Your vision what a wonderful tool

While travelling this week I had numerous meetings that mostly went well. Though when pausing for a breathe on yet another flight home, two particular meetings stuck in my head and both for a similar reason.

The meetings were with the leaders of two very different teams one conducts most of the team action in a virtual environment to an internal audience, while the other has a very hands-on and customer facing team. What struck me about both these meetings was that the leaders expressed their vision with crystal clarity, sitting with them I could see in my mind the situation and end-state that they wanted each team to achieve. I left their offices in an invigorated state, eager to get to work and do my part of the team's plan to make sure we got to this end point.

Why was I moved in this way? After these meetings I had a clear and unambiguous vision of what I needed to do to help make the team reach its goal. Sure I interrupted what about this and what about that? And sometimes there was a definite answer and sometimes I was told - we need you to come up with a solution for this part of the problem. Often this would get me off-side and negative about the task, but because these leaders took the time to explain their vision and the steps we needed to complete to get there I was OK with it. So later it occurred to me that these leaders had put me into a receptive mood to take on the challenges that I may not have otherwise accepted.

My goal going forward is to take the time to think through the vision of what my team is achieving and then slow down further to plan of the best way I can articulate it to my team. I'm sure if a clear vision had such an affect on me it will to other teams too.