No Vision = No Leadership
By definition, leadership moves a group towards a goal. But what if the goal is not understood? Or worse yet, missing? At best you’ll have some individuals or teams taking action towards what they think should be a goal. At worse, you’ll get nothing much. So a vision is needed for (effective) leadership. It is a necessary, albeit not a sufficient condition. But we’ll focus on vision here.
What provides that goal? It’s a vision. No, not the ones you could get from mushrooms or drugs, but one that paints where the organization and project should be in the future. A leader must provide such a vision. This is one of the behaviors (sub-domains) in the Personal Leadership domain in the Six Domains of Leadership™. (See Delta Leadership Inc.’s website for details on the Six Domains of Leadership.) A leader must “provide a clear vision”, “lead with confidence”, and “think about things in innovative ways”. These are leadership behavior of a leadership sharing and communicating a vision.
Great, but how does a leader develop a vision so they can communicate it?
Ideally, a leader can leverage a vision from higher up in the organization that they can then turn into a vision for their team. This effort requires that the leader understand what role their team fulfills in the organization’s bigger vision. Some contextual leadership is needed here, to understand the…
