Thought leadership is often presented as a higher form of advice and direction: ideas, perspectives, and opinions shared from a position of expertise. It sits in a more rarefied space than everyday advice — polished, confident, and designed to signal authority. But when it comes to something genuinely tricky, who do you actually turn to? An expert? Or someone who’s been where you are, and understands what you’re going through? Someone who knows everything about the subject? Or someone who can help guide you to the next steps to take?
Why answers aren’t the problem anymore
Getting answers to questions isn’t the problem it once was. The sum of human knowledge is already online, expanding every second. Whatever you want to know, there’s an article, a framework, or an opinion waiting for you.
But abundance isn’t the same as clarity. One question leads to another, and another still, as more options, tangents, and detail open up. The search for answers becomes a web of explanations and alternatives, until information stops feeling like the solution and starts to feel like part of the problem.
Context and understanding matter more than knowledge
What we’re really looking for is context. Information that meets us where we are, shaped by an understanding of why we’re asking the question in the first place. Often, what we want isn’t more knowledge at all, but reassurance: someone who understands the situation, remembers what it felt like, and can help us focus on what matters most right now.
"Often, what we want isn’t more knowledge at all, but reassurance: from someone who understands the situation, remembers what it felt like."
So, say you were facing divorce, you probably don’t want to know chapter and verse on matrimonial dispute case law, but what you probably do want is a coffee with a friend who’s made it through to the other side, and who can tell you the most important things to think about right now.
Research shows it’s not much different (nor much less traumatic) if your goal is to research, buy, and implement complex technology. There’s a divorce of sorts in there — a separation from certainty, and from familiar systems, tools and workflows. There’s an urgent need to understand what good can look like for your organisation. To navigate to a decision — step by step, often when technology and solution vendors are making the same claims, using the same language, and offering the same (still theoretical) benefits. Polish aplenty. But real perspective, insight, generosity? Maybe not so much.
The difference between gurus and guides
That’s the difference between a guru and a guide. Gurus perform certainty: glossy opinions, definitive frameworks, the sense that they’ve already arrived at the answer. Guides are more grounded. They remember what it felt like not to know. They don’t overwhelm you with everything they’ve learned since; they focus on what mattered most at the moment you’re in now. They help you orient yourself, spot the next safe foothold, and avoid the mistakes they wish someone had warned them about.
"Guides are more grounded. They remember what it felt like not to know."
The concept of “thought leadership” can divide a room. Many businesses embrace it, encouraging leaders to share ideas through articles and blogs, and valuing the credibility it reflects back on the organisation. At its best, thought leadership is opinionated, insightful, useful — and genuinely thought provoking.
But remember the research suggesting B2B buyers think most thought leadership is done poorly? That’s a very revealing contrast and highlights, we think, the gulf between the gurus and the guides.
Experience, empathy and humility
For individuals, being asked to contribute “thought leadership” can feel uncomfortable, especially if they associate it with being a guru: an expert who’s got it all figured out, dispensing wisdom from on high. So they hold back. And that’s a shame, because some of the most impactful thought leadership is grounded not in certainty, but in lived experience, uncertainty, and humility.
Here’s a final perspective. Might it be true that guru thought leadership has also been sculpted and constrained by the limitations of web crawlers, and ranking, and the dark arts of SEO ? That we’ve focused on the medium, to the detriment of the meaning?
But now we share the web and our world with a far subtler intelligence. ChatGPT and its cousins let us ask much more nuanced questions, and synthesise layered and ‘thoughtful’ answers. They aim to prioritise insight over information, originality over repetition, real experience over search ranking. They want to explore the question behind the question, and the questions that follow on.
It’s a long way from perfect, but it feels like another reason to reconsider the old recipes for good, or bad, thought leadership.
Help someone take the next step
Guide-not-guru thought leadership isn’t about broadcasting brilliance or winning arguments. It’s about usefulness. About sharing what actually worked, what didn’t, and what you’d do differently with the benefit of hindsight. Less “here’s what everyone should do”, and more “here’s what I learned when I was figuring this out myself”. Because in complex, human situations, progress rarely comes from having the smartest answer in the room. It comes from feeling understood well enough to take the next step.
What do you think?