You may not see yourself as a visionary.
If that’s true, I want to make a compelling plea today to see if you would reconsider that position.
Utilizing your imagination, dreaming and visioning is a strong attribute needed to be leader, to lead a company or to lead a life. Your dreams are like a huge motivational magnet. They help pull you through to where you envision yourself being. You can be a visionary by simply taking the time to imagine how different things could be and what a difference it would make in the life of an organization, a community, yourself and others.
If your organization doesn’t commit at least a small percentage of it’s time to reflect and also pursue opportunities or possibilites, it will always maintain the status quo. Read that as limited to no growth. As a leader, you should be setting aside time to meet with your team during the year to imagine at least 5 to 15 years into the future.
Strategic question: What must we do now to prepare for challenges we’ll face 5 years from now? 10? 15? 20?
Another important aspect for you if you are a leader of a team is to challenge yourself to make your dream or vision so big that it’s impossible to accomplish alone. Make it so huge, you may not even be able to do it in your lifetime. If you are working primarily to hear someone say “you’ve done a good job”, you can accomplish that before today is finished.
Strategic question: What if you had a dream and vision that’s big enough to transcend the issue of who gets credit for it?
You have vast potential that has yet to be fully developed, simply because we have not taken the time to engage our imaginations to work on it purposefully or our circumstances have never required we do so. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, the world now requires us each to do just that.
At times, our mind will manipulate us with thoughts such as “what if I come up with a big hairy audacious dream and it falls flat”? You must learn to capture a thought like that and counter with “What if my dream is 100 times more successful than I planned? What then?”
When you create a successful vision, you begin to feel passionate about it. The only way to be successful in your vision is to visualize it and set goals and a plan of action to reach your vision. Over time, you will begin to see more parts of your vision coming true until one day you see yourself living your vision.
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