Creating a Compelling Vision
When we look at key qualities of leadership, one that stands out as critical is the ability to create a compelling vision for the team and communicate it in a manner that links the team members at an emotional level, encouraging them to do the right things AND to do them the right way!
What is a vision?
Simply put, a vision is a desired, sometimes idealized, future state or condition. Goals and objectives are generally related to taking steps toward a vision.
Examples of a simple vision might be;
· A Zero Injury Workplace
· A Zero Defect Operation
· All Customers are delighted
· To Be the Lowest Cost Supplier
· Successfully Completing every project on time and under budget
Of course, the vision must be meaningful and relevant to the business. The more detail that can be provided in describing how that vision looks and why it is important, the better, and the more likely that all team members will interpret the vision correctly.
In many cases, visions are cascaded from the vision of a higher-level leader and therefore are the localized interpretation of the higher-level vision that is directly meaningful to the team in question.
How to Build an Emotional Connection
Now comes the tricky part – how does the leader make the vision compelling to the team members?
The vision must be personalized to get buy-in. In order for the team members to choose to do the right things, and do them right, the connection must be real and act constantly in the subconscious. If there isn’t a solid emotional connection acting in an almost subconscious manner, people will choose the path that seems to have the most reward. The connection must answer the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ in a compelling manner.
For example, imagine that a leader has established a vision of a Zero Injury Workplace. Without an emotional connection, employees might acknowledge that safety is important when they actively think about it, but they will not instinctively make the right decisions when those decisions are inconvenient, or when shortcuts seem to offer rewards like getting a task done faster. This lack of emotional connection to visions, or goals, is a common root cause of poor decision-making and subsequently, poor results.
To create an emotional connection in the example of the Zero Injury Workplace could be getting your team members to imagine that they are one of the injured employees! Since they were too lazy or over-confident to follow the rules on wearing eye protection, and unlucky enough to get a splash of corrosive chemicals in their eyes, now they are injured and will never be able to SEE their children or grandchildren again! Was saving a little time worth this long-term consequence?
Ouch! That’s personalizing a message! It stops people in their tracks. Was the ‘reward’ of saving a little time or inconvenience worth losing their eyesight? No way!
If this exercise resonates and creates that emotional ah-ha moment, they will connect with the zero injury vision and do the right things to support the achievement of that vision. Of course, this exercise needs to be repeated frequently in different ways in order to consistently reinforce the connection to the vision as the allure of saving a little time, inconvenience, or discomfort will be a constant tug in the direction of doing the wrong thing, or doing things wrong!
Remember Charlie?
One of the most compelling TRUE stories I ever experienced around this Zero Injury message was in a training video called Remember Charlie. Some of you have seen it – if you haven’t and want to learn more about establishing an emotional connection to safety – look it up!
Charlie was a macho, overly confident, Chemical Worker who could not be bothered to take the few seconds required to comply with safety rules. One day there was a fire. Charlie wasn’t doing the ‘right things’ – and he was badly burned. His life completely unraveled as a result of his injuries.
There was a silver lining to the story though – Charlie became a motivational speaker and safety trainer. He very effectively personalizes the safety message by forcing his audience to imagine they were him.
Anyone who has seen Charlie’s presentation – whether live or on video – will never forget it – and will be committed to doing the right things right – to achieve the Safety Vision.
While injury prevention might be an example of a vision that is fairly straightforward to create an emotional connection, other visions may provide more of a challenge in this regard. Creating that emotional connection is still important though and may require more creativity and effort to establish.
Conclusion
How you choose to create that emotional link between your team members and the vision will depend heavily on the situation and the type of goal. Once you create that link though, you will ensure that team members will take the decision to do what they believe is the right action in line with that vision.
