They slide into my DMs daily. CEOs, executives, "visionary leaders"—all with the same desperate plea wrapped in corporate confidence: "I want to go viral. I want to be a thought leader. Can you make that happen?"

This is the executive thought leadership content crisis in a nutshell. Everyone wants the credibility and influence that comes with being recognized as an industry authority, but they want to skip the actual work of developing authentic perspectives and insights.

Sure, I tell them. What unique perspective do you have on your industry? What contrarian take keeps you up at night? What hard-won wisdom could genuinely help your audience?

The response is always the same uncomfortable silence, followed by: "Well, can't you just... figure that out?"

Or my personal favorite: "I want to speak at [insert prestigious conference here]. Find me a topic."

Find YOU a topic? You want to be the expert on stage, but you can't identify a single subject you're passionate enough about to speak on for 25 minutes? You want the authority and applause, but you're outsourcing the actual expertise?

What the fuck is that about?

And there it is—the executive thought leadership content paradox that's breaking LinkedIn and turning genuine expertise into performative nonsense.

The Fantasy vs. The Reality

Here's what they think executive thought leadership content looks like: Post a motivational quote over a sunset photo, add some generic business buzzwords, watch the engagement roll in, and boom—instant authority status unlocked.

Here's what authentic executive thought leadership content actually requires: Years of experience, genuine failures to learn from, contrarian perspectives that might piss people off, and—this is usually a shocking revelation—actually having something worthwhile to say.

But that's work. Real work. The kind that involves introspection, risk-taking, and the terrifying possibility that your hot take might be wrong or unpopular.

Most wannabe thought leaders want the credibility without the vulnerability, the platform without the perspective, and the audience without the authenticity.

The Great Outsourcing Experiment

I've watched executives spend thousands trying to outsource their brains. They hire content creators, social media managers, and ghostwriters to manufacture their "authentic voice" while they focus on "more important things."

Here's where it gets interesting: In my experience working with C-suite executives, there's a stark gender divide in how this plays out.

Women CEOs come to me with ideas. They've already identified the problems they want to solve, the perspectives they want to share, the stories they want to tell. Research supports what I see firsthand—women leaders tend to be more collaborative and articulate concepts around empathy, adaptability, and transformation. They come with ambition and a roadmap for how to get there. They want help refining their message, not creating it from scratch.

Men? They show up empty-handed and expect all the glory.

"Make me a thought leader."
"Get me on that conference stage."
"I need to go viral."

But when I ask what they want to say, what they believe, what insights they've gained from their experience…crickets. Radio silence. Not a single original thought.

Here's where the gender divide becomes most apparent: When I work with CEOs and executives on their content strategy, I send them questionnaires. Detailed questions about their experiences, failures, insights, and perspectives on their industry.

The women CEOs pore over these questions. They'll spend hours crafting thoughtful responses, sharing specific examples, and diving deep into their experiences. They treat it like the strategic exercise it is.

The men? They send it to ChatGPT. Or have their assistant fill it out based on talking points. Or return it half-completed with generic responses that could apply to any executive in any industry.

How the hell am I supposed to write authentic content about your unique perspective if you can't invest 30 minutes to share that perspective? You want to be seen as a thought leader, but you won't take the time to actually think about what you want to lead people toward? Make it make sense.

Here's what they don't understand: Your thoughts can't be outsourced.

Your unique perspective on why most SaaS onboarding sucks? That comes from the three product launches you botched and the customer feedback that made you rethink everything. Your contrarian take on remote work culture? That's built from managing distributed teams through a pandemic, not from a content brief titled "Hot Takes About WFH." Your industry insight about market trends? It's earned through watching competitors fail, making your own mistakes, and pattern-matching across years of experience.

You can't hire someone to think your thoughts for you. And audiences can smell manufactured authenticity from a mile away.

The Engagement Theater

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has become a theater of engagement farming. The same recycled takes get reposted by different "thought leaders" who've never had an original idea but know exactly which emotional triggers drive comments.

"Agree or disagree: Hard work beats talent."

"Unpopular opinion: Most meetings could be emails."

"Hot take: Company culture matters more than salary."

These aren't thought leadership. They're conversation starters designed to game the algorithm. They're the intellectual equivalent of asking "what's your favorite color?" and calling it market research.

Real thought leadership makes people uncomfortable. It challenges assumptions. It presents ideas that haven't been focus-grouped to death.

But discomfort doesn't convert into leads as cleanly as motivational platitudes, so we're stuck in this cycle of sanitized, committee-approved "insights" that insult everyone's intelligence.

The Effort Equation

Here's the truth that no one wants to hear: Going viral for the right reasons requires genuine effort. Not the kind of effort you can delegate to your marketing team, but the personal, intellectual effort of developing and articulating worthwhile ideas.

Maybe your communication manager won't tell you this, or you've scared your assistant straight so they just nod and agree with everything you say. But I will: not to be mean, not to be a hardass, but because if you're genuinely serious about becoming a thought leader, you'll put the work in. And if you're not serious, you'll keep looking for shortcuts that don't exist.

That means:

Thinking deeply about problems in your industry instead of skimming headlines for content ideas.
Taking actual positions on controversial topics instead of playing it safe with both-sides-ism.
Sharing real failures and what you learned, not just humble-bragging about successes.
Developing genuine expertise through years of hands-on experience, not just reading other people's hot takes.
Writing your own content because no one else has lived your specific combination of experiences.

The executives who want instant executive thought leadership content without this effort are like people who want six-pack abs but refuse to exercise. They're looking for a shortcut that doesn't exist.

The Authenticity Audit

Want to know if you're ready for actual executive thought leadership content? Ask yourself these questions:

Do you have strong opinions about your industry that might alienate some people?
Can you explain why conventional wisdom is wrong about something specific?
Have you failed publicly and learned something valuable from it?
Do you regularly consume content outside your immediate field to make unique connections?
Are you willing to be wrong in public and adjust your views based on new information?

If you answered "no" to most of these, you're not ready for thought leadership. You might be better served focusing on building expertise and developing genuine perspectives before trying to position yourself as an industry authority.

How to Spot a Ghostwritten Executive (It's Embarrassingly Easy)

Want to know who's writing their own content and who isn't? It's not as hard as you'd think.

The authentic voices:

Their writing style matches how they speak in interviews
They reference specific, personal experiences with details only they would know
Their takes evolve and sometimes contradict their previous positions as they learn
They engage meaningfully in the comments, not with generic "thanks for sharing!" responses
Their content has personality quirks, industry inside jokes, and occasional tangents
They post inconsistently because, you know, they're running actual companies

The ghostwritten ones:

Every post is perfectly polished and follows the same engagement-bait formula
They somehow have profound insights about every trending topic within hours
Their "personal stories" are vague enough to be anyone's experience
They never acknowledge being wrong or changing their mind about anything
Their comment responses are corporate-speak pleasantries
They post with machine-like consistency at optimal engagement times
Their writing voice is suspiciously similar to other executives in their network (hint: same ghostwriter)
They default to empty platitudes like "Let's get there together!" or "Innovation starts with collaboration!"
They regurgitate company values and mission statements with zero personal insight or context
Everything sounds like it came from a corporate communications template because it probably did

The Raven Blog noted, "I think the average person underestimates just how much of the content they consume is not actually written by the people they assume wrote it." And honestly? It shows.

And let's talk about the elephant in the room: We can tell when your photos are AI-generated. We can tell when your posts are AI-written. Recent studies show that over 40% of Facebook posts are now AI-generated, and about half of surveyed individuals can correctly identify AI-generated content. You're not fooling anyone—you're just creating a path of fake engagement that's frankly embarrassing.

But here's what's even worse: When your content claims one thing but your leadership and company culture experience the opposite, the truth will seep out. And it always does.

You can post all day about "people-first culture" and "empowering your team," but if your Glassdoor reviews are full of employees talking about toxic management and impossible expectations, your thought leadership becomes a joke. You can write LinkedIn novels about "innovation and risk-taking," but if your company is known for micromanaging and punishing creative thinking, everyone sees the disconnect.

Your employees are also on social media. They have friends in the industry. They talk. And nothing kills your credibility faster than former employees sharing stories that directly contradict your carefully crafted thought leadership persona.

The internet has a long memory, and authenticity isn't just about your writing voice—it's about whether your actual leadership matches what you're preaching online.

The data on thought leadership's impact makes this even more frustrating. Roughly 60% of decision-makers say good thought leadership content makes them more willing to pay a premium to a supplier. 66% of content marketers consider thought leadership a "top priority" for their marketing organization. 94% percent of marketers say extensive thought leadership content raises their perception of a brand as a valuable information resource.

The opportunity is massive. The potential ROI is huge. And yet most executives are sabotaging themselves by treating it like a shortcut instead of an investment.

The irony is that the executives most qualified to create compelling thought leadership content are often too busy doing the actual work to care about going viral. They're solving real problems, building real companies, and learning real lessons.

They're not optimizing for engagement—they're optimizing for impact.

The path to genuine executive thought leadership content isn't through viral hacks or outsourced insights. It's through the decidedly unglamorous work of developing expertise, forming opinions, and having the courage to share them.

So to all the executives sliding into content creators' DMs: Stop trying to shortcut your way to authority. Start doing the work that creates actual authority.

Your audience—and your credibility—will thank you for it.

The Choice Is Yours

Executive thought leadership content doesn't have to be a wasteland of empty platitudes and manufactured insights. We have the opportunity to elevate the conversation, to share genuine expertise, and to build authentic authority that actually serves our audiences.

But it requires a choice: Will you do the work, or will you keep looking for shortcuts? Will you invest in real expertise development, or will you keep trying to hack your way to influence? Will you build something authentic, or will you contribute to the noise?

The market is hungry for real insights from real leaders who have real experience. The opportunity is massive. The question is whether you're willing to earn it.

The Executive Thought Leadership Content Problem: Why CEOs Want Viral Success Without the Work