Chapter Four: It’s All About Fit.
“Looking good, Billy Ray,” said Dan Aykroyd’s character to Eddie Murphy in the movie Trading Places. “Feeling good, Lewis,” said Murphy back to Aykroyd. When you’re a thought leader, you just feel good. You’re on your way to what Aristotle taught us to aspire to: Eudemonia, not a feeling of happiness because happiness comes and goes, but rather a total sense of well-being, of complete euphoria, of the highest order of human good.
I discuss what discipline of market leadership fits you best of all the disciplines in my 21st Century Disciplines of Market Leaders. Obviously, I hope you’ll gravitate to the thought leadership discipline ahead of the others, but ultimately, that will be your choice; both a choice for you and for your company.
And although I can’t promise that being a bona fide thought leader will make you look good, too, I can tell you that evidence exists that it might. Get this. In a research study conducted by R.M. Ryan and E.L. Deci in 2001 that appeared in the Annual Review of Psychology, our intrepid researchers determined that there is a connection, and they fondly referred to the research as Eudaimonic. Really? I can’t imagine where they got that idea from.