Communicating Your Vision
In my last posting, No Vision = No Leadership, I addressed the fact that it is extremely critical for a leader to have a clear vision before they can articulate it to their team. The vision can be with respect to the team and how, you, the leader envision it in the future, or it can be about a specific initiative and the product, service, change that will come out of it. Both types are important.
Why is a clear vision important? Because it serves as a guiding light, a “leader’s intent” statement, to inspire your team for them to aim high (inspirational leadership). You as a leader cannot spell each and every detail of what needs to happen. But if your team knows your intent, they can adjust and fill details as needed.
So, let’s say you have such a vision in mind, how do you communicate it to the team and, more importantly, get them engaged in it?
It starts with making sure that the vision is clear and can be articulated in a clear way. What will we look as a team in a year? Three years? What will the product enable our customer to do once it is available. Paint a picture with words of what you, as a leader, envision the vision to be. Use words that resonate with your audience. You may want to even develop actual pictures of the end point that can help them understand your vision. Review and discuss the vision with a small subset of your team or in…
