So you think you’re a Thought Leader. But will your ideas still be influencing the way people think and the choices they make in a few weeks? A year? Two years? 10? How about in 50 years? It’s easy to think that we’re influencing people when we look at our most loyal followers, but can you say that your ideas, perspectives, and message are influencing those who aren’t aware of you or don’t even LIKE what you’re saying?

Rachel Carson was a true Thought Leader who published Silent Spring in 1962. If we look at her book through the lens of the world today we wonder why it’s such a big deal. All it does is talk about the dangers of pesticides and the impact humans have on the natural world – basic ecology that many of us, especially those with “green thinking” as part of our daily lives, take for granted.

In 1962 however, people weren’t aware. Generalized pesticide spraying over entire communities – without even notifying the citizens – was common and legal. Big industry was making a ton of money doing it with the reasoning that it helped farmers grow more crops – and America needed to be fed. We were a growing and booming country – and quite proud of our status in the world! We were also deeply in competition with the USSR as the cold war was forefront in everyone’s minds. It was a very different world than the one we know today.

Scientists were also often held up so highly as to almost achieve the status of gods. Science itself was compared to a religion – one that was going to save us all. Yet, very few people fully understood science, except the scientists themselves who, of course, published, researched, and shared plenty of their findings using the god-like language of science that excluded the general public.

Enter Carson. She was a trained and highly respected scientist whose focus was on the natural world. But she broke the rules. And she did it deliberately.

Carson first began to research the impact pesticides were having in about 1954. Her intention was to write a short article for publication. But the further into her research she got, the more angry she became and the more she realized things needed to change.

So she did two things:

First, she took science to the public, unveiling the god-like language and making it fully accessible. This alone was akin to having the bible translated from Latin into the lay-tongue. The priests were not happy about losing their status and power!

Second, she deliberately tied her findings into the most heart-felt values of her audience. She created a picture in a mother’s mind of their child playing on the grass among poisons dropped from the sky – and then had the proof that it was actually already happening lined up. People couldn’t NOT talk. They couldn’t NOT respond and react. They couldn’t NOT push for change.

As a result of that one book, Silent Spring, congress changed the laws governing pesticides, ecology as a science was born as a field of its own and legitimized, and the authority of science was questioned. Over 50 years later, we still feel her influence even though we may not have read the book, or even really know who she was.

THAT is a true thought leader.

Are you sharing your message with the right people and in the right way to create maximum impact, and have the longest lasting influence you can?

February 2013 Issue