Creating Inspiration, part 3: Ask people to choose

In this time of change your ability to create inspiration is essential: both for attracting people to your project and enthusing them to do more.

There is no one ‘right’ way of achieving this. But every inspiring vision is formed from the same basic building blocks. The third of these blocks is to ask your audience to make a choice: will they support you or will they not?

At first sight it might seem to make sense to push everyone to say “Yes.”

But the more you force people into supporting you now, the more effort you will have to put into convincing them again and again in the future, every time an issue arises. And in these times of change there will be many issues…

Far better to share your vision with them in a way that inspires them, helps them to understand why it is their vision too. Then let them make up their own minds.

If they decide “Yes” then you will know that you can count on their committed support, no matter what happens.

And if they choose “No” then you will have saved yourself from a lot of future distractions.

The CEOs of Unilever and Apple both understand this. In recent years they have both effectively said to shareholders:

“This is where we are going…