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by Pat Schally
Certified Business and Leadership Coach
With our national political debates in full swing, I can’t resist referring to the obvious relevance of vision in leadership as it’s currently being played out between and articulated by our candidates. While attaining and sustaining a unifying vision is undoubtedly challenging and crucial for leaders in the private and public sectors, it is exponentially more critical to the effectiveness of a President or even a wanna-be whose electability clearly hinges upon it. To capture the hearts and minds and votes of the masses, any hopeful needs to offer the citizens a compelling vision for the country. As citizens, we’re hungry—even desparate—to latch onto an inspiring vision, one that we can each relate to in our own way, one that shakes us up and points us to the promise of a better future.
Yet, people have long memories and most of us, justifiably, are rather suspicious of political promises served up in the heat of a steamy campaign. If a candidate gets the public stirred up and emotionally connected to a winning vision and then gradually abandons it once in office, then the victory is pretty hollow—like air slowly leaking out of a campaign balloon the morning after election day.
It’s the same in business. A new leader comes on board with vision statements in hand, all jazzed about the changes that will be made, all ready to give the lofty speeches, rallying all to the cause. And then, poof, business issues get tough, pressure mounts. Where is vision then? It is nowhere to be found.
And with it goes productivity and the promise of better things to come. Inevitably the mood in the organization goes from encouragement and enthusiasm to disappointment and finally to tacit acceptance of the status quo. There is grudging acceptance of what they knew all along—things will never change. The obvious result? A sigh of resignation indicating the deflated attitude of "Oh, well, it’s just business a usual."
Ask yourself, who is buying your vision as a leader. Will they continue to enthusiastically do business with you and be an inspired supporter of your vision, championing it as if it were their own? More importantly, do you include them in designing that vision? Effective leaders embrace the idea that having and sustaining a vision is a collaborative process and, consequently, they will move mountains to publicly place every decision they make up against that collaborative vision.
In the highly competitive Presidential race, all of us, whether we know it or not, are assessing the authenticity and inspiration levels of each of the candidates’ visions. Who is ahead on that score? Who is articulating clearly and forcefully, on every occasion possible, his or her vision? Who’s buying it? We’ll find out sometime after midnight on November 5th. Until then, watch the upcoming Presidential debates to see some superb examples of visions being articulated and, in the process, you can gauge how yours stacks up. What if you were on the slate of candidates, would you be elected?
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