Eight-step process to discover your personal leadership vision

Leadership vision is an essential means to focus attention on what matters most; what you want to accomplish in your life and what kind of a leader you wish to be

Bhavna Dalal
Updated: Jul 14, 2017 10:19:01 AM UTC
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Image: Shutterstock

Leadership is the ability to inspire or influence others towards the leader's, team’s or organisation’s vision. Leadership can be developed at every level, mainly because it starts with being able to lead yourself first. Having a clear and continuous vision is a vital requirement in developing as a leader.

Once upon a time a man on a horse suddenly came galloping down the road. It seemed as though he had somewhere important to go. Another man, who was standing alongside the road, shouted, "Where are you going?" and the man on the horse replied, "I don't know! Ask the horse!"

To be able to lead you must know where you are going, unlike the man in this story. The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. The vision must be articulated clearly and forcefully on every occasion. To achieve great leadership skills it is important to have an understanding of your own personal vision first.

Leadership vision is an essential means to focus attention on what matters most; what you want to accomplish in your life and what kind of a leader you wish to be. It represents who you are and what you stand for. It inspires you, and the people whose commitment you need, to act and make constructive changes towards a future you all want to see.

Are you someone interested in discovering more about your own leadership potential and solidifying your personal vision? Isn't your personal vision is too valuable not to take action on.

If you are serious, by following is a simple eight-step process, you can get down to taking action-right from setting a vision, down to holding yourself accountable to accomplish it.

Step 1: Discover the Vision
Most of us process information based on what we see. 65 percent of us are visual learners, according to the Social Science Research Network. This is where the "Leadership Vision" comes from too. Imagine yourself sitting at your desk. On it is one of those calendars that turns one page per day. It is showing today’s date. As you are looking at the calendar, it flips on its own to the next day. Then it turns again and again, only faster. You see the next few months fly by. It’s now onto the next year, and then it begins turning very fast as it goes to the next year, and then the next, and on and on, until it suddenly stops. As you look down you see that the calendar shows five years from today.

Imagine that you look up from your desk and you find you are where you were at all. You are in actually in a place where you feel a lot of joy and happiness. You are doing what you love, and having a very good time. Visualise it. What will it feel like? How will it smell? Where are you? What are you doing? What are people saying about it ? DO NOT worry about the "How Will I Achieve It?" part right now. Write or draw out your vision very quickly.

Step 2: Uncover the Passion
You now have a fuzzy idea of what is important to you. Now try and understand the purpose. The Why factor. What will it give you? Why is it important to you? How will it bring more meaning in your life? How will it help other people?

Step 3: Construct the Vision Statement
In Step 1, you had a picture of that vision that was floating around in your head and you brought it to the surface. You uncovered the reasons why it was important in Step 2. Now build something specific which is the anchor to move forward and take action. The Vision Statement. It must be clear and concise and really specific. Specificity is power when we want to make our vision a reality.

Step 4: Create your Action Plan
Make a list of the actions and steps you will need to take to achieve this vision. For example, if you aspire to be a great speaker, what are some of the things you can do to get better at it; like watching speeches by influential speakers, getting in touch with a speech coach, practicing by yourself in front of a mirror.

Step 5: Legend your Action Plan
Look through your list for actions that are five minutes or less. Mark them. Come up with something that would take five minutes to do, if you don’t see anything there already. For instance, it could be as simple as scheduling time in your calendar to watch a speech, or sending out an email to your friend for a recommendation, or even researching about speech coaches in your local area.

Step 6 :Take Quick Action Now!
What separates success from not? Fine execution. Executing entails continuous actions tweaked along the way focused in the right direction. How many times have you wanted to do something but never ended up doing it and later regretted it. Have you ever for a second paused and thought about what holds you back in going after your life's dream?

Step 7: Plan Your Future Actions
This should be your personal plan, how you will continue and move forward. Now that you have some idea of your vision at this point, how you will propel yourself to success. Bucket your action items on a sheet. Look at this list. What will you do in the next 48 hours, 10 days, 30 days. Schedule it.

Step 8: Activate Your Accountable Self
Accountability separates good from great. This is what separates people who don’t take action from people who do. In order to put your vision into action, only you can figure out how best to stay committed. Reflect on simple tricks that help. For example, posting it on your mirror or putting it on a calendar. You have to get that accountability machine going. Take ownership of previous steps. take a photo and send it to three people. Who would you tell? Who are you scared to tell? Who is the person you trust. And finally, who will help make it happen for you?

Following these simple eight steps can you some idea and a sense of the direction you want to proceed in. In fact, this is a good exercise to follow whenever you need clarity or are at any crossroad or facing a difficult dilemma.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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