During the hot summer months I took my wife and children to Oregon to do some camping and mucking around on the beach. My wife comes from there and we had a marvellous time building sand castles, picking berries and catching big, juicy Dungeness crabs.
But it was something mundane my sister in law said during a simple car journey that has remained with me most strongly.
She and her husband were leading a small convoy of 'out of towners' from one place to another. When we finally arrived Estelle (the sister in the law) said, "When I'm leading the way the hardest thing to remember is that you guys have no idea where you're going!"
It sounds ridiculous to draw a comparison between this innocent comment and the world of corporate leadership, but what my sis-in-law observed is something I see leaders doing every day.
Enthused by the goal leaders often dash off, forgetting that no-one knows exactly where they are going or how they're going to get there. They forget that in terms of their vision everyone else is an 'out of towner' . It's only when they stop and look behind them that leaders realise everyone else got stuck at a 'traffic light' 30 miles earlier and is now horribly lost.
Most of the time only you truly know the route you are going to take. The people following are 100% dependent on you and need to be able to see where you are in order to follow.
Yes, you have to keep moving forward. But even more importantly you need to keep a close eye on the rear view mirror. Leadership isn't about blazing a trail and zooming ahead. It's about moving at a pace that even the slowest follower can match, even pulling over from time to time to let them catch up.
the leadership coach
13 September 2010
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I think this is where co-creation of the vision in the first instance comes into its own. The leadership trick then becomes to get the balance right between co-creation and over-emphasis on concensus. Someone does finally have to put the pin in the map, but at least everyone was around the map at the time the destination was chosen!
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree, and thanks for your comment. What the experience tells me, though, is that even if everyone was around the map as the destination was defined (something that is hard to do in even medium-sized organisations), sometimes the leader has to make tactical decisions on the spur of the moment: take a sudden detour to avoid roadworks etc. We need to keep an eye in the rearview mirror just to make sure everyone saw what we did and was able to follow.
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