5 Key Skills for Sharing a Vision

To get your team to rally behind your shared vision, there are 5 key skills you must build and employ.  If you’re able to create that shared vision, your team’s performance can soar.

Today’s post is by Jeff Wolf, author of Seven Disciplines of a Leader (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

New leadership roles require new leadership disciplines. Three of the most critical disciplines are building shared vision, surfacing and challenging mental models, and engaging in systems thinking. These disciplines can only be developed through a lifelong commitment. And in learning organizations, these disciplines must be distributed widely because they embody the principles and practices of effective leadership.

How do individual visions become shared visions? A useful metaphor is the hologram, the three-dimensional image created by interacting light sources. If you cut a photograph in half, each half shows only part of the whole image. But if you divide a hologram, each part, no matter how small, shows the whole image intact.

Likewise, when a group of people come together to share a vision, each person sees an individual picture of the organization at its best. Each shares responsibility for the whole, not just for one piece. But the component pieces of the holograms are not identical. Each represents the whole image from a different point of view. It’s something like poking holes in a window shade; each hole offers a unique angle for viewing the whole image. So, too, is each individual’s vision unique.

When you add up the pieces of a hologram, the image becomes more intense, more lifelike. When more people share a vision, the vision becomes a mental reality that people can truly imagine achieving. They now have partners, co-creators; the vision no longer rests on their shoulders alone. Early on, people may claim it as their vision. But, as the shared vision develops, it becomes everybody’s vision.

Building shared vision involves these five useful skills:

– Encouraging personal vision. Shared visions emerge from personal visions. It is not that people only care about their own self-interest. In fact, people’s values usually include dimensions that concern family, organization, community, and even the world. Rather, it is that people’s capacity for caring is personal.

– Communicating and asking for support. Leaders must share their own vision continually, rather than being the official representative of the corporate vision. They also must ask “Is this vision worthy of your commitment?” This is hard for people used to setting goals and presuming compliance.

– Visioning as an ongoing process. Many managers want to dispense with the vision business by writing the official vision statement. Such statements often lack the vitality, freshness, and excitement of a genuine vision that comes from people asking “What do we really want to achieve?”

– Blending extrinsic and intrinsic visions. Many energizing visions are extrinsic, focusing on achieving something relative to a competitor. But a goal that is limited to defeating an opponent can, once the vision is achieved, easily become a defensive posture. In contrast, intrinsic goals, such as creating a new product, taking an old product to a new level, or setting a new standard for customer satisfaction, elicit more creativity and innovation. Intrinsic and extrinsic visions need to coexist; a vision solely predicated on defeating an adversary will weaken an organization.

– Distinguishing positive from negative visions. Many organizations only pull together when their survival is threatened. Similarly, most social movements aim at eliminating what people don’t want; thus, we see anti-drugs, anti-smoking, or anti-nuclear arms movements. Negative visions tend to be short-term and carry a message of powerlessness.

Two sources of energy motivate organizations: fear and aspiration. Fear, the energy source behind negative visions, can produce extraordinary changes in short periods, but aspiration endures as a source of learning and growth over time.

Strategy. Decide what’s important (and what’s not important) so you can aim the allocation of resources—time, money and creativity—toward this end. In this annual discipline, leaders systematically and regularly review and renew their mission, values, strategic position, vision, their most vital few objectives, and agree what to stop doing

The effective leader must articulate five means: 1) here’s where we’re going, 2) here’s why we’re going there, 3) here’s how we’re going to get there, 4) here’s your role in getting us there, and 5) here’s how we’re going to work together to get there.

Your team must be inspired and understand what the present and future hold for them. Everyone on your team, department and organization listens to radio station WIIFM: What’s In It For Me? Employees must understand their particular roles in achieving this vision, along with ―what’s in it for me if I carry out goals and work hard.

Inspirational leadership. If you want people to do great things, then your leadership style must be inspirational. Inspirational leaders have a positive attitude, and they can help ordinary people do extraordinary things. When a leader is not inspiring, people will do just enough to get by. Workers usually have more potential than they show. It’s up to the leader to provide the guidance and inspiration to do better.

How do you measure up as a leader? Do you dedicate time to working one-on-one with your people? Do you train and give them the tools necessary to become better at their jobs? Do you set goals and help employees attain them? Do you empower people to make decisions (not delegate mundane tasks)?

Empowering people allows them to grow, and they appreciate that you believe in them. They know you trust them to make important decisions that directly affect the department, team or organization. Empowered people feel valued and respected, which inspires them to improve and come to work energized.

– This post is adapted from Seven Disciplines of a Leader by Jeff Wolf (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Wolf is founder and president of Wolf Management Consultants, LLC, a premier global consulting firm that specializes in helping people, teams and organizations achieve maximum effectiveness.

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Photo: Ultima vision?! by mind_scratch