Think about a company you admire. Chances are, your impression of that company isn’t based entirely on what you see on its website or corporate LinkedIn page.
Rather, you know something about the people who lead it. Maybe you’ve heard the CEO talk about where the industry is headed. You’ve seen another executive share why innovation matters to customers. You’ve watched a leader recognize an employee, weigh in on an issue that matters to the industry, or share something they’ve experienced along the way.
Over time, those moments add up. You start to get a sense of what the company believes, what it values, and where it’s going.
That’s executive thought leadership at its best. And while the end result can look pretty straightforward, the strategy behind it shouldn’t be.
At Kolbeco, we approach executive thought leadership as another way to tell the company story. That means the work has to start with the story itself.
Before we think about content, we think about the company.
In order to build an effective thought leadership strategy, we have to fully understand the business strategy behind it. We want to know where the company is going and what matters most right now:
What’s driving the business strategy and why is it important to employees, customers, and the world right now?
What are the opportunities and challenges?
What do our stakeholders most want to hear about, and what do they respond to?
How is this being translated to the brand strategy, including the messaging that’s central to who the company is?
This is foundational work. It’s hard, it’s fun, and it’s critical to organizing the perspectives of the people who can help tell the story. The CEO sees the business from one vantage point. The CFO sees something different. So does the person leading technology, operations, people, sales, or a major business unit. Their responsibilities shape what they know, what they notice, and what they can credibly add to a conversation.
We map all of that against the business strategy and start looking for the intersections:
Where does each leader fit naturally into the larger story?
Where do they have something meaningful to contribute?
Which topics make sense coming from them, and which are better carried out by someone else?
Once we understand the role each leader can play, we begin building a larger story across the leadership team. While each person has their own territory, the strategies aren’t developed in isolation. We look at how those voices work together over time, where they reinforce one another, and how they bring different dimensions to shared priorities without sounding like they’re all reading from the same script. Most of the time, that means leaders are talking about different things. But there are moments when the same topic belongs to everyone.
The planning we do, and clarity we create around each voice, becomes especially important when the company has big news. An acquisition, major financial milestone, or significant advancement may be relevant to the entire leadership team. But that doesn’t mean we need many executives posting the same version of the same announcement.
We’d rather post what each of them actually sees in it. Maybe one is thinking about the opportunity for customers, while another sees possibilities for technology breakthroughs. Someone else might be thinking about what it means for employees, culture, or sustainability efforts.
Same story. Different perspectives. But together, those voices can give people a much fuller picture of what the news actually means.
Then we get to know the human being.
Job titles tell us surprisingly little about what will make someone interesting to listen to. That’s why some of the most important work we do happens in conversations with the leaders themselves. We talk about the business, of course. But we’re also listening for what gets them excited.
There is usually a moment when you find it. They start talking faster. They have opinions. They tell a story you weren’t expecting. Maybe it’s a change happening in their industry, a problem they believe needs to be solved, an insight into what the future holds, or something completely outside the boundaries of their job description. That’s where things get interesting.
We take what we’ve heard, research it, connect it back to the story, and begin building the territory that the leader can own. That eventually becomes story pillars, quarterly focus areas, and an editorial calendar.
The strategies we develop serve as a guide but also give us room to let the world happen. Companies change. Industries evolve. News breaks. When we already understand the leader and the larger story, we know whether that new idea belongs and how it fits.
A leader’s voice matters. So does knowing when to leave it alone.
This is probably one of the trickiest parts of writing on behalf of another person. We want the content to feel authentic, so we learn how a leader communicates. We listen to words they use, how they approach their work, how they explain complicated ideas, and what they care about.
But we are also realistic. Some people are naturally hilarious. Some are great storytellers in a room. Some have dry wit or a particular way of delivering a line that works because it came from them. We’re never going to perfectly recreate that on their behalf. Trying too hard usually makes things worse.
Our goal isn’t impersonation. It’s knowing someone well enough, and understanding the subject well enough, to develop content that feels credible coming from them.
We also don’t want the content we create to become the entirety of their presence. We often tell leaders: we are starting the conversation, you have the power to carry it forward. And we see that play out. When a leader jumps into LinkedIn to comment on someone’s idea, congratulate an employee on an accomplishment, or add their perspective to a conversation in progress, another dimension is added to their presence. These moments matter because humans are interacting, exchanging thoughts and ideas in a way that only humans can.
And this matters. When someone is deciding whether to work for a company, do business with it, partner with it, or invest in it, the people leading that organization are part of the equation. Every interaction gives people another glimpse into the company.
Likes only tell you so much.
Social media gives us plenty of numbers to measure. We can look at followers, reach, impressions, and engagement. Those metrics are useful in telling us whether people see the content. But that’s not the end goal of what we’re trying to create.
We are working to build a feeling over time. Picture this … Sicily, 1922 … sorry, wrong story! No, really, picture THIS: someone encounters one executive talking thoughtfully about where the industry is going. A few weeks later, they see another celebrating the team behind the accomplishment. Later, the CEO comments on an employee’s post. Then they read an article from another leader that gives them a new way of thinking about a business challenge.
None of those moments alone defines the company. But together, they start to tell you something about it. That’s the part that is incredibly difficult to put into a dashboard:
How does someone FEEL about the company after encountering its leaders over time?
Do employees feel more connected to leadership?
Are customers hearing messages that support the company’s strategic direction?
Is stakeholder sentiment moving?
Is the organization becoming known for the things it has decided matter?
Those are much harder, and more important, questions than, “How many likes did the post get?”
To tell the story, you have to be part of it.
This work cannot be done from an arm’s length. We don’t need to sit in every meeting or talk to a leader every day. But we do need to know what’s happening.
We need access to evolving strategy and understanding of what employees are hearing internally, what the company is communicating externally, and why. We build close relationships with marketing and corporate communications teams who proactively keep us in the loop.
The best relationships reach a point where that becomes natural. We don’t receive pieces of information because someone remembered the agency might need them. We’re part of the flow of information because we’re part of the team helping tell the story.
Honestly, we don’t know another way to do this work well. Because ultimately, executive thought leadership isn’t about filling a content calendar. It’s about helping people experience a company through the people leading it. No single post accomplishes that. It happens gradually as people encounter those leaders again and again, and begin to understand what they care about, how they think, what they value, and where they believe the company is going.
Eventually, someone has a feeling about the organization. They can’t tell you exactly where that feeling came from. But they know it’s there. That’s what we work to help our clients achieve.
If you’re thinking about how your leadership team can play a stronger role in telling your company’s story, we’d love to talk about it. Reach out to get the conversation started.
