In The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do (2009), Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller give an in-depth description of great leadership. Their book is a captivating story illustrating five elements of servant leadership–using the easy-to-remember acronym, SERVE.
(1) See the Future
One of a leader’s most important responsibilities is to envision and communicate a compelling picture of the future. Blanchard and Miller note that leadership always begins with a picture of a preferred future.
One of the lessons I learned early in my management career was that the vision for the future needs to be a shared vision…in fact, it’s more important that your team buy in to the vision than how “good” it is. In my first leadership role, I came up with a beautiful vision for the future for the HR specialists I led. To my surprise, they didn’t like it… I later learned they had their own ideas…imagine that! In the end, we developed a shared picture for the future that was more powerful than I imagined.
So, don’t feel pressured that you must be a visionary to be a leader. Servant Leaders figure out how to bring a compelling picture of the preferred future out of their team…for that, facilitation skills trump visionary skills…
For more on their five elements—comprising the acronym SERVE—click here.