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.

Who should be the leader?

Who should be the leader in your group? why You! We all have potential to be the leader and some will be more successful than others, it depends on your perception, your values and especially the drive in your heart.

Do you want to make a difference , do you want the team to accomplish, do you want to feel part of the group - like you belong? I guess we all do. Where to start, probably the place to start is to assess the situation - of where the group is, what the composition of the group is and what we want to achieve.

Take care to then explain in a positive fashion the vision of what the end-state is, in many cases this is all you need to do particularly if the group is in a good state of mind. Next pause for a few moments to let everybody consider the idea and then ask your team for any questions. It is important that you allow the team to have sufficient time to consider the vision you have planted in their mind - don't rush this aspect. A question asked at this time in front of the whole team allows everyone to benefit from the clarification points.

Once the idea is firmly planted in each member of the team, it becomes time to delegate/arrange the members to tasks - often this is quite obvious as a member may have special skills that preclude others from taking that part of the job. If much of the overall job falls to the special skills people it may be prudent to ask them if and how someone can assist to lighten their load. This can have some great spin-off benefits, firstly the guy with the big load gains a sense of appreciation that he has more work, secondly the person who helps may learn some new skills they can contribute to the team, look for these hidden opportunities to broaden the teams skills and exposure.

So we can all be leaders and with a little empathy and thought we can make a great job of it by including everyone and getting the job done when we get the chance.