Subscribe to The Graceful Thought Leader

Thought leadership, content, and communication strategy for innovators, from large companies to startups. Get your ideas across clearly. Your traction in the market depends on it.

Enroll in Syncresis Learning

We offer courses, coaching, and mentorship so that you can learn skills that have propelled dozens of banks, investment managers, and fintechs to visibility and commercial success.

Barriers to Thought Leadership

Individual coaching can help thought leaders hone their point of view and communicate it with impact. But organizational limits have much more impact than one person’s willingness or readiness. Here are some of the biggest organizational limits I have seen—most of them, sadly, completely unnecessary. Which of these barriers to thought leadership do you often encounter? What would you add?

  • Lack of support
  • Lack of incentives
  • Excessive process
  • Shallow bench of thought leaders
  • Dysfunctional content governance
  • Little or no culture of thought leadership
  • Competing or vague definitions of thought leadership
  • Weak alignment on thought leadership program goals
  • Broken dialogue between marketing and business stakeholders

The barriers often pile up one onto the other, and they are tough to take on, but the good news is that organizations can and do find ways to break through.