A Leader’s Vision
The courage to find your passion, define your vision, and work toward your mission
Many imbue leadership with qualities: the ability to dictate to others, to negotiate, even charisma. But what we often forget about some of the world’s most memorable leaders is that they were governed by a vision that kept them on the path to changing the world, and inspired others to follow them. In her workshops and coaching sessions, Ela Crain focuses on helping participants find their passion and discover their vision so that they can be leaders who are agents of change, both inside and outside the workplace. I recently spoke to Ela about her unique approach to leadership and how discovering your inner leader can help you live a more purposeful life.
How much is leadership linked to an individual’s happiness and sense of purpose?
True leadership is about working toward a vision and inspiring people to join you on that journey. First of all, if you are working towards your vision and you have a mission, the biggest thing you get at that stage is a sense of purpose. What am I here for? What do I stand for? And I ask myself, why aren’t we addressing this in our schooling? I studied for seventeen years and no one ever asked me what I stood for. Truth be told, I didn’t know what I stood for as a person until I started coaching.
The first taste of this delicious liquor of leadership is having a purpose. And from there you start creating an impact.
I remember giving a workshop to only one participant when I started coaching. And I was happy that someone turned up because I had someone to go on this journey with me, someone to challenge my ideas, demand more, and ask questions. This is how you start creating an impact: one person at a time — and it reenergizes you, makes you feel more alive.
When you clearly see whatever your vision is, you feel a wild joy, and that will give you so much energy. It’s not like ambition, it’s just joy. It blurs the line between work and play; it makes you want to do more for others. That’s why I say leadership isn’t about the leader, it’s about community. And good leaders always keep that in mind — that they are there to serve the community and solve a problem, while fake leaders want attention and control.
What if you aren’t a natural leader or in a job that requires you to be a leader. Should you still care about leadership?
As I like to put it, you’re either in a crowd or in a tribe. A crowd doesn’t make an impact or have any influence on anything. It’s more like a bunch of people waiting around at a bus stop. A tribe, on the other hand, is a powerful community of people who share a vision. So if you have a job where you just receive instructions, you are disempowering yourself. It’s easy to blame your job, your boss, your environment, the economy, the government, and so on. But in the end, you’re wasting your life — not somebody else’s.
It takes courage and discipline to get out of such a trap, to persist until you find the role that’s just for you. And it doesn’t need to be a high-profile job. I’ve seen cleaning ladies who clean like Picasso paints. It’s not about the job, it’s about your perspective: the sense of purpose, service, and positive impact.
When I say impact, I don’t mean changing the world by yourself. Just ask yourself how you can contribute to a cause that you are passionate about. You can play a huge role by inspiring people, doing your job in a way that makes people happier, healthier, or wealthier — whatever your mission is. You can be a masseur, for example, helping a CEO through tough times, or you can be a leader working for another leader in order to have a greater impact. In a healthy environment, there are structures but not a hierarchy. In a healthy company, a bunch of leaders take care of the system independently, and you can turn any role in that system into a leadership role if you keep in mind the impact you want to have.
You’ve been running businesses for a long time. What lessons have you taken away from your time as a leader?
It’s funny, because I wouldn’t even say I’m a leader, but then I end up being one somehow. When I attended a workshop in London recently, people were hungry and no one was taking any action. So I googled a restaurant, called them up, reserved a table, and asked everyone if they wanted to join me — and then I was a leader! The point is, even something so simple is an act of leadership. But it wasn’t intended, I wasn’t sitting there thinking, ‘let me lead these people.’
I believe leadership is creating a space for like-minded people to join you on your journey. The power is in this togetherness, synergy, and connection. The value is in having people stand for the same thing and then working on that thing together, wholeheartedly.
Another lesson I learned is: trust. Before managing two companies, I didn’t trust myself or others as much. Today, I start every relationship, personal or professional, with full trust — 100% trust. I select who I’m going to interact with, of course, but once I’m in I start with trust. Simply because:
1. I trust my judgment of people
2. I trust that if my judgment is wrong, I’ll handle it
If someone breaks something, steals something, or does a sloppy job, it’s fine. I’ve handled worse things. This is the trust I gained by losing money, by shutting down my business, by creating another one, by growing too fast, by managing whatever life threw at me. Sometimes I did an excellent job, sometimes I didn’t. But that’s what leadership is: having the courage to deal with whatever comes up. By doing this, you grow as a person and you learn how to truly trust yourself. Once you trust yourself, trusting your judgment of others comes naturally.
What are some little actions everyone can take daily to become a better leader?
Like I said, it can be taking a group of people to a restaurant when everyone is hungry. It’s all about taking an active role, rather than giving in to your inner-judge or inner-victim. More broadly, finding that thing that makes your heart beat is crucial.
Because with passion, it’s not your mind that speaks, it’s your heart. So connect with your heart.
We ask a million questions to our minds each day: how to I do this, when do I do that? But we never ask anything to our hearts. So when there is an important question, I ask my mind and then I ask my heart: how do you feel about this, which one would you prefer? That way, I get a better and more balanced answer.
Leadership is tightly linked with a vision and a sense of purpose. So connecting with people who have similar passions is an important step. If your passion is cake decoration, then go to Meetup.com and start a cake decoration Meetup. From that community will come a mission or vision. Being a leader doesn’t mean you have to have a vision and only then can you announce the mission. It can start with a vision, the vision can come later, or change drastically. Leadership is all about providing the space for things to emerge.
After finding your passion and connecting with like-minded people, next step is action. So ask yourself, what you want to do with this passion. Do you want to teach it? Do you want to create awareness around it? These are the actions that make a good leader a great one, so think thoroughly, listen deeply, and never let your things go to your head.
To learn more about Ela Crain and her upcoming workshops, visit her website at http://elacrain.com. If you enjoyed this article, please like it so others can find it too!
