Values, Vision & Entrepreneurial Leadership: Lesson One
Intention & Possibility Frame Your Values
It all starts with values. Sort of. But we’ll get to that.
A few years ago I taught an online course called “Vision, Values and Entrepreneurial Leadership.” As I look back on it, one thing that always bothered me was the course title. It had already been announced by the school, so they were unwilling to change it.
The problem? The concepts it was to cover showed up in the wrong order.
The more organizations I work for and with, the more I believe that the personal values of the leader (or the founder, particularly if they are still in residence) shape and drive the culture of an organization. Even when you come to lead something that’s been around long before you were, it will still shift and shape under your guiding hand.
It all starts with values. Your own, first.
So now as I share these thought pieces, I’ve changed the name to reflect the proper order… Your personal values come first.
In subsequent “lessons” we’re going to address values, but before we get to that, let’s spend some time on the context in which organizations, enterprises and leaders operate because this is how you make value works the hardest; in other words, a context.
We tend to assume that “values” are positive, probably because of the positive associations with the word “value” in all its definitions. However, values really are what someone thinks are most important, the underlying assumptions that drive their decisions and behaviors but they aren’t always positive, or at least, they don’t always manifest in a positive way.
For example, if you value being right, that can be a positive - if you do your homework thoroughly and make sure you carefully make an argument then this can be a great value that can lead to smart decisions and can energize teams… but if you need to be right all the time and you simply trust your own instinct and willingness to fight for your position, this “value” can quickly turn negative. Rather than creating an environment of clear thinking, discussion and attention to detail, it can turn argumentative, emotional and hurtful fairly quickly. The same is true for valuing action. Many organizations get caught up in indecision and inaction so action can be an important thing to value. But if you take it too far, you can sacrifice strategy and productivity if you value only action and activity.
Your personal values as a leader that shape and shift your organization have to be managed so they can be assets that help you lead effectively.
The easiest way to mange that is to frame them in a context of something positive. Over the years, I’ve noticed a pattern; one thing the strongest leaders I’ve worked with share is that they help their teams feel a sense of possibility. No matter the audience — their own teams, their customers, their board, the investment community — and no matter their personality, when you are in the presence of a real leader, you feel a sense of belief, because things seem possible.
For some it comes naturally. Some have to be — or choose to be — very intentional about this. They work hard to help people see the power of the vision and they make an effort to let their everyone know how much they see potential in the team.
Consciously or unconsciously, they also use this sense of possibility as an over-arching governor on what they do and how they behave. It’s the ultimate “positivity” screen… if a value, decision, action or thought somehow diminishes a sense of possibility, you have to pay close attention.
If this isn’t something you’ve thought about before , it doesn’t come naturally for you, or you haven’t done it (or thought much about it) before, how do you do it? How do you go about becoming someone who leaves possibility in their wake?
Sometimes it’s a matter of uncovering it, sometimes it’s a matter of discovering it and sometimes it’s a matter of creating it.
Here are a few ways to be very intentional about this. Like in most things, focus and practice are the secret. Here are a few things you can do — some are specific tasks and some are habits you can adopt.
- Read “The Art of Possibility.” The Zanders are artists of life — people who open themselves to the energy of others and when they need to find the surplus required to create real possibility, they have a trick of getting it from others, something you’ll see time and time again in the pages of what is one of my favorite books. (Zander, Rosamund Stone and Benjamin, The Art of Possibility, 2000, ISBN 08758447706, 0142001104, used from $5, new from $5.)
- Let your own life be your teacher — be a serious journal keeper. For a significant part of my career I traveled halfway round the world at least twice a month. During that time I was often alone and I found myself writing in my journal. It was like talking to a friend. Little did I know that the material in that journal was the first step in formulating the principles that would someday be the foundation for my company. In the pages of those old journals, I found a reflection of myself and insights into what mattered most.
- Look for lessons in things you’ve already done — write down three times in your life that you uncovered or created possibility you didn’t think was there. Don’t get bogged down or overthink things. Mine your personal life for these if you can’t find them in your work. Did you ever have to start a lemonade stand to make money to buy something you really wanted? Did you ever go off on a trip by yourself with no idea where you were going to stay? Did you ever start a job and on the first day think you were a fraud since you really didn’t know how to do what you had been hired to do? Why did you think success would be possible? It turns out most people have many examples if they look at their personal histories. Use your life experience to try to draw some conclusions about why you thought the risk would pay off — that is the art of creating the possible.
- Practice “risk-taking” by trying something new. One thing we all need to understand is our own level of risk tolerance. I don’t know if we can — or should — try to change who we are, but particularly if you find you have a low risk tolerance, it’s really important that you do something to stretch your own willingness to try things… leading is about confidence in things yet unseen (another definition of “possibility”) and if you are scared it’s hard to be confident. So try things. Little things. New things. Like you did when you were a child. Find an address of a place you haven’t been before and try to find it without a GPS. This exercise sounds simple but you may find yourself practicing “risk taking” in lots of ways… trying new routes, observing details you would otherwise miss and putting them together in different ways, asking for help, asking direction, discovering interesting things along the way. Take the subway in an unfamiliar city instead of a cab. I’ve done this in New York and Paris and Tokyo. It scared me at first — all for different reasons — but every time I felt like once I got the hang of it the city opened itself up to all sorts of new possibilities.
- Draw the future by getting in the habit of writing things down. Sometimes the mere act of writing down your ideas will create a framework for possibility. The other day I was with a client who began to list all the things that he was worried about as he tried to continue to build his business in a fast-paced competitive industry. Rapid fire, one after another…. the list was really long. As he talked, I wrote and I found myself categorizing his worries. When we finished, it was clear that he had two big worries and a whole lot of other small ones. When I showed it to him that way, it was as if a giant weight lifted. “Two I can handle,” he said as he smiled. “Thank you — this makes it a lot simpler.”
A sense of possibility — and a sense of shared belief in it — is the primary job of any leader and is the easiest way you can ground your values to make sure that they manifest in positive ways. You do it by how you think, where you spend your energy and how you inspire others. There is no limit to how much you can manufacture. You need time, an openness to new or different ways of thinking. But most of all, you need the intention that will make you start.
To be a creator of possibility, and to inspire others to feel it too, means you must look further, consider deeper and ponder longer. Do it. It is your choice. Be intentional about it. You’ll find it’s not that hard and it’s something you can practice no matter what leadership stage, organization or life stage you are in.
Intention can help you create possibility.
Possibility inspires.
Practice creating it.
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This is the first lesson in a series of nine by Jane Melvin, the founder and president of Strategic Innovations Group, Inc., a strategy and creativity consulting practice. These lessons grew from content she originally created for an online course in an MBA program.
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