REFLECTION 1
Make a list of four or five experiences from your past that have been “turning points” for you—experiences that have truly influenced the direction you have taken in your life. These experiences can be from many years ago, or they can be from the present. The important thing is that they made a real difference in your life. Describe each experience in a few words.
- Review the experiences on your list. Do you see a pattern? A theme or two that connects them? What's the pattern? What are the themes?
- What do the patterns and themes tell you about what creates meaning for you? About your hopes and dreams for the future?
REFLECTION 2
Imagine that five years from now you are attending a dinner honoring you as “Leader of the Year.” One after the other, your colleagues, customers, friends, and family talk about the contributions you have made to the organization, the community, and to them personally. What do you hope that they will say about you?
- What you want others to say about your contributions is an expression of your own dreams. What does your description of what you want others to say tell you about the difference you'd like to make in the world?
APPLICATION 1
Find Your Theme
Focusing on the project you've chosen, what truly inspires and excites you about it?
- Beyond its business, financial, or organizational objectives, what higher meaning or purpose does (or could) this project serve?
- What future trend(s)—demographics, technology, and so forth—are likely to influence the direction of this project? For example, we know that workers from different age groups—Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z—often differ in a number of ways in terms of their values and the way they prefer to work. These differences could influence your project in the sense that you will need to find ways to accommodate multiple sets of values and work styles and be prepared to resolve conflicts.
- What future trends are likely to influence what you aspire to achieve?
- What future disruptions—such as recession, climate change, war, disruptions in the supply chain, or another pandemic—could influence the success of this project?
APPLICATION 2
Check the Fit
As you did with your values, you need to do a fitness check with the vision you are beginning to articulate.
- Are you clear about your organization's vision? If not, where do you need clarity, and how are you going to find it?
- Compare your personal aspirations for your project to the organization's vision. If there appears to be alignment between your vision and the organization's vision, move on to Application 3. If not, determine how you are going to resolve the conflict. For example, as you did with Model the Way, you can discuss the conflict with your manager or talk it over with your family or a close colleague. You might find that the conflict is a result of a lack of clarity, or you might discover that you are unable to figure out how to meet your needs and the organization's at the same time. Whatever the root cause of the conflict, you need to address it. You cannot lead others to a place you personally do not want to go.
- There is alignment between my vision and that of the organization. (Move on to Application 3.)
- There is a conflict. I will do the following to address it:
APPLICATION 3
Discover Common Ground
Engage your project team in a conversation about the questions that you answered in Application 1. You can hold that conversation in a series of virtual or in‐person team meetings or on a retreat. No matter how you hold the conversation, it's important to elicit and listen to each person's hopes, dreams, and aspirations. When you have finished these conversations, help the group find common themes among the individual aspirations by asking the following questions.
- What are the common themes that weave our dreams and hopes into one tapestry?
- How does this project contribute to the larger vision of the organization?
APPLICATION 4
Give Life to the Vision
The practice that most differentiates leaders from other credible people is their ability to Inspire a Shared Vision. You have to be comfortable talking about your unique and ideal image of the future. You need to write and rehearse your “vision statement,” whether you will be delivering it to one person at a time or to one hundred.
You give life to a vision when you infuse it with powerful language, with metaphors, stories, word pictures, and other figures or statements. Think of a vision as a song. If a song were about the theme of “caring,” it would be pretty hard to sell if it just repeated that one word over and over again. All songs that stand the test of time are variations on a theme, and the words in those songs have a unique way of expressing that theme. Your vision statement needs to do the same.
The following exercises are intended to help you develop a vision statement that will resonate with your audience—one that will be remembered and repeated.
Before you write your own, here's an example of an inspiring vision statement that the manager of employee learning and organization development for a community college district put together:
More than any other institution of higher education, the community college is in the business of changing lives. We meet our students where they are and help them define and achieve their goals. As they fulfill their potentials, we help them shine!
In days gone by, the lamplighter dutifully set about lighting the streetlamps as day faded to night. We in ELOD light the lamps of learning, chasing away the darkness of uncertainty and doubt for our customers.
When asked why he is so committed to this repetitive, mundane task, the lamplighter replies, “I do it for the light I leave behind.”
As learning and development professionals, we too are lamplighters, creating conditions that nurture the spark of new ideas and perspectives. Through encouragement, thoughtful questioning, and provision of safe spaces for experimentation, we ignite innovative thinking and self‐discovery in our learners.
The light we leave behind illuminates the paths of those we touch, enabling them to spread their light throughout the college.
Envision the Future
Picture yourself, your team, and your organization when you have completed this project. It has been successful beyond your wildest dreams. Describe what you see and hear in rich detail by responding to the questions and instructions that follow.
- What are people doing?
- What are people saying?
- How are people feeling?
- What positive things are happening as a result?
Use Metaphor
The most powerful visions use metaphor or visual analogy to change abstract notions into tangible and memorable images. Here's an example:
| Metaphor | How It's Like This Project |
|---|---|
| Skyscraper | Ambitious, expensive |
| Reaches upward to the sky | |
| Requires a team and lots of coordination | |
| Requires different kinds of material to make it strong and beautiful |
Take a few minutes to identify a concrete object or activity that could serve as a metaphor for your project, one that might be inspiring if your team and other stakeholders hold it in mind. For example, you could say your project is like:
- The New York City Marathon
- The ascent of Mount Everest
- The FIFA World Cup
- An eagle's flight
- The Blue Angels
- A huge, ancient redwood tree
Try this for yourself. First, take three minutes to brainstorm and list below as many metaphors—figures of speech that suggest a likeness between your project and something else—as you can.
My project is like:
From your list, select the metaphor that works best for you and your project. Explain how your project is like your metaphorical expression.
| Metaphor | How My Project Is Like This Metaphor |
|---|---|
| _______________ | ______________________________________ |
| _______________ | ______________________________________ |
| _______________ | ______________________________________ |
| _______________ | ______________________________________ |
| _______________ | ______________________________________ |
| _______________ | ______________________________________ |
Enlist Others
Now think about all the people you want your vision to inspire. Who are they? What motivates them? Be sure to include everyone you can identify: team members, customers, management, vendors, community members, and others. (See the example below.) Then list the motivators for each of the groups and individuals you want to inspire with your vision.
Audience: Management
Motivators: Profit, future growth, competitive advantage
Audience: ______________________________________________
Motivators: _____________________________________________
Audience: ______________________________________________
Motivators: _____________________________________________
Audience: ______________________________________________
Motivators: ______________________________________________
Audience: _______________________________________________
Motivators: ______________________________________________
Now review what you have written with one objective in mind: to identify what these audiences have in common. What can you do to appeal to their overlapping interests? For example, let's say one of the motivators they share is the desire for challenging and meaningful work. How can you help all of them find more meaning and make a contribution? You might talk about exciting opportunities to make a difference in their current roles, form diverse teams to explore innovative ways to make work more challenging, take field trips to visit award‐winning workplaces, invite an author of a relevant book to speak to the group, or go on a site visit to another organization that is engaged in a related project but in a different industry.
| What They Have in Common | How I Can Appeal to This Motivator |
|---|---|
| _____________________________ | ____________________________ |
| _____________________________ | ____________________________ |
| _____________________________ | ____________________________ |
| _____________________________ | ____________________________ |
| _____________________________ | ____________________________ |
| _____________________________ | ____________________________ |
APPLICATION 5
Vision Statement
As a culmination of all the thinking you've done in this chapter, you are now going to write a compelling vision statement for your project. Do you remember how we defined vision at the beginning of this chapter? If not, take a moment to review. Then answer the questions below to formulate the key components of your vision statement.
What ideal inspires you—gives you passion—for this project?
____________________________________________________________
- What ideal(s) would inspire the other constituents on this project?
- What is unique about the dream you and your constituents have for this project?
- What future do you envision for your constituents and for the greater organization or community?
- How does this vision serve the common good: the good of all essential constituents?
- What metaphors or visual image(s) can you provide that would appeal to others?
Now pull all the pieces together and write your vision statement below in four to seven paragraphs.
MY VISION STATEMENT
____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
APPLICATION 6
Try It Out
Going live with your vision statement is like taking a musical to an out‐of‐town trial to work out the rough spots before opening on Broadway. Similarly, you need to try out your vision statement by delivering it to colleagues, coaches, family, or friends, asking them to play the role of “loving critic” and give you honest feedback.
- Who are some trusted people you can approach to “try out” your vision?
- When will you do these rehearsals?
- Whom do you know who is very good at Inspire a Shared Vision? Can you ask that person to act as your coach? (A coach is someone who can help you build your skills, not just give you feedback.) When will you approach them?
- Once you feel comfortable with your statement and your presentation, select a time and a place or occasion to “go live and try out your vision statement.” What is that time and place?
After you have made your vision presentation, how will you know whether your audience is genuinely inspired? For example, when people are inspired they smile, applaud, show excitement, and talk about how meaningful and unique the vision is. People might say, “This is the most exciting project I have worked on in ten years,” “I never knew that something that seemed so ordinary could become so truly extraordinary,” “I feel as if I'm learning,” or “Now I know that I'm contributing to something really important.”
- Think about the signals that will tell you people are inspired. Record those signals here:
IMPLICATIONS
What have you learned about yourself as a leader from the activities in this chapter?
Based on your experience with these application exercises, what do you need to do in order to improve how you Inspire a Shared Vision during this project?