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.
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?
Focusing on the project you've chosen, what truly inspires and excites you about it?
As you did with your values, you need to do a fitness check with the vision you are beginning to articulate.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 |
---|---|
_______________ | ______________________________________ |
_______________ | ______________________________________ |
_______________ | ______________________________________ |
_______________ | ______________________________________ |
_______________ | ______________________________________ |
_______________ | ______________________________________ |
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 |
---|---|
_____________________________ | ____________________________ |
_____________________________ | ____________________________ |
_____________________________ | ____________________________ |
_____________________________ | ____________________________ |
_____________________________ | ____________________________ |
_____________________________ | ____________________________ |
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?
____________________________________________________________
Now pull all the pieces together and write your vision statement below in four to seven paragraphs.
____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
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.
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.”
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?