As leaders we have to be able to paint a picture in people’s minds, shape the future and to bring it to the present.
A dream is also a vision
I was at a recent New Leadership workshop with a client down in Mexico and one of the exercises is what we call a dream-o-graph, where people grab pictures from a magazine that make up whatever their dream is. They then have to paste those pictures on a whiteboard and then share their dream with everyone.
It turns out this was an interesting exercise because most people would break into tears, get goose bumps or have a hard time holding their emotions.
It was an incredible and humbling experience.
This really got me thinking. We hear how all these companies have mission statements and vision statements just to have one but with no real depth. The people I saw at the workshop have some dreams in common, but what stands out is that each one of them has a feeling for it.
They felt it, and authentically want it.
Passion cannot be replicated, it comes from within
To make people believe in our vision (dream) we have to be able to make them care, and to do that we have to be able to communicate it with passion. When we speak with emotions it’s like we’re sending our energy to other people, we’re connecting with them on a deeper level and we want them to feel what we feel.
Emotions are sticky!
So imagine we have a BIG canvas and we put everyone’s dreams on it and we start seeing a pattern, a new picture starts forming. What does it all mean?
A shared vision emerges
When we put ours and others dreams together we get a shared vision, and like the picture above, it pulls us all toward the same common goal. This shared vision is the result of the input of everybody on the team.
As leaders, our job is to synthesize others ideas with our own and come to a shared point of view of the future we want to create.
Key takeaway: Paint your masterpiece and make sure it gives you and everyone else goose bumps.
Does your vision have depth, does it touch yours and people’s hearts? Does it give you goose bumps just talking about it?