, the championing of new ideas” (p. 2). In the article, the author presented case studies of employees, who implemented new strategies in their work environment. For example, the junior HR specialist who convinced his team to adopted a new system. The new innovation improved the performance of the team and promoted growth in the organization.

Thought leadership vs. positional (shared and distributed) leadership

Thought leadership focuses on an innate capability to birth eccentric ideas. Once the ideas are accepted, positional leadership takes responsibility for organizing and executing the tasks. Thought leadership is an individual skill set that derives from experience and trial and error. The latter, is a learned behavior, one that can be taught and offers no uniqueness or originality. Moreover, Thought leadership is not limited to upper management, anyone can introduce ideas or new ways to better the organization, which in turn, helps

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