Vision Is Communicated Direction
For a leader, vision is all about helping others see that bigger picture and begin to make those connections to a larger effort. As a leader, you need to focus on being the effective communicator of direction to your team.
Knowing Where You're Going
Is there any doubt whether an organization with clearly defined goals and objectives has a greater chance of achieving them than one operating in a muddle? It only takes one experience working with a befuddled group to wipe the doubt from your mind. The single biggest contributor to a lack of team vision is that the leaders haven't thoroughly sought to understand where the group is going and what it takes to get there.
The fatal mistake many make is thinking that because they say they want to do something, they must have vision. Nothing is further from the truth. Talking about a direction is no more than stating a desire. Before helping others find their way, leaders must have developed their own vision of a group's goals. The process is rigorous and demanding. Unless effort is put in at the beginning, there will be no results at the end.
Communication Makes Things Possible
Leaders can have a fully developed vision of where they need an organization to go and still get nothing from it if they can't communicate their vision to everyone else. When you do communicate a vision effectively, amazing things are possible. Just as having a vision is more than simply saying you want something, communicating a vision means more than just telling someone what you see.
Explaining vision is like explaining the experience of eating a peach. Your words may be well chosen and your imagery may be strong, but ultimately all you have is a person hearing about how good a peach is and wondering why you don't just give them some fruit.
Communicating vision is the process of working with others so they can create and implement a vision. That way, instead of depending on an intellectual grasp of an idea that will fade or just become some kind of curiosity, you pass along an experience that sticks with your team. Then, as circumstances change, the team members can refresh and expand their vision as necessary. You see the effect and effectiveness of the communication in what happens with the team members. You're on the right track if they become more enthused and involved. People are stimulated and excited in an environment that rewards learning and renews commitment.
No Communication? No Vision
When the leader doesn't effectively help people establish vision, then the exact opposite of “stimulated and excited” happens. Team members cannot know what they need to achieve or how to get there because they don't know where the team or organization is going. Why? Because no one bothered to tell them.
As a leader, you need to give the people on your team more than a road map. They need a tangible sense of the path — a 3D relief map, if you will. You want them to feel the rises and dips and see the goal as a palpable place.
Without such a map, the team will do nothing — at best. At worst, members will start setting their own objectives, which could easily go off in directions you don't want. But they don't want to stand around waiting for someone to tell them what to do. So don't make them wait. Build a vision and communicate it.
The Vision Process
Creating vision is really a process of building understanding. You don't come up with the “magic phrasing” that brings things alive for team members. Instead, you move through a series of steps:
Review the organization's principles.
Examine the specific goal.
Determine how the goal supports the principle.
Break the goal down.
Help team members build their own vision.
Be receptive to vision from below.
Fundamental to all these steps is the ability to ask the right types of questions.
