We’ve talked about the first two stages of leadership here and here. The third stage of leadership is about a shared vision.
There is a lot information out there about how to get people to do what we want. Much of this information is about how to manipulate people. The best manipulation is to give someone else what they want while they give us what we want. This really is trading, and not so much manipulation. Pretty much any other type of manipulation feels icky. Sometimes even the trading can feel icky if it’s not done in a good spirit.
But even if we’re trading, we really don’t have a shared vision. At best, we have a type of contractor or an employee. As soon as something happens to us where we can’t get them what they want, they’re done. They really didn’t share our vision. We really weren’t leading them, we were engaged in a transaction.
Shared Vision
Instead of a contractor or employee type of relationship, what we really want is a team member or a partner. This is where the third stage of leadership comes in. In this stage, we learn to create a shared vision. This is where everyone is working toward the same goal for reasons of the goal itself. There aren’t people thinking, “If I help them achieve this goal, I will get what I want.” Instead they’re thinking, “I want this goal.”
Creating shared vision can be really tricky. If we’re starting out fresh, we can tell people, “Here’s my vision. Would you like to be a part of it?” For the most part we’ll attract people who share our vision.
However if we already have followers and we don’t have a shared vision, it’s likely that people are around for various reasons and they each have a different vision. A simple example is that of two spouses in a marriage where we each have different visions for our life.
Sharing the Vision
We are often told that the leader needs to cast his or her vision. But this rarely works. People might agree to follow the leader’s vision, but it’s still the leader’s vision. People don’t take the vision on as their own.
To create shared vision, the leader instead needs to initiate a whole lot of talking about the future we’d like to create together. And the leader needs to do a whole lot of listening. Out of this huge amount of sharing and attempting to understand each other, a shared vision will begin to emerge. The shared vision, though, can’t be forced. We need to be patient as we continue to share, ask questions and understand until the shared vision eventually forms out of the fog.
In addition the leader needs to hold on to his or her vision loosely. The shared vision usually takes on a form different from what each person had individually.
Our Shared Vision and Our Calling
Once we have shared vision, it becomes “our” vision. No one person is heading the vision any more, and if something happens to the leader, the tribe (our group of followers) continues to work toward the vision.
When we pursue our calling and create a tribe of followers, we want the tribe to take on the vision. Then the vision and the tribe can live well beyond our years on this earth. This is a great example of the type of huge impact we want to have in the world.
