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Discovering the Leader in You | your leadership vision

In Chapter Two we discussed some of the organizational factors

influencing leadership, as well as common perspectives and views

of it. Whether those views come from your surrounding culture, your

organization, or some other source, they can affect the way you see

yourself as a leader and your expectations of what leaders do. In this

chapter, we examine vision, a key part of discovering the leader in

you. Indeed, if you cannot articulate a clear and compelling vision for

leadership, your risk of drift is higher, and you may be less able to escape

it. Think about it: How can you effectively chart a course out of drift if

you don't have a clear view (that is, a vision) of where you want to go?

A leadership vision is foundational to your views of leadership and

your long-term success as a leader. Your vision for leadership goes

beyond simple expectations and perspectives about the role of a leader.

It captures and describes the desired future that you see for yourself

and your team, organization, or community. A vision for leadership is

different from an organizational mission (which spells out the reason for

an entity to exist) and from organizational goals (which articulate specific

outcomes). Your leadership vision is an expression of what you want to

create, do, or accomplish when you are in a leader role. It describes

your philosophy about leadership and your purpose in choosing to be a

leader, and it serves as an important guidepost for the core behaviors

you enact as a leader.

50 Discovering the Leader in You

CONSCIOUS PERSONAL AND

LEADERSHIP VISIONS

A leadership vision is not the same as your personal vision. Rather, it

is a component of your personal vision; it can help you accomplish the

larger vision for your life, which also encompasses other life roles, family

desires, where you want to retire, and so on.

Similarly, a leadership vision isn't a specific organizational vision

or the future state desired by leaders of a particular organization. Your

leadership vision is that which you personally want to accomplish with

your leadership. For example, if, like Michael J. Fox, finding a cure

for Parkinson's disease were your leadership vision, then you could

find many ways to demonstrate your leadership, such as starting a

foundation to raise money to support research, going to medical school

to learn more about the disease and then treating it, or publishing a

newsletter to raise public awareness about the disease.

Conveying a compelling leadership vision is foundational to being

an effective leader. CCL research with senior leaders reveals that

leaders who are able to articulate a clear and compelling vision for their

organization are rated by bosses and peers as more effective leaders.

As a child, you may have ''known'' that you would someday become

an astronaut, a professional athlete, a teacher, or a doctor. As you grew

and advanced through school, you might have expressed what you

''knew'' about yourself by seeking out other young people who shared

your interests. Later you began to see yourself in adult roles, such as a

family and community member and as a contributor to the organization

where you work. Through these stages, you may have woven a vision

for leadership into your life. You might not have spelled out that vision

in a personal creed or blogged to the world, but it was there.

We've found that leaders at all levels often have at least a rudimentary vision of leadership under the surface. True, some haven't been

particularly thoughtful about their lives or reflected on their experiences

to imagine what's to come. As a reader of this book, you're unlikely to

be one of them. But your leadership vision may still lie below the level of

Your Leadership Vision 51

awareness, and thus it's not available to regularly draw on in your role

as a leader. Unarticulated, it leaves too much to chance and leaves you

vulnerable to drift, it leaves you less than fully engaged, and it leaves

you passive and opportunistic in your work.

Without question, who you are as a person and what you want

to accomplish in your life (your legacy) influences your vision for

leadership. It is this conscious connection between your personal vision

and the leadership vision that creates congruency of direction. Consider

how one senior executive with whom we worked thought about his

legacy (including what he did as a leader) in strongly personal terms:

Dear—

CCL confirmed to you that you're a leader—embrace that and have fun

with it. Don't be so hard on yourself—got it. When you're eulogized, people

will remember you as a good man who left a legacy of a happy marriage, kids

who grew to be productive adults, and a leader who inspired others and was

fun to be around. Lastly, you'll be remembered for the people you helped pull

up. Life is like a baseball game, and you were lucky enough to have been born

on 2nd base. Look around for people having trouble getting into the stadium

and give them a hand. Now call your parents.

Think about how having a similarly vivid picture of your legacy

might influence your vision for leadership. What do you want your

legacy to be? How is your leadership a part of this legacy?

Personal vision and leadership vision can intersect powerfully. Colleagues at CCL brought back this story from a recent trip to India

where they had visited with leaders of Pantaloons, one of India's fastgrowing retail companies. At the time, Pantaloons was keenly focused

on developing the skills of its leaders and frontline workers. Most of

them earn low salaries and come from the lowest socioeconomic strata

of Indian society. A member of the Pantaloons training arm had begun

a leader development program based on a personal insight he gained

from the streets of Mumbai as he watched beggars work the traffic

intersections. Sympathetically, he noticed that some beggars were more

52 Discovering the Leader in You

effective in obtaining charity than others. ''What is the difference?'' he

wondered. Careful observation suggested that the more effective beggars displayed a greater sense of self-confidence and self-worth. If he was

right, these personal characteristics, which could be nurtured, taught,

and developed, could be applied to those who worked at Pantaloons.

From that insight, he implemented a visionary, innovative developmental program that ultimately strengthened employee engagement

and subsequent organizational performance. His story shows how an

individual with a higher purpose can connect his leadership vision to

the needs of a group (not the beggars themselves, but others in lower

socioeconomic brackets than his) and the needs of a growing business.

It shows how a leadership commitment to helping the less fortunate was

blended into an innovative hiring and employee development initiative.

Or consider Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank. In

1974, Yunus was an economics professor in Bangladesh; at the time,

Bangladesh was experiencing yet another famine. The problem was so

large that he questioned whether he could help in any meaningful way.

One day Yunus visited a village near the university at which he was

teaching to learn more about what he could do to help the villagers cope

with hunger. He discovered that the forty-two women in the village

wanted a total of twenty-seven dollars to start small businesses so that

they could take care of their families in a more sustainable way. After

extensive efforts to persuade banks to loan the women money, Yunus

took twenty-seven dollars out of his own wallet and funded the women

to establish microenterprises. This small investment had astounding and

unexpected ripple effects. Indeed, it was the impetus for what eventually

led to global microfinance movement.

As of this writing, Grameen Bank had made over $10 billion in

loans to over 7 million borrowers, almost all women. The loan recovery

rate is over 98 percent, which is better than institutions that lend to

higher-income clients. With twenty-four hundred branches, Grameen

Bank provides services in many tens of thousands of villages. All of

this was started by an economics professor who felt helpless in fighting

hunger and poverty and so simply loaned twenty-seven dollars from

Your Leadership Vision 53

his own pocket. This work has had such a powerful impact that Yunus

and Grameen Bank were awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. The

global innovation of microfinance that Yunus and a few dozen poor

women in a single village set in motion provides a powerful example

of how a compelling, personally derived leadership vision can achieve

monumental change that drives business outcomes and improves the

daily lives of customers.

DISCOVERING OR CLARIFYING YOUR

LEADERSHIP VISION

Almost daily, we interact with leaders who struggle to find and articulate

a meaningful vision for their work as leaders. Tackling this issue head-on

is not easy. It requires deeply exploring what motivates you to get up in

the morning and drives your attention and energy throughout the day.

As we said earlier, a leadership vision is an expression of what you

want to create, do, or accomplish as a leader. To serve as a useful guide,

your vision should do three things:

1. It should incorporate your dreams and passions—the things that

motivate and excite you about leading.

2. It should be authentic and anchored in who you are as a person. It

must reflect your values about leadership.

3. It should continue to evolve. A leadership vision is not static, like a

photograph. Rather, it is like daily frames in a slow-motion film. It

reflects where you are in your own evolution and where you think

you are heading in your own life journey.

Not many leaders spend time thinking about their leadership vision.

One told us (typically), ''I think mainly in terms of management. I was

thinking more in terms of job and job description than I was in terms

of leadership and what I had to do.'' However, one technical manager

we met at a chemical company had given it quite a bit of thought:

''Leadership is all about being able to formulate a vision, deciding that

you want to go somewhere, that there is value in getting there, and

54 Discovering the Leader in You

then being able to describe that vision, to sell that vision. The word lead

comes in when you bring people along with you to attain it.''

Having a leadership vision is not just for those at the top. Sure,

it is often easier to pursue your own leadership vision and what you

want to accomplish as a leader when you are at the helm, but a clear

leadership vision can still empower a middle manager or frontline

supervisor. Perhaps your leadership vision is to help fix what is broken,

saving money and time. If so, it will matter in many contexts: mending

the broken spirits of people who were led by an ineffective leader,

rejuvenating an old product line in decline, or restoring a brand that

was damaged by recall, for example.

STRATEGIES FOR DISCOVERING

A LEADERSHIP VISION

Developing your own leadership vision is difficult; simply adopting

someone else's vision won't work. Clarifying your vision is an ongoing

journey involving a process of exploring likely places for elements you

can combine to form a conscious, meaningful, and integrated picture.

You discover your vision by honestly looking at yourself and your role

as a leader in an organization or community.

The rest of this chapter suggests strategies to help you discover

or clarify your leadership vision and make it more visible to yourself

and others. Whether you have never thought of having a leadership

vision and are starting from scratch, or you have one but it needs more

definition, depth, or expansion, the following strategies will take you

through various reflective processes to assist you in your work. If you

gravitate to some of the strategies more than others and don't feel a

need for all of them, simply use the ones that help you the most in

clarifying your leadership vision. Here they are, in short:

• Tell your own story.

• Reflect on your daydreams.

Your Leadership Vision 55

• Look for trends and patterns.

• Incorporate lessons from role models.

• Assess your perspectives on power and conflict.

• Make use of your creative involvement.

• Follow your intuition.

• Look beyond yourself.

Tell Your Own Story

There's a book in you: the one you're writing about your own life.

Narrative is innate to human growth, and personal vision often springs

from myth or one's imagination. The same can happen for a leadership

vision. When people discover, create, invent, build businesses, raise

families, compose symphonies, or fly to the moon, they do it to fulfill a

story that they've been telling themselves and others. Think about your

own story and how it is part of your leadership journey:

If we wish to know about a man we ask, ''What is his story—his

real, inmost story?'' For each of us is a biography, ... a singular

narrative which is constructed continually, unconsciously, by,

through, and in us—through our perceptions, our feelings, our

thoughts, our notions. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so

different from each other; historically, as narratives, we are each

of us unique [Sacks, 1970, pp. 110–111].

The richer and more compelling you can make the story of yourself

as a leader, the stronger your leadership vision will be. People tell and

retell their stories until they get them right. Your own story is connected

to those you inherited from others. This story from one of the leaders

we know gives a sense of that continuity:

I had an older brother that I really looked up to, nine years

older than me. I was in about fourth grade when he got killed in

Vietnam. At that time, my mother told me that I had to be the

head of the household. I think that had a profound effect on me.

That was a catalyst. I went from being a child to being responsible

from that day forward.

56 Discovering the Leader in You

I've been in leadership types of positions ever since I was in

high school. In high school, it started out with sports. Then I got

real serious about politics in high school, and I got involved in

some political groups in the sixties. [Now] I'm involved in a number of different nonprofit organizations ... and I have leadership

roles in every one of them.

Some stories take generations to tell and to complete. Others are

picked up as inspirational waypoints, and the people they're associated

with are regarded as pioneers. Some people relish the idea of rewriting

their stories over and over again. But even if you don't, we're sure

that you've revised and improvised your story over the years, and we

are also sure that the basic theme of your story shows continuity over

time. Within that push and pull of change and continuity, your vision

of yourself as a leader emerges. Take a moment to think about your

story and its recurring themes, especially as they relate to your roles as

a leader. Think about your life as a series of headlines in a newspaper:

• What events have inspired your passion?

• What stories would you tell about making a difference as a leader?

• What stories would your colleagues tell about you as a leader?

• What actions have reflected your values or have made an enduring

impression on you?

• What would you want a journalist to write about your vision as a

leader?

Reflect on Your Daydreams

Everybody daydreams—sometimes in quiet moments, sometimes as

we're drifting off to sleep, and sometimes when we're engaged in

physical activity like walking or running. Although most leaders will

rarely admit it publicly, we're sure that many occasionally daydream in

a boring meeting.

Daydreams can be important sources of insight, a window into

something deeper than they seem, connecting present realities to some

desired future state. Indeed, they may even reflect your aspirations as a

Your Leadership Vision 57

person and a leader and sketch a bridge to their fulfillment. As Henry

David Thoreau noted, ''If one advances confidently in the direction of

his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he

will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.'' We suggest the

content of your daydreams can help you articulate a leadership vision.

When you catch yourself daydreaming, make a few notes, and reflect

on how they would connect to your vision for leadership. Do you see any

obvious connections? Can you make some not-so-obvious connections

between your leadership vision and the daydream's seemingly random

thoughts? A daydream may reveal an image of yourself as a leader—the

kind of successes you're having, how you see yourself as a winner or

hero, the kinds of situations you're in, things that bother or worry you,

and what you do to contribute to the success of a team. Daydreams

can inform how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by

others—what you might call self-image. By noticing when and where you

perceive a positive self-image, you can get a glimpse of the vision you

are trying to project or a picture of where you're trying to go in your

life as a leader.

As you reflect on your daydreams as a mirror into your leadership

vision, it is important to connect them to actions. As Harry Potter author

J. K. Rowling says, ''It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to

live'' (1998, p. 214). With perceptive humor, Mitch Hedberg (2003)

says, ''I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where

they're going and hook up with them later.'' His comment harkens back

to our discussion in Chapter One about drifting into leadership versus

making a conscious, active choice to pursue it.

Thomas Jefferson imagined a set of principles about how free people

should live in relationship to their government, and then he enacted

those principles in a lifetime of founding, expanding, and leading

a vast country; creating a university; and contributing mightily to

the philosophy that undergirds the United States to this day. When

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ''I have a dream,'' to a crowd in front

of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, his words and deeds helped crystallize

a nonviolent civil rights movement. Christopher Reeve (1999), the

58 Discovering the Leader in You

actor-turned-advocate for biomedical research and spinal injury patients

said, ''So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem

improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become

inevitable'' (p. 300).

Dreams of smaller scope can be equally inspiring, and they don't

have to be entirely original. King borrowed from Gandhi, and Jefferson

borrowed from the philosophers of the European Enlightenment. As

the song in the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow (Harburg and Saidy,

1947) put it, people will ''follow the fellow who follows the dream.''

Take a moment now to jot down what you've been daydreaming

about lately, and remind yourself for the next few days to remember

what you were daydreaming about and how that might help you

develop a leadership vision:

• Are there common themes in your daydreams that reflect on your

vision or aspirations as a leader?

• As you think about your past successes and failures as a leader, are

there connections you can make between these past experiences

and your current daydreams?

• If you could write your own daydream of yourself exhibiting

exceptional leadership skills, how would it go?

• If your leadership scenario indicates you feel stuck, bored, pressured,

or similarly unhappy, what solutions are you pondering in your

daydreams?

• If money were no object, where would you work? What cause or

passion would you pursue?

Look for Trends and Patterns

Another way to bring your leadership vision to light is to look for

patterns in events you have experienced, behaviors you have engaged

in, attitudes that you hold. We're not suggesting that you synthesize a

complex map—only to look for repeating or similar themes when you

play back part of the tape of your life experiences. Patterns are not

always neatly labeled, and they may be more obvious to people around

Your Leadership Vision 59

you than they are to you. So feel free to seek the guidance of family

members or close friends and colleagues as you document key life trends

and patterns.

Start by noticing broad patterns. In the past, what things have you

repeatedly paid attention to, gravitated toward, or chosen to do in your

work and personal life? For example, one leader we know had chosen as

a teenager to attend an all-girls' high school and found there that girls

naturally stepped into leadership roles when they were not competing

against boys. This experience was the start of her interest in women

and leadership, and her later choices throughout her life reinforced

the early pattern. Look at your experiences and the passions that hold

you, the books you choose to read, the television shows you watch,

the quotes or stories that resonate with you. As you think about these

early experiences and choices, do you see any connections to your

leadership work?

Next, note the important events that you have experienced during

the past year or two—especially key projects, activities, and relationships

at work. What trends and patterns might you notice in how you spend

your time, and what kinds of work attract you?

After you've reviewed some of the broader themes in your experiences, you can more closely examine your behaviors and the roles you

play in groups. There are two kinds of lessons for you to gather at this

stage. One has to do with how eagerly you engage directly in leadership

roles and what kinds of leadership roles you embrace; the other has

to do with where you typically try to lead the groups you are in, from

whatever roles you play.

Consider the following questions:

• When did you have success, and when did you have setbacks? What

were some contributing factors?

• When were you happiest?

• Which situations did you find easy or hard to deal with?

• What kinds of projects or teams are you asked to join?

• Which of those really interested you? Which do you avoid?

60 Discovering the Leader in You

• A number of factors could be making certain activities successful,

enjoyable, easy, and attractive for you. What's the underlying theme

in these situations?

• What do they have in common that produces the positive

experience?

Incorporate Lessons from Role Models

When we ask people about their role models, we're also asking them

about their own aspirations. A person who names Bernie Madoff as

a role model has a very different vision from one who names Nelson

Mandela. Role models can be real or fictional, famous or private, public

figures or personal acquaintances. The important feature of a role

model is that you have thought about that person's image and found

something attractive in it. That's the element you want to examine for

clues to your leadership vision.

This isn't about picking a hero. Ask yourself a series of questions

about why such a person interests you so much:

• Do you name Bill Gates because he is bright, because he is among

the richest persons in the world, or because of his vast philanthropic

activities?

• Do you admire Nelson Mandela because he overcame adversity,

because he became a national savior, or because of the way he

performed in office?

• Is Muhammad Yunus your role model because he won the Nobel

Peace Prize in 2006 for developing the microfinance model or

because he commands the attention of world leaders?

• Is one of the reasons you admire your Aunt Charlene that she

travels all over the world and doesn't ask anyone's permission to do

anything?

One executive told us what he learned from one role-model boss in

his career, the chief financial officer at Esquire magazine:

He would never let anybody go unless he was satisfied that he had

done everything that he could to make that person work out in

Your Leadership Vision 61

the position. He was essentially telling me that I needed to take

as much responsibility as the other person and do everything that

I could to make a situation work. That's a large, transcending

statement. People look for the easy way out, but there has to be a

lot of personal ownership in leadership.

Make a short list of the role models you've followed in life. For each

of them, ask yourself the following questions:

• Why is this person a role model for you?

• How are this person's admirable characteristics similar to and

dissimilar from yours?

• In what ways did this person exhibit leadership?

• What is this person's leadership vision? How was it communicated

and put into practice? What made it compelling to others?

Assess Your Perspectives on Power and Conflict

Leadership entails using power on occasion. In fact, leadership is

about the power to make things happen. Because power has many

negative connotations, people often talk about it as influence, impact,

or effectiveness. But power itself is neutral. It is the outcomes of using

one's power, and whether those outcomes are perceived as good or

bad, that determine how effectively power has been used. As Abraham

Lincoln noted, ''Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to

test a man's character, give him power.''

How do you feel about having and using power? Where is power in

your leadership vision? What part does it play? How does your power

affect your ability to relate to other people?

With power comes conflict—no question about that. Like power,

conflict is an inevitable part of life as a leader. Across many studies

conducted at CCL on the topic of executive derailment, the ability to

handle conflict effectively is a key factor that differentiates leaders who

don't derail from those who do.

Conflict is inevitable when two people in positions of power or of

leadership don't agree. If you embrace conflict as a common element

62 Discovering the Leader in You

of work life, it can be highly informative and a stimulus for bringing

transparency to core issues such as vision and values. Conflict can draw

out what you and others hold valuable and are willing to advocate for,

defend, and protect. If you understand the effect that values have on how

people respond to different situations, then you can better understand

the root causes of a conflict. And in understanding root causes, you will

also gain insight into the way values affect your vision for leadership.

For some people, leveraging power and managing conflict in pursuit

of a leadership vision can be an anxious endeavor. Some never planned

to take power, so when conflict arises, as it will in any opportunity to

lead, they fall back on old scripts about the importance of modesty,

fairness, and not stepping on toes in pursuit of control and influence.

This sort of interference isn't easy to sort out, but it's worth your time to

try if you find yourself uneasy with power and conflict. If you can view

your interactions with others as an opportunity to share and leverage

power for a higher purpose, your effectiveness as a leader and the

effectiveness of your group are likely to increase.

You might encounter power and conflict in a variety of situations.

For example, have you ever been in a situation in which you thought,

''Enough is enough!'' and insisted on breaking with the status quo?

Have you ever lost a leadership position because you believed that the

direction that was being taken was wrong? Have you found yourself in

a prolonged debate about the merits of a decision or strategy? Have

you told someone in a senior position that doing it your way wasn't just

better but a lot better, or maybe even the only way to succeed? Consider

these questions on power and conflict:

• How does power fit into your conceptions of yourself and your

vision for leadership? What do you like and dislike about power?

• How have you used power effectively and ineffectively?

• When you admire others' use of power, what do you admire about

them, and what does that convey to you about their leadership

vision?

• What does misuse of power look like?

Your Leadership Vision 63

• How do you feel and act when you don't have power?

• What ideas or goals have you fought for in recent years?

• What have you gone to the mat about? What does that say about

your values and your vision for leadership?

• How well do you handle conflict?

• In various conflicts you have with others, is there a theme or pattern

in the content of the disagreement?

• Do you tend to get in conflict with a particular group of people?

• How does conflict affect your vision about how you want to lead?

Make Note of Your Creative Involvement

Where you expend your creative energies tells you a lot about your

passions and interests and can inform your leadership vision. With

respect to the relationship between creativity and vision, creativity is

like a fingerprint. It can be what makes your vision for leadership

unique. Part of discovering your leadership vision is noticing how you

use your creative capabilities. Perhaps you love coming up with new

product ideas or improving existing systems. Perhaps you love the power

of the written word, and you spend extra hours writing. Perhaps you

love helping people solve problems and can easily spend hours listening

and thinking about their problems rather than attending to your own.

A leader's creativity can show up in connecting existing ideas that

others have not previously connected. It can show up in metaphors

and analogies that reinterpret old problems or in some entirely new

approach. No matter what form it takes, being creative doesn't happen

by chance or without expenditure of desire and effort. People who are

perceived as creative will tell you that it takes preparation and hard work

and can be pursued in deliberate ways. Central to it are a heightened

form of focus and energy and a deep involvement with whatever you're

doing.

If you have an area in your life that you consider creative (maybe you

play a musical instrument, paint, write, engage in outdoor adventures,

or play sports), explore what that activity says about your vision for

leadership. You may find that your creative outlets tell you quite a

64 Discovering the Leader in You

bit about your passion, desires, and energy regarding leadership. Ask

yourself the following questions:

• When do you feel most creative as a leader, and when do you feel

most at ease or in the groove?

• When are you so absorbed you lose track of time? Does this ever

happen when you are leading? Whether it happens or not, what

does that convey to you about your vision for leadership?

• When is leadership creative? When it's not, why is that?

• Does your organization encourage your creativity? If not, is this

why you feel a sense of drift?

• How do you as a leader encourage the expression of creativity

among others, and what might you be doing that thwarts it?

• How do you use your creativity outside your job or leadership role?

If there is a gap between your creative level at work and your

creative level outside work, what do you attribute that to?

Follow Your Intuition

While we believe that developing a leadership vision requires deliberate

thought and collection and analysis of data, we also believe that

intuition is a source of insight into developing a vision for leadership.

Why? Because leaders often lack the data they would like to have to

make a decision or articulate a vision. In such moments, tapping into

your intuition can help you move from analysis to action. Intuition

requires:

• Bringing both creative and analytical approaches to an issue

• Looking at the horizon, not just what is in front of you

• Seeing patterns that can inform your assumptions about how issues

will play out in the future

• Drawing on your own and others' experiences to inform future

decisions

Some of us rely a good deal on intuition and use it to help make

decisions. Both intuition and vision are based on parts of ourselves

Your Leadership Vision 65

with which we're not fully aware. Both provide insights into what makes

sense or what feels right. If there are areas in which you have found your

intuition to be particularly valuable, those areas are likely to show up in

your vision. Some people trust their intuition when selecting employees.

Others trust it about which products will sell or how fast to expand a

business. For others, intuition is the primary driver for their vision of

leadership.

Consider the following questions about how intuition might influence your leadership vision:

• What does your intuition tell you about your vision for leadership?

• How does your vision for leadership resonate with other people?

• Do you value and trust your intuition? Why is that?

• What has happened when you have acted on your intuition in your

roles as a leader?

• In what situations has your intuition seemed most reliable? When

has it been off-base? Can you discern what factors differentiate

between being on target or off target with your leadership intuition?

Look Beyond Yourself

Finally, we strongly suggest you talk to others as you develop your vision

for leadership. We believe that leadership is as much about collective

activity as it is about an individual leader, and thus your own leadership

vision is also connected, implicitly or explicitly, to the vision that others

hold. As such, it's important that you be open to and seek input from

other people. Our colleagues at CCL, Bill Drath and Chuck Palus,

frame it this way.

Our constructs of leadership, it seems, have been built up around

... the powerful individual taking charge. This aspect of leadership is like the whitecaps on the sea—prominent and captivating,

flashing in the sun. But to think about the sea solely in terms of

the tops of waves is to miss the far vaster and more profound phenomenon out of which such waves arise—it is to focus attention

on the tops and miss the sea beneath. And so leadership may be

66 Discovering the Leader in You

much more than the dramatic whitecaps of the individual leader,

and may be more productively understood as the deep blue water

we all swim in when we work together [1994, p. 25].

As you think about your vision for leadership, consider the extent

to which your vision aligns with and is influenced by the people with

whom you work and serve and those you admire. Also consider the

following questions:

• What inspires you about visions that others have about leadership?

• How can you build on and expand the vision held by others and

make it your own?

• What is it that they want to accomplish, or what problem do they

want to solve?

• Where does your vision for leadership fall short of the potential of

the groups and teams with which you work?

In addition to looking for connections between your vision for

leadership and the vision of members of collectives in which you

participate, think about how and where you choose to concentrate your

efforts in working with other people. Where and what you choose to

focus on (or not) indicates something central to your priorities and to

your leadership vision.

WHAT A CLEAR LEADERSHIP VISION

WILL DO

At the start of this chapter, we defined vision for leadership as an

ideal picture of what you might do as a leader. Therefore, as you

develop a clearer vision of leadership, you'll clarify your direction as

a leader—where you want to go, why, and what you'll do when you

get there. You will make better decisions about the paths and options

presented to you. You will know when you can and cannot compromise.

You will better understand your passions and priorities. You will be

Your Leadership Vision 67

better able to move toward roles that will allow you to express what you

have to offer as a leader. You will know what you'd like to test or learn

from future leadership opportunities. You will also find that clear vision

lends a confident, steady sense of identity amid chaos.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, novelist Milan Kundera (1984)

suggests that for everyone, there is an ''Es muss sein!'' (''It must be!''), that

is, an overriding necessity that governs a person's life. This necessity

will drive you toward a pattern in your ideas, needs, and passions. This

necessity will also inform the way that leadership plays a role in your

life. Through this process, you will gain insight into why some people

find their way to leadership roles and others do not, by either choice or

happenstance.

For some people, a desire for leadership forms part of a broader

vision they have for themselves as humans. It's important to distinguish

your desire for leadership from desire for simply power and influence.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins (2001) writes about ''level 5 leaders''—those

who concomitantly hold as values a burning desire to succeed and a

measure of humility (that is, they can attribute success to the contributions of others). In our work with many leaders from different sectors

of society, almost without exception, the most effective leaders have

combined a compelling vision with a burning desire to lead and a desire

to assume responsibility for a higher purpose.

CONCLUSION

By now you clearly recognize the importance of a leadership vision to

guide you through your choices and decisions as a leader. Reflect on

the following final questions to see where you are in developing and

articulating a clear leadership vision:

• What are you trying to accomplish through your leadership?

• What would others say about the guiding force for your leadership?

• If you were to outline the elements of your leadership vision, what

would be included?

68 Discovering the Leader in You

• Are the elements of your vision compatible or contradictory?

• How does your vision for leadership contribute to the success of

other people, your team, or your organization?

• How does your leadership vision connect to your overall personal

vision?

• What obstacles impede your enacting your vision for leadership?

New events, ideas, and ways of thinking will cause your vision to

shift over time. At times of important transition in your life, you may

wish to revisit the sources of your vision of leadership.

In Chapter Four, we move to motivations and values for

leading—the third component of the Discovering Leadership

Framework. If you still don't have a clear leadership vision, a look at

your motivations and values will certainly help. Examining them will

also give you more insight into why you feel adriftI

n Chapter Two we discussed some of the organizational factors