Leveraging Thought Leadership

Peter Winick and Bill Sherman

Hear from the people whose ideas shape the business world. Learn what their public stories leave out. Our beat: the business of thought leadership and the people who take ideas to scale. Fortune 500 CEOs. New York Times bestselling authors. Thinkers50 honorees. NSA Hall of Fame speakers. Top business school professors. First-time authors. Emerging keynote speakers. Their support: publishers, speaking coaches, PR experts. We ask thought leaders to share generously. And they don't hold back. How did they get here? What nearly stopped them? What did they learn? And what keeps them going? Your co-hosts, Peter Winick and Bill Sherman of Thought Leadership Leverage, bring two decades of experience working with thought leadership practitioners. We've woven stories from 700+ episodes, our frameworks, and the tools we use every day into The Thought Leadership Handbook. Learn how the experts take their big ideas to scale—and how you can too.

  1. 6d ago

    Building A Leadership Framework Backed By Data | Benjamin Granger | 728

    Why do we size up a rude stranger in seconds and decide they don't belong in our "tribe"? Dr. Benjamin Granger has a term for it: the evolutionary hangover — his phrase for the cognitive biases our brains evolved for savanna survival and never quite retired. As Chief Workplace Psychologist at Qualtrics, Granger spends his days distilling billions of data points on how employees and customers really feel, and in this episode he brings that same lens to his new USA Today bestseller, A Leader Worth Following. The conversation moves from the biological to the deeply practical. Granger traces human speech back only 100,000–200,000 years — a blink in evolutionary time — to explain why we still assume our texts and emails land exactly as intended, and why they so often don't. He and host Peter Winick dig into a favorite (and least favorite) example: the customer satisfaction survey. Whether it's a car dealership coaching you to "circle the five" or a flight attendant joking about the inevitable post-flight survey, Granger shows how well-established science like goal-setting theory gets bent out of shape the moment it collides with real incentive structures. There's also a candid look at what it takes to write a book while holding down a demanding day job — from years of scattered iPhone notes to a publisher's cold outreach that landed within days of deciding to write one. Granger and Winick talk through the tension every corporate thought leader faces: how do you promote your ideas without it feeling like self-promotion? Granger's answer — "I'm selling the message, not myself" — anchors a broader discussion of why academic rigor and real-world readability don't have to be at odds. The episode closes on a personal note: Granger's hope that more leaders will get comfortable with hard conversations with themselves, and a few concrete ways to start — from a two-minute daily reflection borrowed from Marshall Goldsmith to a monthly sit-down with your future self. If you've ever wondered why your best-intentioned message got read the wrong way, or why your company's survey scores don't tell the real story, this one's for you. Three Key Takeaways: • Our brains are running outdated software. Granger's "evolutionary hangover" concept explains why we instantly judge people as "abrasive" or "rude" — a tribal survival instinct that made sense on the savanna but creates friction in modern offices and customer interactions. • Good science can get gamed by bad incentives. Goal-setting is one of the most well-established practices in organizational psychology, but Granger shows how tying compensation to survey scores (like a car dealership's NPS rating) corrupts the very measurement it's supposed to improve. • Selling ideas isn't the same as selling yourself. Granger reframes self-promotion as message-promotion — a mental shift that let him push through years of book marketing discomfort because he believes the underlying research deserves to reach people. Ben isn't the only one turning years of hard-won research into a book built to scale. Bill Sherman, Peter Winick, and Naren Aryal have just released The Thought Leadership Handbook: How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas—and How You Can Too — a field guide drawn from more than 700 conversations on this very podcast, mapping out the frameworks and five "thought leadership avatars" that separate an idea stuck in your head from one that actually reaches an audience. If Ben's path from scattered iPhone notes to a USA Today bestseller has you thinking about your own expertise, this is the next book on your list. Get it at thoughtleadershiphandbook.com, or find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Apple Books, or Amplify.

  2. Jul 26

    Why Thought Leadership Needs Real Experience, Not Theory | John Winsor | 727

    What happens when the person telling your success story wasn't actually in the room? That's the moment that pushed John Winsor — Founder and Chairman of Open Assembly, Harvard Business School executive fellow, and author of six books including the bestselling Open Talent — to write a widely discussed piece questioning the entire thought leadership industry. In this conversation with Peter Winick, Winsor traces his path from launching a regional sports magazine (sold to Condé Nast) through decades of building and exiting companies, to his current work at Harvard's AI Institute studying the future of work. Along the way, he unpacks a tension every expert eventually faces: when does an idea deserve a blog post, a keynote, or a book — and when is it just filler dressed up as insight? Winsor and Winick dig into what separates "thought leaders" from "thought doers," using everyone from Malcolm Gladwell to Domino's Patrick Doyle as examples of how firsthand experience — not borrowed theory — is what actually earns an audience's trust. They also tackle a question with real urgency for anyone building a business around ideas: if generative AI can produce a working website, investor deck, and full brand in a single prompt, what's left for humans to do? Winsor's answer centers on relationships, judgment, and the irreplaceable value of live, human-to-human experience — a case he backs with striking data from executive AI workshops at HBS. This is a candid, occasionally pointed conversation about ego, authenticity, and the mechanics of building influence in a market flooded with polished — but often hollow — expertise. Worth a listen for anyone deciding what to write next, whether to take the stage, or how to stay relevant as AI eats the easy parts of the job. Three Key Takeaways: • Experience should come before the platform, not after. Winsor argues that credible thought leadership starts with real, specific experience — "go have a bunch of really killer specific experiences" — rather than reverse-engineering content to match a trending topic or keyword. • AI is pushing execution toward zero cost, which raises the value of judgment and relationships. Winsor points to tools that can generate a full company's assets — website, investment deck, brand — from a single prompt in under two hours. What AI can't replace is the human trust required to sell, evangelize, and validate an idea. • Format should follow curiosity, not ambition. Rather than deciding upfront that an idea "deserves" a book, Winsor tests ideas publicly through Substack, HBR, and Forbes articles first, using audience response to gauge whether something is worth developing further — or whether it was only ever his own curiosity. Before you go — Peter has a new book. The Thought Leadership Handbook: How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas—and How You Can Too, co-authored by Bill Sherman, Peter Winick, and Naren Aryal, draws on more than 700 conversations from this very podcast to map out the patterns that separate thought leaders who build lasting impact from those who never scale past their own curiosity. It introduces five thought leadership avatars — Growth-Minded CEOs, Impact and Legacy Executives, Thought Leaders on the Run, In-House Experts, and Hall of Fame Thinkers — and gives readers the frameworks and tools to find their own path. Endorsed by Mel Robbins, Ken Blanchard, Stephen M. R. Covey, Marshall Goldsmith, and 50+ other leading voices, with a foreword by Lisa Bodell. Order now: Amazon Barnes & Noble Bookshop.org Amplify Publishing Apple Books Learn more at thoughtleadershiphandbook.com

  3. Jul 19

    Why Your Book Launch Is Just the Beginning | Sandy Smith | 726

    You just spent two years writing a book. Now what? That's the question at the center of this conversation about book publicity, expectations, and the long game of building a body of work. Bill Sherman sits down with Sandy Smith, CEO of Smith Publicity, to unpack what a smart book launch actually looks like — and why most of the excitement (and anxiety) authors feel in the 60 days around publication misses the point. Sandy's first move with any client is to ask what success looks like a year out. That reframe — from launch week to long horizon — shapes everything else: how to define goals, how to find the right audience for a big idea, and why a book should be treated less like a product drop and more like a two-to-three-year (or longer) relationship-building asset. The conversation moves through sharp, practical territory: the difference between an audience that's ready for your message and one that isn't (yes, even when they need it most), how publicists match authors to podcasts, bylined articles, and expert commentary opportunities, and why revisiting an author's earlier books can sometimes be more valuable than pushing the new release. Sandy and Bill also talk through the emotional arc of a launch — the pre-launch momentum, the 60-day flurry, and the letdown that can follow once the initial push ends. Underneath the tactics is a bigger idea both return to again and again: books create relationships. They let readers spend time with an author's thinking in a low-stakes, high-trust way, and that trust compounds over years, not weeks. The episode also touches on what makes an idea worth an audience's attention in the first place, and why generosity — not ego — tends to separate thought leaders who build lasting influence from those who burn out chasing a moment. Whether you're planning a first book launch or trying to get more mileage out of one published years ago, this episode offers a grounded, experience-based look at what actually works. Three Key Takeaways: • A launch is a beginning, not a finish line. Treat the book as a two-to-three-year (or longer) asset rather than a 60-day sprint — the real payoff comes from what you do with it after publication week ends. • Define your goal before you plan tactics. Whether the aim is sparking conversation, building visibility, or attracting clients, that goal should shape everything from media targets to messaging. • Audience readiness matters more than audience size. The right strategy meets people who are already primed to hear your idea, then lets them bring others along — rather than forcing a conversation an audience isn't ready for. This episode landed right in the middle of launch week for The Thought Leadership Handbook — the new book from Bill Sherman, Peter Winick, and Naren Aryal — and everything Sandy Smith unpacked about goals, audience readiness, and building a lasting asset is exactly what's behind it. If you want to see those ideas in practice, head to thoughtleadershiphandbook.com for a free excerpt, your own thought leadership avatar, and tools to sharpen your strategy. Then preorder your copy today at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Amplify — and become part of the conversation this book is meant to start.

  4. Jul 16

    The Marketing Dilemma Every Author Faces | Rand Selig | 725

    What happens when the metrics you were taught to chase — title, bonus, prestige — stop adding up to a life that feels good? In this episode, Peter Winick sits down with Rand Selig, a Stanford MBA, former Wall Street investment banker, and founder of The Selig Capital Group, to trace his path from a jarring first job at Lehman Brothers to a self-defined version of success built on peace, gratitude, and deep relationships. The conversation opens with an unusually candid account of what it was like inside a major investment bank in the early days of Rand's career — a place where talent was abundant but the culture rewarded pushing others down to get ahead. That experience became a turning point, eventually leading Rand to launch his own firm, run on his own terms. From there, Peter and Rand dig into the origin of Rand's book, Thriving! — a project that started as decades of collected notes, quotes, and reflections never meant for commercial release, until early readers flatly rejected the "small legacy project" plan and insisted it reach a wider audience. That pivot raised a harder question: how do you promote something meaningful without it feeling like self-promotion? Peter pushes Rand directly on this tension, exploring podcast appearances, AI-assisted content tools (including his use of the platform Inkflare), and a growing circle of "collaborators" as alternatives to traditional marketing — and where that approach still falls short. Listeners get a real-time consulting moment too, as Peter reworks a piece of Rand's speaker bio live, showing how thought leaders can connect their message to concrete value for individuals, teams, and organizations — not just personal transformation. The episode closes with Rand's hard-earned lessons about the business side of publishing: the lack of transparency, the costlier detours, and the operators who prey on first-time authors navigating unfamiliar territory. If you've ever wrestled with putting your ideas out into the world while resisting the instinct to "sell" yourself, this one will resonate. Three Key Takeaways: • Redefining success is a decision, not a discovery. The guest describes consciously rejecting the industry's default definition of success — money, title, bonus size — early in his career, choosing instead to measure his life by peace, gratitude, and the depth of his relationships. • A "legacy project" became a book because trusted readers said no. What began as a private compilation for family and friends turned into a public release only after early readers insisted it had value far beyond his inner circle — a reminder that outside perspective can reveal a bigger opportunity than the one you set out to build. • Avoiding "marketing" and building visibility aren't mutually exclusive. Podcast guesting, AI-assisted content creation, and cultivating collaborator relationships let the guest grow his reach without the traditional playbook — though the conversation also surfaces where that passive approach still needs sharper packaging to convert interest into real opportunities. These two episodes wrestle with the same core question: what happens when conventional markers of success — a title, a bonus, a placement fee — stop being enough? Where Rand Selig found his answer after walking away from Wall Street's zero-sum culture, Gene Rice has spent a career inside executive search watching leaders hit that exact wall. If Rand's story of redefining success resonated with you, Gene's episode gives you the data and the executive-search vantage point behind why so many high achievers feel unfulfilled — and what actually fixes it. Listen to "Purpose Driven Thought Leadership" with Gene Rice.

  5. Jul 12

    Why Your Expertise Is the Only Content That Converts | Ghazenfer Mansoor | 724

    What happens when a software CEO stops thinking like a marketer and starts thinking like a thought leader? You get a content flywheel that ranks #1 on Google, ChatGPT, and Claude — without hiring an SEO firm. Ghazenfer Mansoor, Founder and CEO of Technology Rivers, didn't set out to become a thought leader. He set out to grow a business. But as referrals gave way to inbound and conference conversations evolved into podcast guesting, something became clear: the content he was putting into the world was doing real work — compounding quietly in the background. In this episode, Ghazenfer walks through how that evolution happened — from the first blog post written just before COVID, to a podcast, to a book (Beyond the Download) that almost started as an e-book. None of it was planned. All of it was genuine. Peter and Ghazenfer dig into what makes that kind of content work, and why it's so different from what a hired marketer typically produces. When an expert writes about what they actually know — mobile apps, HIPAA-compliant healthcare software, AI-powered workflows — the depth shows. Readers feel it. Search algorithms reward it. Clients trust it. They also tackle one of the most pressing questions for any modern thought leader: where does AI fit? Ghazenfer's answer is nuanced and practical. AI is a great editor and organizer, but only if the raw material — the knowledge, the perspective, the real experience — comes from you. Garbage in, garbage out. Grade in, grade out. Perhaps the most useful insight in this conversation is about patience. Thought leadership doesn't pay off the way a campaign does. There's no 30-day attribution window. It's a long game — a flywheel that takes time to spin up, and then becomes very hard to stop. If you're a practitioner, entrepreneur, or expert who's been wondering whether to invest in content, this episode gives you an honest look at the payoff, the process, and the pitfalls. Three Key Takeaways: • Genuine expertise outperforms outsourced content every time. When a practitioner writes from real experience — not a marketer writing for a brief — the depth is unmistakable. Audiences feel it, and so do search algorithms. Ghazenfer's content began ranking #1 on Google and major AI platforms without any deliberate SEO strategy. • Thought leadership has a compounding effect, not a campaign timeline. Unlike paid marketing with a defined attribution window, content-based thought leadership builds slowly and then accelerates. Ghazenfer cautions against expecting quick ROI — and points to the flywheel effect that kicks in only after consistent, sustained effort. • AI is an amplifier, not a ghostwriter. The data still has to come from you. Ghazenfer uses AI to organize, clean up, and optimize the content he produces — but the knowledge, perspective, and specific expertise must be his own. Using AI on generic inputs produces generic outputs that no one will remember. If this episode got you thinking about the relationship between content and credibility, there's a natural next listen. Both Ghazenfer Mansoor and Stephanie Chandler came to the book-writing process the same way — as entrepreneurs who needed a better way to demonstrate expertise, not as authors chasing a bestseller list. Where Ghazenfer built his book from blogs and an e-book that outgrew itself, Stephanie has spent years helping nonfiction authors do the same thing: turn hard-won expertise into a book that actually supports a business. Hear her break down the promotion strategies most entrepreneurs skip, the product ecosystem a book should anchor, and why social media probably isn't where your next reader is coming from. It's the tactical counterpart to everything Ghazenfer shared about playing the long game. Listen to Marketing and Product Roadmaps for Entrepreneurs with Stephanie Chandler!

  6. Jul 9

    From In-House Analyst to Independent Thought Leader | Charlene Li | 723

    This episode is a companion to the upcoming Thought Leadership Handbook — part of a series where Bill speaks with exemplars featured in the book about how they actually practice thought leadership. There are plenty of books explaining what AI is. This one is about the person who decided to write a book that tells you what to do about it instead — and who's spent 25 years turning disruption into frameworks other people can actually use. Charlene Li joins Bill Sherman to talk about her new book, Winning with AI, co-written with Katia Walsh, and why this one felt different from her five previous titles. It's less an explainer, she says, and more a "doing book" — built for a moment when the case studies go stale before the ink dries. That tension opens into a bigger conversation about how ideas get made and shared. Charlene walks through the origin of Groundswell, the book that made her a New York Times bestseller, written entirely remotely with co-author Josh Bernoff while she was still an in-house analyst at Forrester. She's candid about what co-authorship actually requires — not just complementary skills, but real trust built over years, disagreements included. The conversation also digs into a business model question that shaped her career: when she left Forrester to found Altimeter, she gave research away for free, betting that value would come back around. It did — inbound demand from companies who'd read the free work and wanted the deeper conversation. Bill connects this to economist Elinor Ostrom's work on knowledge commons. Underneath it all is a simple throughline: frameworks outlast the moment they were built for. The "ladder of engagement" from Groundswell is still taught 18 years later — not because the case studies held up, but because the thinking did. If you're building a book, a body of research, or a career on ideas that might get overtaken by the next news cycle, this one's worth your time. Three Key Takeaways: • Co-authorship runs on trust, not just talent. Charlene describes working with multiple co-authors over her career and is clear that the deciding factor was never just complementary skill sets — it was years of built trust, the ability to disagree productively, and knowing when to step away from a deadline argument and come back with a clear head. • Give the idea away first — the business follows. At Altimeter, Charlene made research free when competitors charged for it, building an audience of 100,000+ readers almost overnight. The resulting inbound demand became the foundation of the business, illustrating a "blue ocean" alternative to the traditional pay-for-access analyst model. • Durable frameworks outlive their case studies. Charlene expects Winning with AI to need a new edition once roughly 20% of its examples go stale — but she draws a distinction between outdated examples and outdated thinking, pointing to Groundswell's "ladder of engagement," still taught 18 years after publication. If you enjoyed hearing Charlene Li unpack the thinking behind Winning with AI, go back to her first appearance on the show — episode 113, recorded back when she was preparing to launch The Disruption Mindset. Both conversations trace the same throughline: how Charlene builds frameworks that outlast the moment they were written for, whether she's leaving Forrester to found Altimeter or navigating a fast-moving AI landscape years later. Hearing the two together shows how consistent her approach to thought leadership has been across three very different books and two decades of change. Listen to "Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick — Episode 113" with Charlene Li.

  7. Jul 2

    Mental Health at Work Is Smart Business | Melissa Doman | 722

    Most professionals who make the leap from clinical therapy to the corporate world stumble on the same obstacle: they speak the wrong language. They know the science cold. They understand what's happening beneath the surface in any dysfunctional team, toxic culture, or burned-out leadership group. But if they can't connect those insights to the metrics that actually keep executives up at night — retention, productivity, profitability — they get dismissed as well-meaning outsiders. Melissa Doman figured this out the hard way, and built a thriving practice on the other side of that realization. In this episode, Melissa — organizational psychologist, former clinical therapist, LinkedIn Top Voice, and author of Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health — traces the winding path from her 2013 exit from clinical practice to becoming one of the most recognizable voices in workplace mental health. She was doing this work before the pandemic made it fashionable, before the term "psychological safety" softened the room, and before companies started putting mental health line items in their budgets. Peter and Melissa dig into the mechanics of what actually made her thought leadership land: not a grand strategy, but a relentless commitment to sharing what she knew to be true, in language her audience could use. When a mental health workshop she designed for 12 people drew 100, she took notice. When the pandemic hit, she was already positioned — right message, right moment. The conversation gets sharp when they examine the difference between a like button and a buy button, how COVID created a temporary bonanza that threatened to make her work feel like a trend, and why she's still thriving six years in. Melissa also unpacks how she learned to meet business leaders where they are — speaking to "the emotional toll of leadership" instead of "leadership mental health" depending on the room — and why social proof matters more than pressure in closing a sale. If you're a practitioner trying to turn expertise into a real business, or a thought leader wondering how to sustain relevance after the hype dies down, this episode is the blueprint. Three Key Takeaways: • A like button is not a buy button. Organic content traction and market validation are not the same thing. Melissa's true signal came when a 12-person workshop jumped to 100 attendees — proof the market was ready, not just scrolling. • Language is the bridge between expertise and income. Clinical, academic, or technical vocabulary can shut doors in a corporate setting. Melissa describes intentionally switching from "leadership mental health" to "the emotional toll of leadership" depending on her audience — same idea, radically different reception. • Evergreen topics still require timely delivery. Mental health, communication, and team dynamics will always be relevant, but staying in demand means talking about them in ways that match what organizations are actually experiencing right now. Evergreen content plus contextual fluency is the long-term monetization formula. If this conversation sparked something for you, there's a natural next step. In our episode with Minette Norman, we go deep on psychological safety — the organizational conditions that make honest mental health conversations possible in the first place. Melissa Doman showed you how to have the conversation; Minette shows you why some teams can and others can't. Together, these two episodes give you both sides of the equation. Don't miss The Power of Psychological Safety with Minette Norman.

  8. Jun 28

    From Attorney to Speaker: The Identity Shift That Changes Everything | Wani Iris Manly, Esq. | 721

    What happens when you're wildly successful at a life you didn't consciously choose? Wani Iris Manly, Esq., grew up groomed for one thing: the law. She did the work, built the firm, drove the Porsche. And then, on New Year's Eve in 2010, she sat alone and took an honest look at the gap between the life she had and the life she actually wanted. What followed was one of the more audacious pivots you'll hear about — selling her car, her apartment, and most of her belongings, and moving solo to Paris without a plan, without French, and without a single contact in the city. That's where the story gets interesting — because Paris didn't just change her circumstances. It cracked her open. Books started pouring out of her. An article for an expat magazine led to speaking invitations at salon-style soirees. And what began as storytelling became something with structure, depth, and demand: a framework around change, identity, and what it actually takes to stop surviving and start living deliberately. In this conversation, Bill Sherman and Wani explore the layered journey from attorney to thought leader — and it's anything but linear. She talks about the very specific cognitive dissonance of having to affirm a new identity every morning when your subconscious has spent 22 years believing it's a lawyer. She gets candid about the differences between the US and European speaking markets — where she earns her fees, where she adjusts her rates, and how geography can quietly shape your perceived value as a speaker. She reflects on what it means to carry a message professionally that you're still personally living through. The through-line Wani keeps returning to is this: external change — new city, new title, new audience — doesn't stick unless the internal identity shifts first. That's the work. And in a field full of change management frameworks, her version carries unusual weight because she didn't just study it. She did it. Repeatedly. Often at considerable personal cost. If you're a practitioner of any kind — speaker, author, consultant — navigating a career transition or wondering when the momentum finally arrives, this one's worth your full attention. Three Key Takeaways: • True change is an inside job. Wani's central framework is clear: no external shift — new job, new city, new role — will hold unless your internal identity changes first. Waiting for circumstances to rearrange themselves is a recipe for staying stuck. • Building thought leadership takes time, and the signals come slowly. Wani spent years speaking at Parisian soirees, cold-pitching podcasts, and doing TED talks in Northern Ireland and Canada before landing a 2,000-person stage in Monaco. The work precedes the visibility by a wide margin, and staying in the game long enough to be found is part of the strategy. • Identity is stickier than circumstance. Transitioning out of a high-status professional identity — attorney, doctor, executive — requires more than a career pivot. Wani describes needing to affirm her new identity as a speaker daily, because the subconscious defaults to the self-concept it's held for decades. The rebranding is internal before it's external. Both Wani Iris Manly and CB Bowman know something most high achievers won't say out loud: claiming a new identity before the world validates it takes a specific kind of courage — and it's a skill you can build. In this episode, Wani talks about affirming "I am a speaker" daily for years before the stages matched the vision. CB Bowman's conversation takes that same tension and goes deeper into what courage actually looks like as a practicing thought leader — when to hold your lane, when to change it, and what it costs either way. If Wani's story resonated with you, CB's episode will give you a framework to go with the feeling. Listen to Courage in Thought Leadership with CB Bowman!

5
out of 5
42 Ratings

About

Hear from the people whose ideas shape the business world. Learn what their public stories leave out. Our beat: the business of thought leadership and the people who take ideas to scale. Fortune 500 CEOs. New York Times bestselling authors. Thinkers50 honorees. NSA Hall of Fame speakers. Top business school professors. First-time authors. Emerging keynote speakers. Their support: publishers, speaking coaches, PR experts. We ask thought leaders to share generously. And they don't hold back. How did they get here? What nearly stopped them? What did they learn? And what keeps them going? Your co-hosts, Peter Winick and Bill Sherman of Thought Leadership Leverage, bring two decades of experience working with thought leadership practitioners. We've woven stories from 700+ episodes, our frameworks, and the tools we use every day into The Thought Leadership Handbook. Learn how the experts take their big ideas to scale—and how you can too.

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