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Commitment #3: Envision the Future
Divya Pari was in the third year of her biotechnology degree program in India when she volunteered to work as one of the editors of Nucleo, an annual magazine published by the Biotech Department. The magazine was created, designed, and managed by the members of Biotikos, the biotech students' association, and was very popular among the university's more than twelve hundred biotech students.
In addition to managing the various aspects of magazine content creation and editing that year, Divya initiated the sale of one hundred unsold copies by marketing them in other universities with biotech courses. In total, about six hundred copies were printed and sold. As a result of her experiences, Divya was asked to be the editor-in-chief for the next edition. “I had about eight months' time to lead a team of about thirty biotech students to accomplish this,” she told us.
But Divya had a broader future in mind for the magazine than simply getting the next edition created and published in the same fashion as the last. “I saw an opportunity to serve the biotech student community both in my university and in the country at large,” she said.
I envisioned a single student magazine immensely popular among all the biotech students in India, a tool that presented opportunities to foster collaboration among all biotech students and a means to raise funds for student biotech projects by generating advertising revenue. The more I saw what was possible, the more I became excited.
I could clearly see all the possibilities end to end, the people who would benefit from this project and how my unique role fit into the whole equation. Every aspect of it excited me, and I looked forward to each new day with enthusiasm. I became intensely inspired by my vision and committed to this goal.
Divya's first challenge was to convince the team of thirty students that this dream was indeed achievable. To do that, she got the team to take stock of what needed to be done to improve the reach and quality of the magazine. To improve the reach, they would have to build their network and enlist students from other universities to aid in the marketing. To improve the quality, the content of the magazine needed to be more student focused—a direction that the team would determine by surveying the magazine's student audience. In addition to soliciting donations from sponsors, selling ad space could help increase revenue. Print quality could be improved by avoiding some of the mistakes made in earlier editions. “By sketching a detailed plan in my mind,” Divya said, “I mustered the necessary confidence to talk to my team and take things forward.”
Divya organized a meeting of the entire team where she shared her vision for the magazine: a top-notch biotech magazine for students that would be read throughout the country. “I explained what we had done so far, what it would take to make this dream happen, and why it mattered,” she told us.
Many reacted, “More than two thousand copies? Sell ad space? Sell Nucleo in other universities? You are crazy!”
When your group wonders if you could be crazy, it could make you doubt yourself and your plans. I managed to overcome this with heartfelt persuasive and motivational talk. I said things like, “Only in doing things never done before do we push boundaries, grow in the process, and gain new skills” and “We could either be like all other student magazine teams or do something incredible that we feel truly proud of when we look back.”
Divya detailed each step of the plan and said that it was not her logic but the fact that the team “wanted to be a part of a passionate work bigger than them” that inspired them to join in her vision. “They signed up despite knowing that we did not have all the answers to all the problems because we could not foresee all the problems and challenges ourselves,” Divya told us. She also believed that her sense of purpose, passion, and excitement, which the team seemed to exhibit with equal intensity, convinced them to subscribe to the new direction for the magazine. “Their sustained motivation for the next eight months ensured that they put in their very best efforts,” Divya said.
When the magazine came out the following spring, the registrar and other university officials praised it; students said Nucleo's quality was excellent, its price reasonable––and that it could have been priced higher! “We sold close to two thousand copies,” Divya told us. “The team was beyond glad and happy. We felt truly satisfied and fulfilled.”
Divya's story illustrates how a new initiative—whether a single project, a campus-wide program, or a student movement—begins with one person's imagination. Call it what you will—vision, purpose, mission, legacy, dream, aspiration, calling, or personal agenda—the intent is the same. If you are going to be an exemplary leader, you must be able to imagine the future you want for yourself and others. When you do that, and when you feel passionate about the difference you want to make, you are much more likely to take that first step forward. But if you don't care about the future or don't have the slightest clue about your hopes, dreams, and aspirations, the chance is slim that you will lead others anywhere beyond where they currently are. In fact, you may not even see the opportunity that's right in front of you.
Exemplary leaders are forward looking. They envision the future and gaze across the horizon, seeing greater opportunities to come. They imagine that noble feats are possible and that something extraordinary can emerge from the ordinary, something that benefits their entire group, team, organization, or larger community. They develop an ideal and unique image of the future for the common good.
But such a vision doesn't belong only to the leader. It must be a shared vision. Everyone has hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Everyone wants tomorrow to be better than today. Shared visions attract more people, sustain higher levels of motivation, and withstand more challenges than those that are exclusive to only a few. You need to make sure that what you can see is also something that others can see and embrace.
The first commitment of Inspire a Shared Vision is to Envision the Future for yourself and others by mastering these two essentials:
- Imagine the possibilities
- Find a common purpose
You begin with the end in mind by imagining what might be possible. Finding a common purpose inspires people to want to make that vision a reality.
Imagine the Possibilities
“The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future,” writes Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University (italics his). “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future.”1 Being forward looking is an essential characteristic that people seek in their leaders, and in our studies, it is selected by a majority of student leaders as a quality they desire in someone they would willingly follow. People don't generally expect this characteristic from their peers, yet our global data on leadership characteristics indicates that the quality of focusing on the future most differentiates people who are seen as leaders from those who are not.2
Leaders are dreamers. Leaders are idealists. Leaders are possibility thinkers. As Divya's experience illustrates, all ventures, big or small, begin with the belief that what today is merely a yearning will one day be reality. It's this belief that sustains leaders and their constituents through the difficult times. Turning exciting possibilities into an inspiring shared vision ranks near the top of the list of every leader's most important responsibilities.
When we ask people to tell us where their visions come from, they often have great difficulty in describing the process. When they do provide an answer, it's typically about a feeling, a sense, or a gut instinct. There's often no explicit logic or rationale to it. Clarifying your vision, like clarifying your values, is a process of self-exploration and self-creation. It's an intuitive, emotional process.
When Kirstyn Cole reflected on her personal-best leadership experience, she noted that “being a leader often means going out on a ledge; it means being scared sometimes. But you shouldn't be afraid to see things differently, because sometimes your perspective is the one that is necessary and enables you to lead.” It can seem difficult, as a leader, to know where you want to take others. You may want to wait for the “right answer” to appear. Yet the right answer, as Kirstyn points out, may well reside within you already. Finding it requires trusting yourself and that gut feeling you have about an idea you can't seem to let go of. You just feel strongly about something, and you feel compelled to explore that sense, that intuition. Visions come from the heart. They are reflections of your fundamental beliefs and assumptions—about human nature, technology, economics, science, politics, art, and ethics.
A vision of the future is much like a literary or musical theme. It's the main message that you want to convey; it's the frequently recurring melody that you want people to remember; and whenever it's repeated, it reminds the audience of the entire work. Every leader needs a theme, something on which he or she can structure the rest of the performance. Recall that for Jacob Philpott, it was preparing low-income students for college; for Bethany Fristad, it was helping underprivileged children; for Kenzie Crane, it was enriching the experiences of women joining sororities; and for Divya Pari, it was publishing a first-rate, revenue-producing student magazine. They could see what they wanted to have happen; they saw how something that didn't exist or wasn't happening now could be possible in the future.
There are several ways you can improve your capacity to imagine exciting possibilities and to discover the central theme for your life, and the lives of others. You get better at imagining the future when you intentionally and consciously reflect on where you want to take others. This requires you to reflect on your past, attend to the present, prospect the future, and express your passion.
Reflect on Your Past
As contradictory as it might seem, in aiming for the future, you first need to look back into your past. Looking backward before you stare straight ahead enables you to see further into the future. Understanding the past can help you identify themes, patterns, and beliefs that both underscore why you care about certain ideals and explain why realizing those aspirations is such a high priority for you.3 Student groups often look at those who came before them to see how things are done, and repeat them, finding that the steep learning curve of doing something new themselves is discouraging. But reflecting on the past isn't about repeating prior practices. Leaders don't settle for replicating what was done before. They look to the past as a context from which to learn and a platform from which to spring.
While a student in Ghana, Christian Gbwardo started The Leadership Lab to combat corruption in Africa. The organization was rooted in his reflections about how the dishonesty he saw around him had come to be. As he thought about how this situation had arisen, he realized that those who had come into power had “only been exposed to corruption and greed, and assumed, therefore, that is what government is meant to be.”
My father showed my family that corruption serves few and denies many. I grew up understanding that we are here to help each other, not take from each other. I realized the only way to stop this trend was to expose young people to an alternative as they become young adults, the way I was. They need to see that there is another way.
None of this is to say that the past is the future. That would be like trying to drive while looking only in the rearview mirror. It's just that when you look deeply into your entire life's history, even as a young person, you understand things about yourself and about your world that you cannot fully comprehend by looking at the future as a blank slate. It's difficult, if not impossible, to imagine going to a place you've never experienced, either actually or vicariously. Taking a journey into your past before exploring your future makes the trip much more meaningful.
Attend to the Present
The daily pressures, the pace of change, the complexity of problems, and the turbulence in the world can often hold your mind hostage and make you think that you have neither the time nor the energy to be future oriented. But looking to the future doesn't mean you should ignore what is going on in the present. In fact, it means you must be more mindful about it.
You must get off automatic pilot, believing that you know everything you need to know, viewing the world through preestablished categories, and not noticing what's going on around you. To increase your ability to conceive of new and creative solutions to today's problems, you must be present in the present. You must stop, look, and listen.
Christian looked around at the extracurricular programs that high school students were currently attending, and explored how he might build The Leadership Lab to have some of the same appeal. He looked at college-age programs at his university and such programs in the United States when he was studying abroad. He looked at their purpose, offerings, and popularity, took the best of what he saw for Africa, and began to build his program.
Right now, as you listen to the members of your team, club, or group, what are the hot topics of conversation? What are they saying they need and want? What are they saying should be changed? Is there anything that they have suddenly stopped talking about that seems puzzling? What does all this tell you right now about where things are going?
To be able to envision the future, you need to realize what's already going on. You need to spot the trends and patterns and appreciate both the whole and the parts. You need to be able to clearly see at the same time both the immediate situation your group is in and the greater possibilities available to them. You need to be able to see the forest and the trees.
Imagine the future as a jigsaw puzzle. You see the pieces, and you begin to figure out how they fit together, one by one, into a whole. Similarly, with your vision, you need to rummage through the bits and bytes of data that accumulate daily and notice how they fit together into a picture of what's ahead. Envisioning the future is not about gazing into a fortune-teller's crystal ball; it's about paying attention to the little things that are going on all around you and being able to recognize patterns that point to the future.
Prospect the Future
Even as you stop, look, and listen to messages in the present, you also need to raise your head and gaze out toward the horizon. Being forward looking is not the same as meeting the deadline for your current project. Leaders have to imagine what the future will hold. They have to be on the lookout for emerging developments—changes inside and outside their groups, such as new technologies, trends on campus, and neighborhood, national, and world news. They have to anticipate what might be coming just over the hill and around the corner. They have to prospect the future.
There is no hard-and-fast rule as to how far into the future a leader should look. In fact, in school settings, most student leaders might have a time frame that extends through the entire academic term, or perhaps as far out as graduation. Contrast this perspective with supervisors, who typically need to see at least a few years ahead; middle managers, who need to see five or more years into the future; and the most senior executives, who focus on a horizon that's ten-plus years, or even more, into the future. What's critical is not losing sight of the bigger picture while working on whatever it is you are currently doing.
The future is where the opportunity lies; leaders are constantly asking themselves “What's new?” and “What's next?” even while they may be hunkering down in the present. Like Divya, Kirstyn, and their colleagues, you need to make choices today that are consistent with where you want to be in the future and, indeed, choices that tee you up for it. Master chess players study what has happened in the past, and play the game in the present, but make moves designed to get their pieces, and their opponents' pieces, into specific places for a future victory. This is the kind of thinking characterized by great scholars, athletes, video game players, and leaders.
Visions are made real over different spans of time. It may take six months to create a new-member recruitment and orientation process. It may take a couple of years to build your new group into one of the most respected student organizations on campus, just as it may take a decade to build a company that is one of the best places to work. It may take a lifetime to make neighborhoods safe again for children to walk alone. It may take a century to restore a forest destroyed by a wildfire. It may take generations to set people free. Pursuing meaningful change is what matters, not how long it will take to make the change.
As a student leader, you have the opportunity to develop the ability to be forward looking now so that you are experienced with visioning as you move into the workplace. It can seem unimportant to think about the future when you consider the relatively brief amount of time you are in school leading others. Yet we know that leaders must be forward thinking all the time, regardless of the circumstances in which they find themselves. Even if you are leading others on a project that might last only a quarter, semester, or academic year, you can still imagine what you want things to be or look like at the end of that period. It takes practice to develop the ability to envision the future, and it's a skill you will apply throughout your life. Why not start now?
Give greater weight to thinking about what you're going to do after you complete the current problem, task, assignment, project, or program. “What's next?” should be a question you ask yourself frequently. As a student, you are living in a culture where the goals are short term; “If I can just get through this paper [or this exam, or this semester]” is often the prevailing mindset. But if you're not thinking about what's happening after the completion of your longest-term project, then you're thinking only as long term as everyone else. In other words, you're redundant! The leader's job is to think about the next project, and the one after that, and the one after that. This mindset can be very easy for student leaders to ignore. Your time in school, which may seem to last forever, is actually a very short part of your life. An important time, surely, but short in the context of a whole lifetime. It is imperative to create time and space to think about the next things in your life, whether for your immediate school experience or those yet to come in your life beyond school.
Whether it's through reading about trends, attending guest lectures on campus, talking with others outside your campus about issues they face, listening to international news sources, reading a variety of blogs, or watching different types of TED Talks, a significant part of being a leader is developing a deep understanding of where things are going. Those who willingly follow you expect you to have that understanding. You need to spend more of today thinking more about tomorrow if your future is going to be an improvement over the present. And throughout the process of reflecting on your past, attending to the present, and prospecting the future, you also need to keep in touch with what moves you, what you care about, and where your passion lies.
Express Your Passion
Passion goes hand in hand with attention. No one can imagine possibilities when they don't feel passionate about what they're doing. Envisioning the future requires you to connect with your deepest feelings. You have to find something that's so important that you're willing to put in the time, suffer the inevitable setbacks, and make the necessary sacrifices. Everyone has concerns, desires, questions, propositions, arguments, hopes, and dreams—core issues that can help them organize their aspirations and actions. And everyone has a few things that are much more important to them than other things. Whatever yours are, you need to be able to name them so that you can talk about them with others. You have to step back and ask yourself, “What is my burning passion? What gets me up in the morning? What's grabbed hold of me and won't let go?”
This is exactly the thinking you should use to determine what you want to get involved in. Rather than joining groups or seeking experiences because you think it “looks good on your résumé,” you should be looking for pursuits you feel passionate about. Leaders want to do something significant, to accomplish something that no one else has yet achieved. What that something is—your sense of meaning and purpose—has to come from within. No one can impose a self-motivating vision on you. That's why, just as we said about values, you must first clarify your image of the future before you can expect to enlist others in a shared vision. As JD Scharffenberger told us about his experience as captain of the baseball team:
I realized that the easiest way to inspire my teammates was to truly embrace and show my passion for the game. I believe when others saw my dedication toward the future that they were also intrigued by what we could accomplish. They would not have been so inspired if I didn't openly show my excitement on a day-to-day basis.
Researchers in human motivation have long talked about two kinds of motivation—extrinsic and intrinsic.4 People do things either because of external controls—the possibility of a tangible reward if they succeed or punishment if they don't—or because of an internal desire. People do something because they feel forced or because they want to. People do something to please others or to please themselves. It's no surprise that intrinsic motivators are more likely to produce extraordinary results. The research is very clear on this subject: external motivation is likely to create conditions of compliance or defiance; self-motivation generates commitment and far superior results. There's even an added bonus. People who are self-motivated will keep working toward a result even if there's no reward.5 You've probably seen examples of this in sports. Even when it's obvious they will lose the game, team members continue to play their hearts out because they are internally motivated. People who are externally driven are likely to stop trying once the rewards or punishments are removed.6
Exemplary student leaders have a passion for something other than their personal fame and fortune. They care about making a difference. If you don't care deeply for and about something, how can you expect others to feel any sense of conviction? How can you expect others to feel passion if you're not energized and excited? How can you expect others to suffer through the long hours, hard work, absences from home, and personal sacrifices if you're not similarly committed? When Christine Mielke was asked to describe how she launched Temptalia, now one of the most popular beauty blogs on the web, with over one million unique visitors each month, she replied:
My career—if you can really call it that; I think I have way too much fun for it to be a career!—began as a hobby, so it was and still is a very organic process. I just started doing something that I loved and was interested in, and by staying dedicated to it and finding ways to make it better, it ended up being much more successful than I ever thought possible.
And if you ask her if she ever gets tired of blogging several times each day, she'll say, “Nope. I just remember why I blog and who I blog for—the readers—and that I never want to let them down!” Christine feels passionately that “every person deserves to feel beautiful and confident from the inside out and free to express themselves,” and her passion not only energizes her but inspires others to share this same vision.
When you feel your passion, as Christine clearly does, you know you are on to something meaningful and significant. Your enthusiasm and drive spread to others. Finding something you truly believe in is the key to articulating a vision in the first place. Once you're in touch with this inner feeling, you can look and think beyond the constraints of your current role and view the possibilities available in the future.
Find a Common Purpose
Much too often it is assumed that leaders have the sole responsibility to be the visionaries. After all, if focusing on the future sets leaders apart, it's understandable that people would get the feeling that it's the leader's job to embark alone on a vision quest to discover the future of their organization.
This is not what people expect. Yes, leaders are expected to be forward looking, but they aren't expected to impose their vision of the future on others. People want to hear more than just the leader's vision. They want to hear about how their visions and aspirations will come true, how their own hopes and dreams will be fulfilled. They want to see themselves in the picture of the future that the leader is painting. The crucial task for leaders is inspiring a shared vision, not selling their personal view of the world. What this requires is finding common ground among the people who will implement the vision. People in the group want to feel part of the process.7
Jade Orth began learning about leadership back in middle school. She believes that the lessons she learned then, about giving back, drive what is important to her today. Her earlier experiences helped her define a vision for an event she initiated with a small group of students on her college campus to give something back to their community: a Veterans Day ceremony to recognize local veterans. Jade had several family members who served in the military, and she first brought others along in realizing her vision by sharing with the group why she felt so strongly that it was important to have such a ceremony. Nothing was being done in Jade's college town to honor the substantial number of veterans there who had sacrificed much and gotten very little recognition and appreciation in return. In talking with the people around campus who she thought could help make the Veterans Day observance a reality, Jade shared her vision of making the ceremony an annual event. A group of supporters formed around this kernel of an idea, and people started to share their thoughts about how to sustain the program. Some of the ideas didn't work out and others did, but the group kept talking through their visions. Jade knew that she couldn't just “tell” others what to do. Through this sharing and discussions, they worked to keep the focus on the things that would make the event special rather than being concerned about whose idea was being selected.
What Jade found out is something every leader must understand: nobody likes being told what to do or where to go, no matter how right it might be. People want to be a part of the process of developing a vision. The vast majority of people are just like Jade's team members. They want to walk with their leaders. They want to dream with them, invent with them, and be involved in creating their futures.
This means that you have to stop taking the view that visions come from the top down. Jade said,
It doesn't always have to be my idea, nor should it be. The more people we have sharing ideas, the better ideas we will get. We accepted that with five or seven heads in a group, we are going to get differing or conflicting views, but we approached our conversations with a give-and-take attitude, and that worked pretty well.
You have to start engaging others in a conversation about the future instead of delivering a monologue. You can't mobilize people to willingly travel to places they don't want to go. No matter how grand the dream of an individual, if others don't see themselves in it, realizing their own hopes and desires, they won't follow freely. You must show others how they, too, will be served by the long-term vision of the future, how their specific needs can be satisfied.
Students were asked about the extent that their leaders “talked with others about how their own interests could be met by working toward a common goal.” They were also asked to respond to the statement, “When working with this leader, I feel like I am making a difference around here.” The relationships were striking. As shown in Figure 3.1, two-thirds of those students who indicated that their leader very frequently engaged in talking about working toward a common goal strongly agreed that they felt they were making a difference; only about one in ten felt they were making a difference when their leader rarely or only once in a while talked about how working toward a common goal would help them meet their own interests. Similar results were found in the relationship between motivation levels and the extent that leaders were able to share a long-term vision of the future.
Jade was clear in her mind about what she hoped to accomplish, and she also was careful to make sure that others either shared in her ideas or had their thoughts incorporated into the vision for the ceremony. Jade told us that there were many people involved in launching the Veterans Day celebration, from fellow students to campus officials to local veterans. She said she knew that she had to trust others and their commitment to the cause. Rather than giving orders, Jade told us,
I regularly checked with the group to be sure we were all still on board with the project and staying true to what our vision was. If we weren't, I knew that I had a responsibility to keep us focused on our vision. I recognized that each person brought something special to the group, and I wanted to trust in and respect their ideas of where we should be going. It was about the collaboration.
Listen Deeply to Others
By knowing the members of your team, group, or organization, by listening to them, and by taking their advice, you are able to give a voice to their feelings. That's what Jade did. You're then able to stand before others and say with assurance, “Here's what I heard you say that you want for yourselves. Here's how your needs and interests will be served by all of us believing in this common cause.” In a sense, leaders hold up a mirror and reflect back to others what they say they want most.
One of the challenges Jade faced was being part of two structured groups at her college: she was enrolled in a leadership class and was also a member of student government, both of which had a stake in the event. She was able to help both groups come together and collaborate by understanding how each saw its role in the program. She talked regularly with both groups about their commitment to the program and also about what they were comfortable with and interested in doing. “I wanted to make sure both groups felt as comfortable as possible and felt that they could play the role they wanted in creating the event,” she said. “I did that by listening a lot to others.”
You need to strengthen your ability to hear what is important to others. The outlines of any vision do not come from a crystal ball. They originate from conversations with members of your team or club. They come from interactions with other students in classes, at campus events, and over meals. They're heard in the hallways, in meetings, and on social media. When Alvin Chen helped launch his university's first international summer academic camp, there were many things that needed to be done, and most of them for the first time in this new venue. Alvin said that “listening is one of the best things any leader can do,” and he and his team were, in his words, “learning as we went.” His takeaway lesson was an appreciation for how “every stakeholder has a voice, and you should never underestimate or undervalue their opinions.”
The best student leaders, as Alvin and Jade attest, are great listeners. They listen carefully to what other people say and how they feel. They ask purposeful (and often tough) questions, are open to ideas other than their own, and even lose arguments in favor of the common good. Through intense listening, leaders get a sense of what people want, what they value, and what they dream about. This sensitivity to others is no trivial skill. It is a truly precious human ability.
Make It a Cause for Commitment
When you listen deeply, you can find out what is meaningful to others. People stay loyal to an organization, research finds, because they like the people they work with, and they experience the work they are doing as challenging, meaningful, and purposeful.8 When you listen with sensitivity to the aspirations of others, you discover some common themes that bring meaning to work and life. Students—like people of all ages, it turns out—want to:
- Pursue values and goals congruent with their own
- Make a significant difference in the lives of others
- Do innovative work
- Learn and develop professionally and personally
- Engage in close and positive relationships
- Determine the course of their own lives
- Feel trusted and validated
Aren't these the essence of what most leadership challenges are all about? Research in the workplace suggests that people have a strong desire to make a difference. People want to know that they have done something on this earth, that there's a purpose to their existence. Work has become a place where people pursue meaning and identity. The same holds for participating in campus organizations, teams, and clubs. The best leaders satisfy this human desire by communicating both the significance of the group's work and the important role they play in creating it. This is true even at the level of a classroom group project—is there anything beyond passing the assignment that motivates you and others in the group to put your best efforts forward? When leaders clearly communicate a shared vision of an organization, they enrich those who work on its behalf. They elevate the human spirit.
When Ella Tepper served as one of the Campus Governors at her university, the group was charged with developing a program that would inform students about what student government could offer them and how they could get involved. In the past, the publicity for these events had mostly highlighted attending for the free food and giveaways. Ella was determined to make the experience more meaningful, she told us.
I'm a student too, and I knew that when I attended events like this, I wanted something more. I wanted to leave with more knowledge and have takeaways that were really useful. I wanted to create a way for people to talk about student government, ask questions, and learn.
Ella started by talking to the chief of staff about her ideas and then quickly went to the larger staff with a goal to create a program where students would leave with a good understanding and appreciation of what student government did for them. They quickly focused on how they could transform the event into a space for meaningful conversations about student government. This focus became the cause that the team was committed to, and they generated many good ideas about giveaways that would last and discussions that would truly inform. Together they came up with the idea of a safari. Each student got a passport to different areas where representatives from the different parts of student government were stationed to answer questions. Once the students circled through all the tables, they received a bag of school supplies.
The team, Ella explained, had come up with a way to spark significant conversations about the purpose of student government and provide participating students with useful and lasting souvenirs of the experience.
There is no way I would have come up with all the great ideas they had, and their commitment to design something that gave the students opportunities to ask questions and have meaningful dialogue was amazing. They were all so committed to helping students see the value of the student government they were part of. I may have been the leader, but they were the ones that made the event successful.
People commit to causes, not to plans. How else do you explain why people volunteer to rebuild communities ravaged by a tsunami; ride a bike from Austin, Texas, to Anchorage, Alaska, to raise money to fight cancer; or rescue people from the rubble of a collapsed building after a tornado? How else do you explain why people work 24/7 to create the next big thing when the probability of failure is very high? People are not committing to the plan in any of these cases. They are committing to something much bigger, something much more compelling than goals and milestones on a piece of paper. That's not to say that executing plans aren't important in realizing great dreams; they absolutely are. It's just to say that the plan isn't the thing that people are signing up for.
Look Forward in Times of Rapid Change
In a world that is changing at warp speed, people often ask, “How can I have a vision of what's going to happen over the next semester or year when I don't even know what's going to happen next week?” This question gets right to the heart of the role that visions play in people's lives. In this increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, visions are even more important to human survival and success than when times are calm, predictable, simple, and clear.
Think about it this way. Imagine you're driving along the Pacific Coast Highway heading south from San Francisco on a bright, sunny day. The hills are on your left, the ocean on your right. On some curves, the cliffs plunge several hundred feet to the water. You can see for miles and miles. You're cruising along at the speed limit, one hand on the wheel, tunes blaring, and not a care in the world. Suddenly, without warning, you come around a bend in the road, and there's a blanket of fog as thick as you've ever seen. What do you do?
We've asked this question many, many times, and here are some of the things people say:
- I slow way down.
- I turn my lights on.
- I tighten my grip on the steering wheel with both hands.
- I tense up.
- I sit up straight or even lean forward.
- I turn the music off.
Then you go around the next curve in the road, the fog lifts, and it's clear again. What do you do? Sit back and relax, speed up, turn the lights off, put the music back on, and enjoy the scenery.
This analogy illustrates the importance of clarity of vision. Are you able to go faster when it's foggy or when it's clear? How fast can you drive in the fog without risking your own or other people's lives? How comfortable are you riding in a car with someone who drives fast in the fog? The answers are obvious, aren't they? You're better able to go fast when your vision is clear. You're better able to anticipate the curves and bumps in the road when you can see ahead. No doubt, there are times in your life when you find yourself, metaphorically speaking, driving in the fog. When this happens, you get nervous and unsure of what's ahead. You slow down. But as the way becomes clearer, eventually you're able to speed up and continue forward along the path.
A very important part of a leader's job is to clear away the fog so that people can see further ahead, anticipate what might be coming in their direction, and watch out for potential hazards along the road. Simply put, to become a leader you must be able to envision the future. The speed of change doesn't alter this fundamental truth. People want to follow only those who can see beyond today's problems and visualize a brighter tomorrow.
Reflect and Act: Envision the Future
The most important role of vision is to focus people's energy. To enable everyone to see more clearly what's ahead, you must have and convey an exciting, unique, and meaningful vision of the future. The path to clarity of vision begins by reflecting on the past, moves to attending to the present, and then involves prospecting the future. The guidance system along this path is your passions—the ideals that you care about most deeply.
Although you must be clear about your vision before you can expect others to follow, you also need to keep in mind that you can't lead others to places they don't want to go. If the vision is going to attract more than just a few people, it must appeal to all who have a stake in it. Only shared visions have the magnetic power to sustain commitment over time, to keep people connected to the group or the cause. Listen to all the voices; listen for people's hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
A shared vision also needs to focus everyone on the future. To do that, it must be about more than a task or job. It needs to be about a cause, something meaningful, and something that makes a difference in people's lives. Whether you're leading a community project, a fraternity or sorority chapter, an athletic team, a campus-wide event, or a national student movement, a shared vision sets the agenda and gives direction and purpose to all those involved.
Reflect
The first commitment of Inspire a Shared Vision requires leaders to envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. Reflect on this commitment and answer these questions:
- What is the most important idea or lesson about exemplary leadership that you learned from this chapter?
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- What changes do you need to make in your leadership to better Envision the Future?
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- In the next section, there are some suggestions on what you can do to take action on Envision the Future. After you have reflected on what you learned and what you need to improve, select an action that you can take immediately to become a better leader.
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Take Action
Here are some things you can do to follow through on your commitment to Envision the Future:
- Determine what you most care about, what drives you, and where your passions lie.
- When you think about all the things you want to accomplish, can you say why these are so important to you? What makes these aspirations meaningful to you, and to others?
- Identify the important issues and causes about which you and your peers are most concerned. Be curious about what others feel is important to their future.
- When you talk to others in your group about their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future, look for patterns and themes in their responses. Determine what their dreams have in common and how they align with your vision for the group.
- Frame what you and others are doing so that it becomes a cause or calling rather than just an assignment, project, or event.
- Come up with ways you can involve others in creating what could be possible; don't make it a process in which you give out orders about what to do.