Note: This is a guest post from @Stephen, editor of Business Development in Context and a co-founder of the work.life.creativity forum. You can follow him on Twitter at @hdbbstephen.

Back in October I wrote about Communicating Your Vision in this space. As my “digital nomad” business grows and develops, my vision for its development become increasingly important. As the manager of a business, department or team, one can never really stop thinking about your vision for that group. An argument could be made that it is impossible to be a true leader of a group, organization, company, or industry without having a vision. In the comments to that post, reader Coaching pointed out:

A manager’s vision is something that he can convey to his employees and then show them through his actions and his focus. It can be his greatest asset, or it can be the destruction of his reputation if he fails to keep a constant vigilance in making his vision happen.

Vision is closely tied to positive action and focus, but involves taking that positivity to the next level.

Between Where We Are and Where We Want to Be

Vision: A leader’s ideas and plans for an organization’s future. Idealistic in nature, a vision gives a sense of the differences between the present and future states of an organization. Visionary leaders are often noted for innovations within and organization or industry.A leader’s vision is extremely important because it gives people something to strive toward: a view beyond the present, into the future of the organization.

How to Define the Preferred Future

To develop your own vision of the future you wish to achieve, try the following exercises:

• Start with your aspirations. What are your aspirations? Is there some particular concept, process, or product that you wish to develop?
• Do your research. Compare your ideas with others in your field by studying books, trade magazines, and Web sites. Talk about your ideas with your personal board of directors or mastermind group.
• Spend some time thinking about your organization and its component parts. What could you do to improve the organization? What is the single biggest hurdle to success in your unit or the organization as a whole?
• Think about potential improvements. What can you do to improve the organization or component? Think about both the short term and the long term. This will enable you to set short-term and long-term goals to take steps toward realizing your vision.
• Think about do-ability. Are your goals realistic? If your vision points to goals that seem unattainable, is there a way to break down the vision into a simpler form?
• Use your intuition. Does your vision make sense? Can you explain it to a child?

Building Confidence in Your Vision

Confidence in yourself will be bolstered by both positive thinking and by the process of formulating your vision. Self-confidence frequently tends to be the result of the measurable success of your actions, and is ultimately up to you. To build your self-confidence, you might make a list of your assets and past successes, no matter how small they were. Some assets you might list are education or specialized training, the ability to communicate well with others, or a great sense of humor.

Finally, sharing your vision with others, be it your team or your superiors, is an important aspect of building confidence in your vision. By sharing your vision with your team, you’ll let them know they have a leader who is thinking of the organization’s future, as well as theirs. By sharing your vision with your superiors, you’ll let them know you are an innovative thinker who is not content with the status quo, but intent on reaching something larger.

What do you think?

Post from: EveryJoe

More Thoughts on Leadership and Vision

It is very important for a manager to have a vision of where they want to lead their team. It is even more important to communicate this vision to the rest of the team. In order to successfully communicate your vision, you should be able to address the following four qualities:

1. Your vision must describe the preferred future. This works best if the language is in the present tense, as though you are there, in the future, describing what has already happened.

2. Your vision must be compelling and interesting. For a vision to be compelling, it must express the right amount of connection between the present and the future. You want the people on your team to know the goal of the vision, and to accept the belief that it will make a difference and thus feel empowered and excited to go for it.

3. Your vision must account for the real world. If a vision seems to take no attention to the real world, nor any attention to future trends as we understand them, it will not work. It should be obvious people that the vision takes into account of what is really happening, rather than ignoring both present and future reality.

4. Your vision must be expressed in enough detail to provide direction, yet be as simple as possible. Your mileage will vary as to what this means, some people want a very short vision, some prefer much more detail.

Communicating your vision means expressing not only the best ideas, but tapping into the hearts and minds of your team. A compelling vision will target the heart, the conscience, and the soul. A compelling vision aligns with your team’s shared values.

One of the best methods for creating a shared vision is to provide everyone involved an opportunity to share feedback on a vision statement that is in process. Asking this question in a sincere manner makes it possible to demonstrate how the individual vision and the company vision line up. When people feel that they are striving for something they also want personally and have the chance to comment on, commitment is much more likely.

What has been your best practice in communicating your vision?

Please share your experience in the Comments so we can all share your vision.

Post from: EveryJoe

How to Communicate Your Vision