Today is part three of my notes from the book The Leadership Challenge:
Part
Three – Inspire a Shared Vision
Chapter
Five – Envision the Future
Leadership
is everyone's business.
If
we don't have the slightest clue about our hopes, dreams, and
aspirations, then the chance that we'll take the lead is
significantly less.
Credibility
is the foundation of leadership.
Bringing
meaning to life in the present by focusing on making life better in
the long run is an essential ingredient in getting extraordinary
things done.
Leaders
want to do something significant.
No
one can impose a self-motivating vision on you.
One
of the most important practices of leadership is giving life and work
a sense of meaning and purpose by offering an exciting vision.
Venture
capitalist, Geoff Yang, said he is willing to back men and women with
great vision.
You
need leaders that can keep people focused on two or three things that
are most important.
Constituents
of all types demand leaders be forward-looking and have a sense of
direction. Leaders must develop this capacity to Envision the Future
by mastering these essentials: discover the theme and imagine the
possibilities.
Finding
your vision, like finding your voice, is a process of
self-exploration and self-creation.
You
just have to be concerned and passionate about the future.
Launch
a crusade.
When
we gaze first into our past, we elongate our future.
Search
your past to find the recurring theme in your life.
To
be truly passionate about something you have to be willing to suffer
for it.
Visions
don't materialize magically in a sudden flash of light. They come, in
part, from paying attention to what is right in front of us.
To
be able to have a vision of the future, you have to be able to see
the big story: to see trends and patterns and not just one-off or
one-time occurrences.
Passion
and attention go hand in hand.
(A
leader) does whatever he can to understand the field of play.
It's
the years of direct contact with a variety of problems and situations
that equip the leader with unique insight.
Action
and vision are intimately connected.
Get
out and start doing something.
(After
a moment of inspiration, you need to take action, you need to) test
out the idea.
Believe
there's a better tomorrow.
It's
an iterative process.
Visions
are about hopes, dreams, and aspirations. They're about our strong
desire to achieve something great. They're ambitious. They're
expressions of optimism.
It's
one thing to go on an adventure just for the fun of it, it's another
to do it because it feeds the soul.
Blend
vision and fun.
The
leaders were characterized by a dissatisfaction with the status quo
and a belief that something better was attainable.
The
ideals of world peace, freedom, justice, a comfortable life,
happiness, and self-respect are among the ultimate strivings of our
existence.
Uniqueness
fosters pride.
Human
memory is stored in images.
All
of us make efforts to see the future.
Leaders
must be think about the future and become able to project themselves
ahead in time.
Leaders
achieve their effectiveness chiefly through the stories they relate.
Discover
those few higher-order values that are the idealized ends for which
you strive.
The
work was about a great cause.
The
more comfortable you are in discussing your innermost wishes, the
easier it will become to communicate a vision to others.
Martin
Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech was (only) about seven
minutes.
Be
sure to adapt your stories to the changing times.
Keep
in mind that your assumptions may blind you to new solutions. Keep
your eyes open and look around.
Imagine
what it will be like when you and your organization attain your
vision.
Chapter
Six – Enlist Others
Find
out what motivates each member of the team and why they want to be
part of the project.
You
have to teach others your vision.
When
relating hopes, dreams, and successes, people are almost always
emotionally expressive.
The
ability to exert an enlivening influence is rooted in fundamental
values, cultural traditions, and personal conviction.
(MLK's
dream was) a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
What
matters isn't the eloquence of the speech but the appeal of the
message to the audience. For that appeal to exist, leaders have to
understand others' dreams, and they have to find common ground on
which to build a shared dream.
Ask
good (and tough) questions.
One
of the key characteristics of the leaders of companies who have been
honored with America's highest award for quality is that they have
impressive listening skills.
They
develop a deep understanding of collective yearnings; they seek out
the brewing consensus among those they would lead.
(Leaders
spend time) finding out what's going on with (their constituents) and
what they are hoping to achieve from their relationship with you.
There
are common values that link everyone together: a chance to be tested
and to make it on one's own, a chance to take part in a social
experiment, a chance to do something well, a chance to do something
good, and a chance to change the way things are.
Great
leaders, like great companies and countries, create meaning and not
just money. The values and interests of freedom, self-actualization,
learning, community, excellence, uniqueness, service, and social
responsibility truly attract people to a common cause. There is a
deep human yearning to make a difference.
The
most successful strategies are visions; they are not plans.
This
sense of belonging is particularly key in tumultuous times, whatever
the cause of the tumult.
All
of us can enrich language with stories, references, and figures of
speech; in fact, doing so is a natural way of communicating.
Metaphorical
expressions are our way of communicating the active, pioneering
nature of leadership.
Leaders
learn to master the richness of figurative speech so that they can
paint the word pictures that best portray the meaning of their
visions.
We
want leaders with enthusiasm, with a bounce in their step, with a
positive attitude. We want to believe that we'll be part of an
invigorating journey. We follow people with a can-do attitude.
(Charisma)
has become are overworked cliché for strong, attractive, and
inspiring personalities.
Leaders
breath life into visions. They communicate their hopes and dreams so
that others clearly understand and accept them as their own.
Identify
those who have a stake today and will have a stake tomorrow in the
outcomes of what you envision.
It
is easy to get out of touch with people (so, we must keep the lines
of communication open and working)
Your
ability to enlist people depends on how effective you are at
detecting the tie that binds.
The
very best way to get to know what other people want is to sit down
and talk with them on their turf.
Ask
one simple question: “What do you want most from this
organization?”
If
people resist giving you their ideas or giving you feedback on your,
try to involve them by offering a choice or list of alternatives.
Once an alternative is selected, it becomes their idea. Remembering
the Chinese is useful in this regard: “Tell me, I may listen. Teach
me, I may remember. Involve me, I will do it.”
Renewing
community and commitment to shared values and common purpose is
essential.
Overcome
the anxiety of public speaking.
There's
no room for tentativeness or qualifiers in statements of vision.
You
need not be a Pollyanna: talk realistically about the hardships and
difficult conditions.
Practice
expressiveness.
When
it comes to visions, we're all from Missouri: we need to be shown.
Remember
that symbols, not acronyms, capture the imagination.
Most
famous speeches were not extemporaneous.
If
the vision is someone else's, and you don't own it, it will be very
difficult to enlist others in it.
You
have to have faith.
Listening
deeply makes a difference.
Another
way to hang out, get your ear to the ground, and be in a position to
listen to others is to change places for some period of time with one
of your key constituents or stakeholders.
Gather
critical information about what people care about and how well they
understand what's going on in the organization.
