How does a thought leader get an audience to take notice, remember, and actively use the content you are putting out? To get a firm grasp of exactly what engagement means and how to get your audience there, I’ve invited Scott Gould to join me. Scott is a consultant, speaker, and author of The Shape of Engagement: The Art of Building Enduring Connections with Your Customers, Employees, and Communities. Our conversation begins with Scott not only defining what engagement is but how he has broken out into three types. Head, Hands, and Heart engagement – while each is very different, we learn how they act as building blocks on each other to create deeper connections between you, your idea, and your audience. A big part of having an audience become engaged is presenting an idea that is easy to understand and remember. Scott shares his process for distilling an idea down to the essentials, which sometimes means blowing the idea up to something huge first! In this episode Scott offers great insight for taking ideas from brainstorm to living at the heart of an audience! Three Key Takeaways: ·         Properly defining the topic you want your thought leadership to center around is one of the biggest jobs that you have. ·         The name of an idea is incredibly important. People engage with ideas when it is easy to remember the essence of that idea. ·         Sharpening ideas to the finest point often involves discarding ideas that you like but don’t connect with your audience.