“A vision gives meaning and purpose to your actions. It is the picture on the jigsaw box of life” Anon
Frequently, vision is listed as one of the qualities that effective and successful leaders demonstrate. It is often cited as the difference between managing and leading. Learn more about the importance of leadership vision on our Leadership Skills Training Course in Brighton, Sussex.
Vision is about generating ideas about the way ahead and, more importantly, being able to articulate these ideas to others in such a way as to secure their understanding and gain their commitment to what you are trying to achieve. One of the keys indicators of high-performance teams is shared vision.
A vision is not a vague dream but a desired outcome and creating it involves:
- Having absolute conviction about the issue, the project, your team etc
- Thinking about the desired future and asking yourself what it will look and feel like
- Testing out your ideas on people you trust
- Building a shared vision with the team
- Involving others in the development of the vision
- Ensuring their commitment
Do you have a vision?
How do you share this with others?
How do you inspire others with your vision?
If you can motivate and inspire others, you can take them along with your vision and they can play their unique part in achieving it.
A great deal is written and said about motivation and it is certainly a key issue for leaders to address.
Key strategies for motivating others
- Give staff a clear understanding of the context of their job and the importance of their function.
- Ensure that everyone agrees achievable personal development objectives and action plans.
- Give all members of staff a challenge so that they will feel stimulated and involved.
- Give inexperienced people more attention and provide on-going training.
- Delegate whole tasks to people so that they develop new skills and feel empowered and motivated to take on more
- Encourage employees to feel like a team by involving everyone
- Always give recognition and thanks to those who deserve it.
- Encourage employees to have high expectations of themselves and to see difficulties as opportunities not problems.
- Show genuine concern when individuals appear to be in difficulties at work
- Deal with unsatisfactory performance assertively not aggressively
- Avoid blaming
- Expect excellent performance – and don’t accept poor performance.
- Ensure staff have the time, resources and opportunity to develop the necessary capabilities to achieve success.
- Show you’re on their side by getting resources for them and working on overcoming organisational blockages.
- Make success visible – notice, appreciate, reward, celebrate and publicise success.
- Don’t ask others to do what you are not prepared to do yourself
- Lead from the front!
