Leadership Kool-Aid: Visions
by Miki Saxon
There is a wonderful post by Kent Lineback at HBR called The Leadership Learning Moment That Wasn’t. In it he tells of blowing a great opportunity because he couldn’t get the other executives in the company to buy into his vision.
“What do you think is going on? I made an important point and everybody yawned and moved on.”
“It was an important point,” he [the consultant] said, “but you didn’t build any bridges.”
Lineback goes on to say that he thought long and hard about the consultant’s words and realized he was right.
“I didn’t build bridges. I didn’t reach out and connect with others on their terms. I talked at them. I had a solution, a beautiful vision. I knew the answer, and I spent my time telling everyone what it was and what the company had to do.
But that didn’t change anything.
I knew he was right. I knew I should do what he said. But I couldn’t debase my perfect vision by turning it into a free-for-all idea jam. Better to stay pure and fall on my sword, a martyr.”
That is one of the great problems of leadership visions, they are the property of one person; one person who will do almost anything to sell the vision—anything except share and modify it.
Leadership visions happen at all levels of a company from the CEO down to the newest supervisor.
It’s a side effect of drinking the leadership Kool-Aid, so you might want to think twice before indulging your thirst.
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/khurt/5252851284/
