305 Leadership Best Practice 5 : Co-Create A Dream

Emotional intelligence is necessary for leadership but not sufficient. Using emotional intelligence to gain formal or informal authority is not leadership at all.

Leaders help followers dream. They don't impose their vision for that is nothing less than manipulation through power. Gaining primal authority for manipulation is relatively easy for many individuals. We need to grasp that certain people want authority for selfish purposes; it is little more than organizational pandering.

Creating a dream together - - co-creating - - with followers, shows on our part humility, honor, and respect. However, such creation needs to be grounded in reality or we are simply kidding ourselves in La-la Land.

Leadership couples emotional intelligence with the courage to raise the tough questions, challenge people's assumptions about strategy and operations, and risk losing their goodwill. It demands a commitment to serving others; skill at diagnostic, strategic, and tactical reasoning; the guts to get beneath the surface of tough realities; and the heart to take heat and grief.

Karl Jung said a dream understood becomes a living experience. Leaders help followers dream through their own vision. The process of bringing life to a dream starts with personal insight - - knowing our own deep interests and passions.

There are five practical steps taken in pursuit of a dream. Applied to an organization they would include:

  • Identify the organization-wide deep interests and passions.
  • Have goals that are big enough to be meaningful, yet small enough to be doable.
  • The workday is a school in itself. Show up and pay attention to the dream.
  • The organization is its own best advocate, because it might be its only advocate of the corporate dream.
  • Move towards the dream now. Don't let other priorities or busyness sidetrack the pursuit.

People working together can achieve something beyond the capacity of individuals working alone. Their work is only a beginning taxonomy within which to investigate the framework of team processes that leads to higher performance.

It is possible that empirical research that unveils the cause of high performance effectiveness will ultimately be found in the realm of human spirituality. I believe this is what Jim Collins and his research team was able to discover and document in his book Good to Great.

Transformational leadership can be learned and it can - - and should - - be the subject of management training and development. Research has shown the leaders at all levels can be trained to be charismatic.

Leadership is something that everyone can learn and that such transformational leadership must be distributed to all followers through example and training. If transformational leaders inspire, energize, and intellectually stimulate, there's no reason to limit such impact to those with formal authority. Authorize and expect everyone within the organization to make this kind of positive impact. Leadership needs to be distributed throughout every company and community. To expect less is to equate people to slugs.

Strictly speaking, distributed leadership has been defined in terms of multiple leaders assuming complementary leadership roles according to their area of expertise.

Often associated are four types of leadership roles:

  • Envisioning - - facilitates idea generation and innovation, defining and championing over goals, finding conceptual links between systems, and fostering frame-breaking thinking
  • Organizing - - focuses on details, deadlines, time, efficiency, and structure; keeps the group from straying from the issues and focused on their mission
  • Spanning - - good with people, have strong networking and presentation skills, political savvy, a sense of power distribution, and the ability to get needed resources
  • Social - - makes sure that everybody gets heard, injecting humor, mediating conflict, and offering encouragement and reinforcement when they are called for

This concept of distributed leadership can be applied in micro or macro settings. Distributed leadership within "self-managed teams" depend on how well people can assume the four roles or functions. Ultimately the team must be able to communicate and unify toward a common goal regardless of the team's strata within the organization.

Leadership is the skill required to bring about change. Leaders at every level of an organization have the ability to see what can be and to head there. One of the most basic questions is:

Are we happy, or are we just occasionally excited and having fun from time to time?

The answer is obvious but that same answer begs the question again.

Why do we find ourselves having to work harder and harder at the expense of our family time?

What will it take to transform our community and our businesses into institutions that have:

  • a social vision for humanity
  • power and authority distributed so that people can genuinely feel they have a real impact
  • trust, openness, and the elimination of political game-playing
  • public confrontation of the difficult issues both locally and globally

Change is hard because it requires relentless will and dedicated hard work. Leadership may seem like David taking on the Goliath; but what if we together are a whole bunch of Davids? Then where would Goliath be? We can see ourself as a leader that is in essence one small David looking for many more. Many Davids can dream together and form a common vision.

Vision

Put simply vision helps us visualize success. Vision is an ideal unique image of the future. Vision is about the pursuit of excellence and the ideal; it is about possibilities and desired futures. Vision is an expression of optimism and hope.

Ideals reveal our higher order value preferences. They represent our ultimate priorities. Vision is also about uniqueness and the right kind of pride in being different - - in being the special person that we are.

Vision communicates what makes us singular and unequal, what sets us apart from everyone else. Vision helps us understand how we are truly distinctive. Vision is also forward-looking and future oriented. Vision states our destination and our aspirations that may take a lifetime to achieve.

Vision projects us ahead in time. Thus vision is about imagery, snapshots of our future reality. When we use vision we draw upon very natural mental processes in creating images of our ideal future. Vision is conceptualizing. Vision contains the images that are our windows of our world of tomorrow. Vision gives expression to our hope for the future.

Effective visions contain within them, whether stated explicitly or not, three key components:

  • Mission
  • Strategy
  • Culture

Strategic vision shows us "where we are going"

Articulating a vision statement has three useful functions:

  • It simplifies the planning phase for defining the vision
  • It enables leaders to integrate an amorphous collection of goals, dreams, challenges, and ideas and make them concrete
  • It becomes, like a constitution, a public document from which there can be no equivocation: people's response to a vision increases, though, when it is perceived as an enduring commitment and commitments are usually made in writing

The purpose of vision is to:

  • Guide us - - align our priorities and goals; keep fragmentation and diffusion to a minimum.
  • Remind us - - help us to remember the important "whys".
  • Inspire us - - not in the work itself but in the purpose of work and its transcendental outcome that gives us joy.
  • Control us - - its snaps us back to reality (when we wander after tempting opportunities or when we move away from our core gifts, competencies and collective abilities) which can help lead us to great accomplishments.
  • Free us - - when we know who we are and what we want to become, the other burdens we have carried are offloaded as we realize "what we are not", collectively and individually.

Formulating an organization mission is the community equivalent to a person grappling with the existential question of "why I am alive and what is my purpose". The mission must identify the expectations of the stakeholders along with their motivation and commitment.

The mission needs to be engaging while requiring little or no explanation. The mission needs to appeal to the broadest stakeholder group yet at the same time rise above the individual interests of any single stakeholder group. The mission identifies the cause that all stakeholders can support while feeling challenged and gratified as they work towards it. What is meaningful, and how much so, is directly related to either the energization or incineration that occurs as challenges are confronted.

Effective missions go beyond "what we do" to address "why we do it".

Strategy provides the operational logic to translate hope into accomplishment. Strategy explains the principles by which this translation occurs, in detail. Strategy is both unique and differentiating based on the dynamics between (1) the internal, the core abilities expressed in creativity and innovation, "what we are", and (2) the external forces of change.

Culture is the glue that holds the vision together. Through culturally shared and managed values, an organization can instill a strong, explicit sense of mission. When there is a "snug fit" between individual and organizational values, motivation will permeate activity.

Corporate culture directly impacts every component of the business organization's performance ranging from leadership effectiveness to business strategy.... business culture directly impacts the success of operations, human resources, decision-making processes, customer services, marketing and sales, policies, organizational structure and R & D.... the failure and under performance of these companies [all brought down by their failed corporate cultures] can be attributed as much to neglected and under-performing cultures as to outright wronging.

Here are 10 steps to building a better culture:

  1. Close the gap between business planning and culture planning
  2. Create a corporate culture that embraces change - - no change, no gain
  3. Treasure innovative people and their ideas
  4. Breakdown the bureaucratic mindset
  5. Identify natural change leaders and empower them to lead the change process
  6. Build a broad consensus for culture change from the bottom-up as well as the top-down
  7. Reinforce ethical conduct at all levels
  8. Create sponsorship at the top
  9. Culture is about behaviors - - replace political attitudes and punishing behaviors with positive reinforced behaviors
  10. Never lose track of the customer

There is a dramatic correlation between the strength of an organization's culture (or spirit) and its profitability (or performance). These organizations have a higher sense of business purpose. There is "ample empirical evidence that spirituality in the workplace creates a new organizational culture in which employees feel happier and perform better".

The sense of belonging to a work community is at the heart of spirituality. The culture of sharing and caring not only affords protection "when things get rough" but also brings motivation and meaning to the workplace which eventually spreads to all of the organization's stakeholders and value chain partners. In this kind of humanistic work environment workers are more creative and have higher morale, two vital factors closely linked to performance.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is intricately tied to future vision, and in fact, deciding future vision is one of the most important decisions a company must make. "Not having a vision will lead to constant firefighting and a workforce that lacks direction."

Mission statements are present-focused defining what a firm will do; vision statements are future-focused defining what the firm will do in the next three to five (or ten) years. Vision statements should be brief and "focus on the one major goal the company is trying to achieve".

However, while 82% of major organizations have a mission statement, and 91% of those mission statements have a customer focus, only 40% of managers believe their mission statements reflect reality. Financial budgets in these circumstances are rarely aligned with the objective of putting the customer service first.

Strategic change must start with a clear and credible vision that is supported by adequate resources and as well as an appraisal/compensation system that is aligned with the stated objectives of vision and mission. The change process must incorporate and integrate a transparent system of rewards and promotions that parallels performance measurement. With anything less, statements reflecting strategic planning are "no more than mere rhetoric, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

The laws of business strategy show that the pathway to superior financial performance is through the customer. However, he says most frequently performance measures relate to internal processes without a strong connection or linkage to customer need. Benchmarking and best-practices measurements can lead a company in the wrong direction by focusing on those processes and unintentionally forgetting about the customer.

Further, customer based strategies should not consider their industry as competition, but should rather be aimed at any potential goods or service that fulfills customers’ needs better than current delivery. The goal is to continually find new needs, fulfill them, and then find more needs. By doing this on a continual basis, it is possible to create sustainable competitive advantages. This is done by focusing on the customer, not on internal processes.

Transformational Leadership

Corporate vision and mission must begin with the transformation of leadership. Organizational transformation will not happen without transformation of top management,. Typically top-down sharing of a unified vision not only goes beyond the purpose of making money, but incorporates a spiritual purpose that encompasses trust, harmony, values, honesty, and transcendent meaning.

Today's knowledge workers increasingly look at a job as a source of:

  • Satisfaction
  • Creativity
  • Development

When corporate vision is linked to those three factors, workers "will respond with extraordinary dedication to work they see as their own".

Some organizations enjoy charismatic leadership that is inspiring, intellectually stimulating, and considerate. Nonetheless, too often there are gaps between what is espoused by top management and what prevails in practice.

Though the organization may have developed vision, mission, values, and beliefs, its workers are often not emotionally committed to these. The reasons for this include:

  • Middle and junior level employees were not involved in the mission development process
  • The senior executives are minimally involved in disseminating these spiritual constructs
  • Values desired by workers are neither espoused nor followed
  • Actual practices are not modified to align with espoused practices

To elicit emotional commitment to espoused mission and vision statements it is essential that :

  • All stakeholders especially employees be involved in the vision and mission development process;
  • The top management team become highly cohesive and become examples of the espoused organizational values;
  • The top management team credibly and earnestly implement what they espouse in public.

Ambition

Ambition needs a better reputation - - too often ambition has been seen as a character flaw yet to make a difference as leaders we need more, not less, ambition:

Every great leader begins with a great dream. Ambitious visions not only require a capacity for meaningful change, but also provide the energy and inspiration to engage others. These tasks - - articulating a dream and rallying others around it - - are the essence of leadership. The study of leaders in every field tells us that leadership is the residue of ambition.

Leadership is found in an urge to create something beyond oneself - - to be dominated by a greater sense of purpose; it must extend well beyond the accumulation of wealth and power. Transcendental leaders show remarkable persistence, preparation, clarity of purpose, and optimism.

The arc of their ambition is found in three behaviors;

  • Stage one - - Ascending the Arc: begins with a fresh insight, discovery, or conviction that is deeply personal.
  • Stage two - - Finding Balance: in sharing our personal vision with others in our organization or community - - the risks of underachieving against overextending must be weighed so that we can deliver on our promises and our promoted values; failure to deliver means losing credibility and the commitment of those we desire to lead.
  • Stage three - - Passing the Torch: understanding that the best way to keep control of our dream is to share control; fashion and commitment to a joint dream is cemented once decision-making authority and personal rewards are widely distributed among our followers.

To move from a collection of ambitious individuals to an organized force, we must be able to articulate a shared, compelling purpose and engage our followers in its pursuit. In sharing our dreams, we must encourage others to dream. Everyone has the desire to accomplish something great. We need the personal humility to recognize the importance of our followers' dreams. At the heart of every great group is a shared dream. In a shared dream is found the power of mission.

Humility is also required because we all sometimes fall short of our ambition. When we stretch too far ahead of our own capability, we can stumble badly. As leaders we need to fight that part of our ambition that is based on pure ego, avarice, greed, infatuation, bravado or hubris. These traits are within all of us and we must temper their effect on our behavior. Self-reflection helps us to see ourselves clearly and to remain true to our highest values. With leadership comes the responsibility of abandoning individual egos in the pursuit of the dream. As a leader we must set a good example in demonstrating how we personally manage our unwieldy ego.

Leaders Set the Stage

Leaders set the stage for the development of culture by providing living, breathing examples for followers to emulate as they go about their everyday actions. As leaders we can unleash a torrent of worker pride and spirit by dedicating ourselves to our followers. We can develop a strong culture by focusing on respect. "Everyone needs to know and feel that he is needed. Everyone wants to be treated as an individual". Giving our followers the freedom to take responsibility will in due time release resources that would have otherwise remained concealed.

Our job as leaders is to encourage people to take risks and become leaders themselves - - by supporting them when they inevitably stumble. Culture thrives when people pursue something that they can really believe in; in sharing beliefs through a common dream we tap into the hearts, spirit, and passion of our followers. The result is they offer every ounce of their inspiration, creativity, and energy.

We demonstrate respect and encouragement as we show our followers that the only way to learn and achieve is to shake hands with ongoing experimentation and failure. We need to foster and promote the failure that leads to success. Extraordinary work and accomplishment comes from providing an environment that centers on the needs and desires of the everyday follower. Perhaps one of the greatest expressions of respect is to include all followers in the process of goal setting and dream making.

Leadership is about helping followers find meaning and significance within terms of a shared overall purpose. Too often instead, followers are disrespected - - "dissed" by a competitive system that rewards aggressiveness instead of corporation.

Organizations fail because the right behaviors are not rewarded. Disrespect and inappropriate rewards takes the soul of any vision. Leadership is all about keeping our eyebrows raised in wonder, adventure, and learning. With that and the adaptive capacity of emotional intelligence, we need to employ personal self-awareness along with the knowledge of how to motivate and engage others.

Imparting or engaging followers' in a vision or dream is anything but easy - - caring, encouragement and trust building are required. Leaders paying the price of self-sacrifice for the sake of the dream may in that sacrificial act set an example in which followers voluntarily join the leader in paying that personal price to pursue the dream. In many ways, sacrifice is the dues of leadership.

Much of our success in life depends on self-generated goal seeking in the face of adversity; in other words, sacrifice is required. "Successful people - - men in particular - - have no idea how driven they are by compensatory 'I'll show you!' needs.

Playing the underdog and having a real or invented enemy are often the preconditions for sacrificing individual ego and paying that special personal price in subordinating all else to the pursuit of a shared dream.

Enabler

Often the job of leaders is to protect those making this sacrifice from the "suits" - - the corporate overseers who do not share the dream. Compare the bureaucrat who is interested in efficiency and productivity to a group that believes they are on a mission that could change the world and make a dent in the universe. Leaders need to protect those who are on a fervent almost obsessive quest of their beliefs and vision.

One of the greatest acts of leadership is found in our ability to help our people give voice to their dreams, and to provide the means by which people come together to create something greater than themselves. The gift of leadership is found in our ability to release the aspirations of others. Our greatest mutual strength will be found where our dreams overlap.

Leaders can help people look beyond themselves in the pursuit of a dream in seven specific ways:

  • Achieve excellence in whatever we do: being the best at what we do transcends individuality when it is combined with high purpose to establish excellence in our service.
  • Create great value: we need to jointly recognize the connection between quality and value.
  • Empower the individual: leadership is found in giving followers and colleagues the information, authority, resources, and shared power to act in pursuit of our shared purpose and dream.
  • Improve the human condition: energy is found when we dedicate ourselves to improving the lives of others and the public good.
  • Create fun and pleasure: we need to appeal to people's sense of enjoyment as well as purpose; Herb Kelleher made fun and good heartedness a way of life at Southwest Airlines.
  • Invent the future: the greatest dreamers and doers strive to change the world by inventing new ways of doing business and rallying people to a worthy cause.
  • Improve the environment: human activity and our technology exact a price on Mother Nature; we elevate our cause if we make a point in promoting conservation, mitigating damage, and raising awareness.

Humility and Narcissism

Not everyone wants to lead. Some would rather "play". They want to be the players involved in the work at the frontline or the idea factories. With these types of followers it is critical that leaders continuously remind people of the dream and of what's important.

Demonstrating humility and personal vulnerability in support of both followers and dream is most powerful. Also required with humility is some degree of narcissism - - some degree of belief in your self - - that success is attainable. Leadership blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will in pursuit of the common vision.

Disciplined dreaming progresses through a series of stages:

  • an initial insight or discovery
  • perseverance that enables us to capitalize on an opportunity to exploit our insight
  • broadening personal ambition into a wider purpose that others can contribute to come
  • a phase of relinquishing the reins of power so that others can carry on the work

"One way or another everybody does follow the arc" of ambition in pursuit of a real dream.

The Hedgehog

Jim Collins says facts are better than dreams. When creating a clear vision or image of the desired future, it is important to brutally examine the current situation. Collins suggests convening a council of interested stakeholders who meet regularly for ongoing discussions about the questions contained in three intersecting circles:

  • What can we be the best at in the world?
  • What drives our economic engine?
  • What are we deeply passionate about?

In Collins' Good to Great model, the vision statement is formed by a council. The council exists as the device to gain understanding about important issues facing the organization. It usually consists of five to twelve people who have a range of perspectives and a deep knowledge about some aspect of the organization and or the environment in which the organization operates. The council meets periodically, as much as once a week or as infrequently as once per quarter.

Always guided by the three circles the council reiteratively loops through a four stage process moving from:

  • asking questions
  • to dialogue and debate
  • to executive decisions
  • to autopsies and analysis
  • to asking questions and so on

Each member of the council has the ability to argue and debate, even heatedly in search of understanding, and without exception they demonstrate the utmost respect for each and every member of the council. Protection of parochial interest and egotistical need to win a point must be set aside.

The frequency with which the council in any given period of time cycles through the three circle process is directly related to how quickly an organization can arrive at its guiding "hedgehog concept". It takes most organizations three to five years to truly arrive at this guiding vision.

Collins contrasts a fox with the hedgehog:

Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are scattered or diffused moving on many levels never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn't matter how complex the world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to a simple, indeed almost simplistic, hedgehog idea. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance. To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity. They have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.

The hedgehog concept comes from a deep understanding three key dimensions, known as "the three circles" (described above), and translating that understanding into a simple, crystalline concept that guides all efforts. We can think of the three circles as a personal guidance mechanism. In the twists and turns of our chaotic world, the three circles act like a compass. It can tell us if we are on target. It shows us what we need to adjust.

If we use the three circles to take inventory of our activities, we can learn what percentage of our time falls outside our vision. To do truly great work we need simplicity - - a simple framework that helps us to discard what does not fit and to understand what we treasure. With simplicity we can make our life a creative work of art. We need to "stop doing" what does not fit into our dream.

Hedgehogs understand what they can be "best at" may not be what they have traditionally been engaged in. Piercing insight and egoless clarity helps the hedgehog appreciate not only that it has the potential to be best-at but crucially also what it cannot be best-at. The hedgehog transcends "the curse of competence".

Frequently the hedgehog must dispense with its core activity, that it may have been involved with for decades because it is only "good" at the activity yet it can never be the very best at it. The hedgehog lets its ability, not its ego, determine what it attempts. The hedgehog requires a clear standard of excellence.

A hedgehog concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what "we" can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial.
The shift from doing what we are good at to what we can be great at is what initiates our passion. This does not mean the change in commitment, strategy and goals is made from ego or bravado. It simply means the decisions are relentlessly and consistently made from the hedgehog concept. That decision-making process creates momentum and accelerates growth.

The hedgehog concept is not a goal, a strategy or an intention; it is an understanding. It has a quiet ping of truth that speaks for itself. It is the one big thing the hedgehog knows and sticks to. It is what drives an organization's economic engine. The hedgehog concept becomes the guiding vision, the purpose and the reason for being that binds the people in its organization together. It reminds them of what is important and why, bringing both passion and a sense of destiny.

Forming OUR Vision

In formulating a vision or dream here are some tips to know and pitfalls to avoid:

  • Work for the good of the organization and the community; avoid the pursuit of self-interest
  • Toil in humility and love; avoid bravado, ego and pride
  • Emphasize the enduring health, sustenance and well-being of the organization above and beyond personal goals; avoid the direction of seeking recognition and hunting for glory
  • Confront brutal realities; avoid glad handing
  • Search for the best; avoid deep examinations of shortcomings
  • Vigorously advocate a wide range of viewpoints; avoid sampling or hearing only the key characters.
  • Do the hard work of constant testing; avoid quick arrival
  • Deeply appreciate the service being provided and to whom it is provided; avoid disrespect
  • Seek resonance, relevance and simplicity
  • Seek flexibility and direction; avoid confining precision and definitiveness

A dream can never be reached. Vision sets out where we will be in a future point in time. Vision statements are not mission statements. Mission statements deal with purpose.

When writing the vision statement:

  • Make the statement action-oriented, what we can do now; avoid intentions.
  • Like a map, give the statement direction; avoid being general or vague.
  • State what we do; not what we believe; avoid making a vision statement a mission statement.
  • Vision statements are reachable and have milestones; avoid being ethereal.
  • Be vivid, succinct and clear using a metaphor if possible; avoided verbosity and high sounding language.

Sharing the Dream

Co-creating a dream is the opposite of imposing a vision. When a vision is imposed, manipulation and even coercion will be required - - push rather than lead becomes the operative verb. When values are not shared, organizational cancer follows.

Some followers want to join into a dream - - adopt the dream of a great leader either because the dream resonates or because the follower greatly identifies with the leader; admiration is involved. Either way the individual is making a personal choice of will.

Without a personal identity, we do not have a soul. "Without an identity that we purposely shape, we have no future". Field Marshal Sir William Slim, who led the re-conquest of Burma from the Japanese at the end of World War II, well stated "leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision".

Co-creating means "let's create the future we individually and collectively want"

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