INDIVIDUAL FINAL PROJECT:

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

LECTURER: DR. ONG CHOON HEE

COURSE: LEADING TALENT IN
ORGANISATION
CODE: MBSA 1623
SECTION: 02
YEAR: 2018/2019
NAME: AHMAD ATIQ BIN KHALIDI
METRIC NO: MBS161116

SUBMISSION DATE: 9th December 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE
1.0ABSTRACT 1
2.0 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP 2
2.1 TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP 2
2.2 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP VS TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP 3
3.0 CURRENT PROBLEM FACED BY ORGANISATION TODAY 4
3.1 HOW THOUGHT LEADERS CAN SOLVE THE CHALLENGES 5
FACED BY TODAY’S ORGANISATIONS
3.2 WHAT THOUGHT LEADERS COULD OFFER IN A DIGITAL 6
AND CREATIVE WORLD
4.0 HOW TO IMPLEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP IN AN 6
ORGANISATIONS
4.1 MISTAKES THAT SHOULD BE AVOIDED BY 7
ORGANISATIONS WHEN IMPLEMENTING
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
CONCLUSION 8
REFERENCE
TURNITIN REPORT
 ABSTRACT

Thought leadership is the championing of new ideas rather than anything to do with managing
people or helping a group achieve a goal. It can be direct upwards and ends once senior
managers accept the proposed ideas. Such leadership cannot be define in terms of enabling or
managing a team to achieve a task, because those who show upwards leadership normally do
not manage their superiors.

Regardless of how important it is for knowledge workers to be self‐managing, the true claim
is that thought leadership must be cultivated as the key form of distributed leadership in any
organization that depends on continuous improvement and constant innovation to prosper. The
practical implication is that managers need to move beyond simply empowering employees to
manage themselves and start fostering bottom up leadership conceived as championing new
ideas.

Highlights a type of leadership that is widely distributed throughout all organizations that
compete based on innovation or wherever all employees need to be initiating process
improvements. Thought leadership is very different from what commonly conceive as
traditional leadership, such as trait theories leadership or behaviour, leadership both of which
is base on the usual mixture of management and leadership ideas whereby the person in charge
of a group, formally or otherwise, both initiates new directions and manages their
implementation.

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2.0 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
According to some source, the definition of thought leadership is always evolving. This term
was first cited in the 1887 which were used to describe Henry Ward Beecher in which the
sentences referred him as “one of the greatest though-leaders in America”.

As for its definition in the business and marketing sectors, though leadership are usually, define
as the winning strategy. It refers to a way of boosting demands as well as creating new ones
for products or services.

Even though the definition of though leadership keeps on evolving over the years, the widely
accepted definition of this term today is though leadership can be referred to “as an individual
or organisation that are widely recognized as the main authority in a specialized field and their
expertise is often on high demand and richly rewarded.

Though leadership can also be defined as the promotion of new ideas regardless the position
of the person in the company. Contrary to the name itself, the individual with the aptitude for
though leadership does not necessarily hold the managerial or leadership role in a company.
The criteria that matters for though leadership are the initiatives of the person to think of new
ideas, a revolutionary mind-set and the abilities to champion new ideas.

2.1 TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP

Some say that thought leadership is a new concept compared to the traditional leadership. As
for traditional leadership, there are a few theories available. Such theories include trait
approaches, which emphasize on the personal characteristics of the leader, leadership style
approach which give emphasize on leader’s behaviour and contingency approach, which take
into accounts situational factors.

Trait theories of leadership focus on identifying specific traits that differentiated leaders from
non-leaders. This theories are based on that leaders are born and not made or train. Even though
the use of trait theories of leadership do produce outstanding leaders, they also are responsible
for producing leaders who will eventually stagnate in their positions.

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After the trait theories of leadership, another theory, which focus on the behaviour of the leader,
is introduce. There are two style of leadership according to this theory; the first style is task-
oriented leadership where the leader is focus on deadlines and the task given to his
subordinates.

Another style is relationship-oriented, in which the leader focus on being friendly and
approachable, developing communication and encouraging participation.

The two theories mentioned above however still receives critics due to not taking into
consideration the situational and organisational factors. Contingency theories consider both
individual and situational factors together in determining leader effectiveness. However, this
theory has also been surpass by newer leadership theories such as transformational leadership
theory. Moreover, the contingency theory is also difficult to apply by occupational psychologist
especially in terms of changing leadership styles.

2.2 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP VS TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP

In the theories of traditional leadership, the focus is put on the leaders to come out with the best
solutions and the subordinates look to them for leadership. Furthermore, the traditional
leadership theories consider that leaders are born with the ability to lead intead of that ability
being able to be trained into someone.

In thought leadership, leaders may consist of someone from below the leadership roles of an
organisation. The way of thinking of that individual determine his or her ability to lead. In
thought leadership, the ability for an individual to open their mind and revolutionalize the way
of thinking is the determinant of its ability to be look upon by others.

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3.0 CURRENT PROBLEM FACED BY ORGANISATION TODAY

In terms of leadership issues, there are some serious challenges faced by organisations today.
Such challenges are:

1. Developing Managerial Effectiveness

Leadership in an organisation today face a difficult task of developing relevant skills in

managing an organisation. Such skills include time-management skills, prioritization skills,
strategic thinking skills, decision-making skills as well as getting up to speed on the current
jobs. These skills is crucial in ensuring today’s organisation to be able to keep up with he
competition.

2. Inspiring Others

Leaders are always the person being look to by their subordinates as an example in an
organisation. Thus, another challenges faced by today’s organisation would be how to inspire
their employees to work more effectively and become more passionate in the work they do. To
inspire greater happiness in the employees who works for them is also important as good
morale can help to boost the productivity and efficiency of work.

3. Developing Employees

For an employee to achieve the level of efficacy that are required for an organisation to be able
to compete in today’s environment, leaders will be the one that are needed to mentor and
coaches the employees with the necessary knowledge and skills which in turn will be beneficial
to the organisation itself. The task of mentoring and coaching different employees with
different aptitude and attitude is indeed a challenging task for a leader.

4. Leading A Team

Leading a team of employees with various backgrounds, attitudes and age range is never an
easy task. A good leader must be able to lead the team with authority but restraining from being
to bossy to ensure high employees morale. Leaders will also be responsible to instil pride to
his groups so that they will feel the need to contribute to the organisation.

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5. Guiding Change

The challenge of managing, mobilizing, understanding, and leading changes in organisation is

also one of the difficult task faced by leader in organisations today. Guiding change includes
knowing how to mitigate consequences, overcome resistance to change, and deal with
employees’ reactions to change.

3.1 HOW THOUGHT LEADERS CAN SOLVE THE CHALLENGES FACED BY

TODAY’S ORGANISATIONS

Thought leaders will be the one in organisation that have the capabilities to logically evaluate
information coming through into an organisation and being able to translate that into solutions
that have broad organizational support and therefore does not suffer unduly from resistance to
timeous and effective implementation.

Thought leaders will use their abilities to identify the problem and put a clear definition to the
problems at hand. When a clear view of the problems have been identified, a proper solution
can be formulize by the thought leaders to solve the problems.

The next step would be for thought leaders to put the ambiguous way of the problem into an
issue-focused way. This way, the thought leaders can address the problem more systematically
one issue at a time. This is to ensure maximum capabilities to solve the problems.

When the problems can be focused on, the next step would be to generate solutions for the
problems. How this is, done will depends on the ability of the thought leaders to think
strategically in a way where the problems can be solved in the most efficient way possible and
use as less resources as possible if needed be.

When the choice of solutions available to the leaders has been identified, the next step would
be for the leader to prioritize which solutions can achieve the problem solving goals in the most
efficient way possible. The capabilities of his or her subordinates to implement those solutions
is also crucial in order to ensure its success.

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3.2 WHAT THOUGHT LEADERS COULD OFFER IN A DIGITAL AND CREATIVE
WORLD

As the numbers of leaders accessing information and communicating in the online space
increases, there will be new places for delivering information. The journals and outlets of news
and information for leadership will create new places for leaders to develop visibility. Anyone
with expertise can share that expertise and create an audience. New leadership influencers will
emerge from new these channels of publication.

Where there is attention there is money. In addition, of course, where there is money, there is
influence. Thought leaders will have even more extensive ability to share the knowledge and
in turn can increase their influence further as people will look for his knowledge and expertise
as a source to exemplify in their organisations. There are many places to share information and
exert influence. This will require special attention both from those who create media to those
who consume it.

4.0 HOW TO IMPLEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP IN AN ORGANISATIONS

There are some ways to implement thought leadership in an organisation. Such ways are:

1. Establish The Strategy And Goals

Make an outline of the organisation strategy by getting feedback from key members of the
organisation’s team on some high-level questions. Such questions include how attract talent;
ways convert leads and steps to boost loyalty.

2. Develop The Core Ideas

The next step will be developing core ideas of thought leadership in the organisation. The steps
in developing core idea of thought leadership in the organisation must be systematic and
organized. The format on the development of core ideas is not important as the encouragement
of producing revolutionize idea and opening of the mind of the employees will be the most
important goals.

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3. Analyse The Core Ideas

Once the core ideas of thought leadership that need to implemented in the company is available,
thorough analysis of the ideas should be done to ensure the validity and suitability of the idea
to be implemented in the organisation and to its employees.

4. Implementation Of Core Ideas

The next step would be to implement the ideas by stimulating the team of employees and
coaching them to open their minds to new ideas. Encourage out-of-the box thinking and take
any ideas provided into accounts. No ideas being put forward by employees can be considered
mediocre or being brush away as this will discourage them to put forward more ideas.

5. Analyse Ideas Being Put forward

After a collection of ideas has been identified, thought leaders could analyse the feasibility of
the ideas put forth by the employees together with them and find way to improve it further.
Appraise any good idea that are being put forward to boost their morale and encourage more
good ideas.

4.1 MISTAKES THAT SHOULD BE AVOIDED BY ORGANISATIONS WHEN

IMPLEMENTING THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

When implementing thought leadership in an organisations, there are some common mistakes
done by organisations that make the implementation process failed. Such common mistakes
are:

1. Expect Fast Result

The process of training the mind of employees out of its comfort zone is a long and tedious
process. It involve of sometimes changing the perspective of the employees entirely. The
management of the organisation need to be able to give the process time to fully run its course
to be able to gain maximum effectiveness.

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2. Reluctance To Provide Resources

In any training or development of employees programs, the reluctance of management to

allocate resources for the programs is always an issue. Most of it is due to them having no
confidence in the programs and the goal it can achieve by finishing it. They feel the allocated
resources can be put into good use somewhere else, which is more tangible and certain.

3. Unclear Goals Of Implementation

Some organisation decide to implement thought leadership only because of the increasing
trends in their organisation’s environment. The true objective of implementing thought
leadership were unclear among the management themselves. This will make the
implementation process seems redundant as eventually the management would not be able to
identify the improvement from its implementation.\

CONCLUSION

Thought leadership has becoming increasingly important in today’s organisation environment.

The management of an organisation can no longer deny its importance, as they need every
advantage they can get to ensure the competitiveness of the organisation in the market. After
all human capital is one of the most important assets an organisation could have in its disposal.
Thought leaders in an organisation would allow the organisation to produce even more thought
leaders through the convenience of sharing information in today’s digital world. Information
is no longer confine within the organisation themselves.

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TURNITIN REPORT