Does your company vision invoke a desire or compulsion for your employees to be a part of it?

Imagine going on a road trip you always wished to, with some of your friends. None of them wanted to go but you convinced them, and they signed up, grumpily. You have made plans of having fun and making memories, but your friends are busy expressing their displeasure. One of them is missing home, the other does not like the place, the third one is cribbing about traffic and amidst all of this, and you try to make them enjoy the trip. Despite your best efforts, the complaining does not end and what began as a trip for building memories became a memoir of disappointments and all you wonder is where did you go wrong?

A vision is much like a road trip. If it is fueled by the personal vision of an individual, chances are that others would not be able to find any commonality in it and hence might sign up for it but may not commit to it at a deeper level!

A recent survey by Gallup showed that in most of the organizations, the percent of engaged employees ranged from 31 to 40 %. A whopping 60% of the employees lacked connect with their organizations.

How does a Transformational Leader create a company vision that weaves a thread of commonality amongst its participants?

1. Such a vision often focuses on intrinsic goals of the participants rather than some extrinsic milestone
2. This vision is often sky high and difficult to achieve, but since everyone relates to it personally, people derive their energy and focus from it, to work in extra-ordinary ways to achieve it. This fuels their thought process, innovation and courage at the same time, empowering them to go beyond their usual potential.
3. People are willing to commit to it for long term.

When John Kennedy announced in 1961 “…to have a man on the moon by the end of the decade…”, when Henry Ford envisioned common people owning an automobile, when Apple created a vision of using the power of computing to empower people – they were all creating compelling visions that would encourage commitment and not just formality.

As Robert Fritz, famous management consultant and author says “…It’s not what the vision is, it’s what the vision does.”

What does your vision do for you?

Is it enough to create an engrossing vision to execute transformational change? In our next blog, we will talk about Ways using which a Leader can achieve long term commitment to this vision.

Want us to cover a particular topic of interest to you? Request us in the comments below.

This blog is part of the Transformational Leadership series

Transformational Leadership aims to achieve significant changes across teams and organizations by inspiring and motivating participants to work towards a common goal (inspired by their aspirations) that not only brings long term prosperity to the organization but also helps the employees expand their own potential and fulfill their intrinsic dreams.

We present to you a series of data backed posts on some of the most pressing issues of Transformational Leadership with real life business examples of how they have been overcome by some of the world’s most famous Transformational Leaders.