How - Dov Seidman [145]
Surrounding the central core are Leadership Attributes, the behaviors, attitudes, and orientation of a self-governing individual. It is these attributes we will primarily focus on and explore in the pages that follow. Surrounding these is a set of Nonleadership Attributes, behaviors that often result when you abdicate your pursuit of HOW.
Let us begin at the beginning of the framework and see where it leads. (I know, a circle has no beginning—that is part of its unique character—so I have numbered a starting place at about nine o’clock on the circle to get us on track.) Feel free to refer back to the illustration frequently to better follow the narrative.
Vision
The Leadership Framework begins with five essential attributes, five keystones of behavior upon which the entire structure rests. The first is vision. A self-governing person spends some time in another realm, the future. Having a leadership disposition means mentally envisioning a better future for yourself, the tasks at hand, and those with whom you labor. Leadership starts with vision, and leaders envision every moment. You could have big visions or little ones, envision a
FIGURE 12.1 The Leadership Framework
better meeting or envision inspiring thousands of workers around the world to make better decisions. You could envision a feature in a technological platform, or envision a whole new product, or simply envision a way to make someone else’s day a little bit better. You can create a new vision or embrace someone else’s and make it your own.
Envisioning represents a proactive stance toward achievement; it is an activity, a behavior, and a disposition toward pursuing your goals. If you don’t have a vision, then you fall outside the lens of HOW and are a short-term manager: task-oriented, obedient, and obsessed with and limited to what you can see right under your nose. Short-term managers tend to be reactive by nature and find themselves putting out fires more often than they light the beacons that show the way. It is a defensive posture and worries more about appeasing others than about engaging them. To get your HOWs right you must be focused on others, and vision is the crucial first disposition toward achieving that goal.
Communicate and Enlist
Most visions that are worth pursuing are greater than any one of us, so if you have a vision and you feel it truly has content that could make for a better future, then you should share it with somebody else. The question then becomes: HOW do you share it? What is the quality of your effort? If you browbeat somebody, if you talk at them, you are not sharing. Sharing, at its heart, attempts to make your vision into everyone’s vision, to make a Wave. Uniting a group of people behind a single goal or set of goals presents the greatest challenge to any leader; achieving that alignment results in the greatest success.
To reach this goal you must enlist those around you and help them see what you see. To truly enlist you must be open and forthcoming about your motives, be transparent in your communication, and reach out to others in a way that they feel you’ve truly shared.
Consider the last 50 e-mails you received. Which ones enlist? Which, when you read them, make you think, “Yes, I get it. This makes sense. I want to help.” Which ones, by contrast, make you think, “What is this all about? This is not what we agreed to. Why did you cc: my boss? What are you up to?” The ones that enlist create connections. They build strong synapses between the sender and you. They make you want to participate, belong, or assist in the