One of the reasons for writing in this blog is to put my opinion out there.
I am a generally opinionated person, but one of my challenges is articulating that opinion. So I hope that with continual writing and practice I will get better as time progresses.
Oftentimes people tend to hold back opinions. Perhaps being afraid of others feeling insulted, or others insulting them. Or perhaps they don’t believe that their opinions are good enough.
While not everyone likes to hear other opinions, people must be willing to state theirs. This is the only way that ideas can get created. People can state facts based on what they read or learned, but an opinion is something that someone would have based on their experience and own thought.
This free expression should be encouraged by others. Even if an idea is not good or maybe not well thought out enough, it allows everyone to improve it, or generate different ideas from it.
It’s one of the reasons I ask people to talk about things they recently encountered, even if they are not experts at it. I ask them to say:
- what they saw
- what they learned
- how they see that helping
- what we should do about it
- and what are some possible next steps
Sometimes we think thought leadership begins with expertise when it’s expertise that is borne from expressed thought. Experts just get better at expressing their opinions.
So practice expressing your thoughts. And remember, opinions are like arseholes: everyone’s got one, and everyone thinks that everyone else’s stinks.