How to grow as a leader: Formulate your vision
Drawing a picture of where you're going and what it will look like when you arrive
In Essential qualities of amazing leaders I presented my current working definition of a leader—any leader, in any context—with five essential qualities that define an effective, influential leader. This is the third in a series of four articles diving deeper into the first of the essential qualities for a leader.
A leader formulates a vision that is aligned with their values and beliefs.
Working our way from the end of that statement to the start. In How to grow as a leader: Uncover your beliefs and How to grow as a leader: Find your values, we discussed beliefs and values with practical tips for inner techniques to begin exploring them. Today we’ll look at your leadership vision and how it’s influenced by your beliefs and values.
Your leadership vision
We’ve been discussing this as an essential quality for any leader, whether the context is a Fortune 500 company, the church women’s group, your role as a parent, or even your own personal development. A vision is essential in all of these contexts: a vision for the company’s progress, a vision for raising funds and doing good work, a vision of your children as strong and capable adults, or yourself as a centered, whole, healthy person. This is why our essential quality starts with “A leader formulates a vision.”
We hear a lot about mission statements and vision statements, enough so that I roll my eyes when I hear one of those phrases. “Oh lord, this again.” But these are good things to have, and they’re excellent things to work on. The good news is, they don’t have to be perfect; nearly nothing ever has to be perfect.
An example
Ten years ago, I found myself stuck and uncomfortable with my life. I was glad to be working again after a couple years of disability leave, but it didn’t feel satisfying. One day I stumbled upon the website of a life coach who works with women who had taken disability leave, returned to work, and found themselves feeling stuck and uncomfortable and unsatisfied. “Wait a minute: this is a thing?” Yes, this is a thing. During my period of leave, my beliefs and values shifted, and I hadn’t realized it. In the articles about beliefs and values that were published recently, we learned how beliefs and values usually live below the surface, where we are mostly unaware of them.
I spent time on inner work, deciding what I wanted to be when I grow up. Ultimately I decided to move into academia, which would require earning a Master’s degree and a PhD. My vision was of myself as a professor and researcher, teaching classes, reading the journals, speaking at conferences… and mostly having a far less frantic pace than the hamster wheel of my job at the time.
What is a vision?
There are many definitions for your vision as a leader, and of course they vary widely depending on the context. For today, let’s talk about the elements that are the same regardless.
Your vision describes a future state, but…
Your vision is written in present tense.
Your vision helps you clarify decisions, and
Your vision appeals to your emotions.
Your vision is connected to your senses.
Your vision is aspirational. It excites you and helps you feel inspired and motivated.
You may have heard vision described as a “North Star” that you will follow. It’s a lovely image, but only some of our travels are northward. We don’t use the North Star as a marker of our destination, but as a guidepost that shows us which direction we should face to get where we want to go. Instead, your vision is a combination of a compass and a postcard: it shows you which direction to head, and it gives you a picture of your destination so you’ll know when you’ve arrived.
Leading in an organization
When you’re a leader in an organization, your vision isn’t just for you. Your vision is there for everyone in the organization to aspire you. It tells your shareholders where you want to take the organization and perhaps some of the landmarks along the way. With a personal leadership vision, it matters most for you. But in an organization—for profit or not-for-profit, international relief or local parent-teacher association—your vision must be compelling for many stakeholders. With the higher stakes, you may not want this to be the very first vision you write. Of course you’ll work with your senior leaders to craft the written statement and to get buy-in from them, but you’re the leader, you’re the visionary, and ultimately, this is your work. Today’s article is introductory, so we’ll dive further into developing a vision statement for an organization in the future.
Inner tools in practice
Now that you’ve used ideation to explore your beliefs and values, followed by review and reflection to explore and reflect on them, it’s time to try a different inner tool. We’ve used the word vision and talked about appealing to all the senses, so it may not surprise you that we’ll use visualization as an inner tool for exploring vision.
Visualization
Visualization is a flexible inner tool that works in many contexts. Leaders in sports, performing arts, and even business use two types of visualization for setting a goal and achieving it: outcome visualization (What does it look like when I’ve achieved my vision?) and process visualization (What do I need to do along the way?). For today, we’ll focus on outcome visualization; in the future, we’ll add process visualization and other visualization techniques to the inner toolbox.
What you need
To get started, you need
An idea of what your goal might be. Something that’s a year away or more, something that excites you, something that might be hard to accomplish.
“I want to be a better parent” is an okay goal to start with.
“I want to be more in touch with my feelings so that I can be a better parent” is a little better.
Don’t spend more than 3 to 5 minutes thinking about this; it’s better to start from a weak goal and develop it over time than to get paralyzed because you don’t have the perfect goal in mind.
About 30 minutes without interruptions. The visualization should take no more than about 15 minutes, but it helps to have a little time on either side.
A timer with a pleasant, even meditative, sound to call you back. I prefer bell chimes (like this one) rather than alarms.
A pencil and paper, your journal, or your favorite app for note-taking.
An environment not cluttered with thoughts, ideas, and shoulds. Minimize all the active apps on your screens or turn them off. When your eyes are open, you really only want to pay attention to the prompts for the visualization.
What to do
Record your goal on your journal page or note-taking app. Put it front and center.
Record some prompts for your visualization below the goal. You can start with the ones below or do a quick ideation session to brainstorm some more. Remember: you don’t need a perfect set of prompts. Give yourself enough, and then get started.
What do I want?
What do I want it?
What will be different once I achieve the goal?
What does that look like? What does it sound like? smell like, feel like, taste like?
What am I thinking when I accomplish my goal?
What do I remember and feel about the struggles along the way?
What does it feel like emotionally?
How are the people around you responding to your accomplishment?
Set your timer for 15 minutes. Close your eyes or don’t, whichever works for you. Visualize!
When your timer calls you back, take a deep breath before coming back to the regular world.
Take a few minutes to jot down what you saw and sensed and felt about your goal.
Later, after you’ve had at least one sleep on it, formulate your visualization into a vision statement that fits the guidelines from “What is a vision?” above.
By immersing yourself in this world where your goal has already been accomplished, you’re training your brain to make it happen. Returning to this world from time to time underlines this new pattern in your brain and increases the likelihood that you’ll achieve it. Explore the little side trails and aspects you find as you call your visualization back up. And don’t be afraid to discover that this may not be the right goal for you. The key is to learn and to grow, and sometimes the lesson we learn is “That’s not a good fit for me right now.”
Additional resources
… and several “dead-tree” books I need to find and cite! Visualization is a key technique recommended for recovery from eating disorders, and the guides I read to work on my own recovery incorporated visualization to explore my recovered self.
Wrapping up
Today we discussed the visions we must formulate in our leadership and the key elements that should be part of any leadership vision, whether personal or organizational. I shared an example from my life, my vision of earning a PhD and working as an academic. That vision has already been through some changes and adjustments, but still when the work gets to be a slog, I visualize receiving my hood at graduation, giving talks at conferences, and helping students add tools for the work they’re learning to do. Finally, I offered an inner tool for formulating your vision: visualization.
Next, we’re going to wrap up this series with alignment. We need our vision to be aligned with our beliefs and values, or we’re in for a rocky road.
I’d love to hear how your visualization goes and how your leadership vision has developed. This is such a rich area for discussion, and there’s so much we can learn from each other. So please pop into the comments and tell me how it’s going!