Designing a Successful Leadership Vision
“To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership - not only on the movie set where I learned it, but everywhere.” -Ronald Reagan
Last month, I talked about effectively preparing to lead an organization by building your leadership team. Now I want to talk about another crucial facet of preparation: your vision for your tenure as leader.
‘Vision’ is a broad statement of what you want to accomplish during your year as leader. It defines the direction and purpose of your leadership that enables you to plan how you’re going to lead. Leadership vision is not a set of goals. While goals are important, they are specifically defined with a specific endpoint when well-stated. Such goals allow you and your organization achieve your leadership vision, but they are not the vision itself. Leadership vision is more open-ended; an infectious dream which gets people working towards greater ends. Success tip number one: explain your leadership vision to inspire your organization to achieve greater things.
A great vision embodies your passion. What do you want to see your organization do, achieve and accomplish during your tenure? You inspire passion in others by painting a picture using your leadership vision. In defining his vision, John F. Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” The passion and excitement in that statement caught the imagination of the American public, leading to the achievement of Kennedy’s vision. Success tip number two: To create a successful leadership vision, project your passion.
A great vision also inspires people to reach farther than they have in the past. In the early days of Longaberger Baskets, Dave Longaberger stood on a 5 gallon drum to explain his vision for the future of their company. He once pointed to one side of an old building they had moved into and told them, “That’s where I think we should set bleachers. We’ll need bleachers for people who will come from all over the country to see how we make baskets.” By 1991, over 12,000 tourists were visiting the company annually. Success tip number three: craft your leadership vision so that it is inspirational and prompts those you lead to work hard to help achieve that vision.
A great vision is always positive. Always. You will see things that need to be changed within an organization, but if your overall leadership vision focuses on the negative parts of those things, you will be ineffective. I once knew a leader who thought that his organization was too large to be effective. His explained that many of the members were not active enough, referring to them as “paper members.” His expressed vision was that the group needed to eliminate the perceived ‘paper members’ to shrink the organization. Now imagine that you were part of that organization. How would you know if you were a ‘paper member’ or not? Negative vision produces negative feelings which produces negative results. It took years for that organization to recover from this unwise bit of leadership vision. Success tip number four: design your leadership vision to be positive and inspiring.
Good vision is focused on the good of the group. The news regularly reveals the fate of what becomes of leaders who focus primarily on power, self-aggrandizement or personal profit. Effective leadership vision points towards things that inspires and builds the group. Joe Voszatka, a good friend of mine, is fond of creating clever acronyms to express his ideas. When he became the president of the Wyandotte Jaycess in 2003, he came up with the acronym S.M.O.O.T.H. This stood for “So Many Opportunities On The Horizon.” Joe was also fond of reciting the proverb, “Great oaks from little acorns grow” which revealed his focus on the massive potential of individuals in the Jaycee organization. He used this positive, group enhancing vision to guide his year as president. As a result, the organization was recognized as the top chapter in the state of Michigan for that year. Success tip number five: for successful results, focus your leadership vision on the good of the group.
Perhaps the most important feature of a well-stated leadership vision is that it points the way to the organization’s goals. Think about Kennedy’s vision of choosing “to go to the moon in this decade.” Doesn’t it suggest what goals must be set to achieve it? Look at Dave Longaberger’s vision of needing “bleachers for people who will come from all over the country to see how we make baskets.” Can’t you envision the goals his company needed to set to achieve that? Or consider Joe V’s vision of finding “So Many Opportunities On The Horizon.” Isn’t the direction his Jaycee chapter needed to head implied in his acronym? So it is for any effective leadership statement. Success tip number six: once you strike on the leadership vision that fits your passion, the organization’s goals will grow from it.
I'll finish this series of articles with some specific things you can do to prepare for your leadership tenure
Have a great month!
