Is this what you so feared?

What stands in the way, becomes the way. — Markus Aurelius

One of my favourite quotes.

There are many obstacles in the way. As a leader the goal is not to be able to foresee all the obstacles you might meet on a given path and have a plan to avoid or solve for them. The goal is to have a vision, a clear endpoint. How you get there is an unknown, and should be. That’s half the fun.

The chasm that opens up between where you are and where you want to be is only overcome by creativity and trust. You can’t know what you’ll face between here and there (if you do, your destination is probably not bold enough), the best you can hope for is that you can inspire a team of people to believe in your vision enough that they’re willing to step off the edge with you.

And there lies the pitfalls…

Is my vision clear?

Did I inspire the right people?

Do they have the skills to overcome the obstacles that will manifest themselves?

Can I keep the team moving toward the goal during hard and uncertain moments along the journey?

I think the biggest place that the leadership journey can fail is not clearly defining the endpoint and getting team agreement. What will the end look like? Can you see yourself standing there when this all done? What does that look like?

More questions than answers I suppose. But looking into the chasm makes it a bit less scary. What is on the other side of fear? Nothing…

Originally published at Devin Glage.