June 4, 2025 • 32 mins
What separates truly exceptional leaders from the merely competent? The ability to see and shape the future—to craft and communicate a compelling vision that inspires others to action.
In this thought-provoking episode of the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, hosts Reed Moore and Chase Williams dive deep into the transformative power of vision in leadership. They explore how vision acts as the bridge connecting today's difficulties with tomorrow's potential, giving meaning to the daily grind that might otherwise feel purposeless.
"One of the challenges that even great visionary leaders have is not that they don't have clear vision, it's how do they communicate clear vision to others," Reed notes, highlighting a critical distinction that many leaders miss. Without effective communication, even the most brilliant vision remains trapped in the leader's mind, inaccessible to those who need to embrace it.
The conversation shatters the myth that visionaries are born, not made. Chase and Reed share practical strategies for developing your visionary capacity through dedicated thinking time, practice, and feedback from trusted colleagues. They reveal how Microsoft faced a decade-long identity crisis after achieving Bill Gates' audacious vision of "a computer in every home"—a cautionary tale of what happens when organizations accomplish their vision without establishing a new one.
Perhaps most valuable is their insight on vision repetition. Following Patrick Lencioni's observation that people don't truly hear something until it's been said at least thirteen times, they encourage leaders to become comfortable with feeling repetitive. The moment you grow tired of sharing your vision is precisely when some team members might be hearing it for the first time.
Whether you're struggling to articulate your vision clearly or looking to strengthen your organization's sense of purpose, this episode provides the practical wisdom and inspiration you need to see and shape a compelling future. Your journey toward more impactful leadership begins with a clear vision of what could be.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
One of the challenges that even great visionary
leaders have is not that theydon't have clear vision, it's
how do they communicate clearvision to others?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
grow right and it's to lead well.
We have to stop and say, okay,I might not be somebody who has
substantial vision right now andI can do something about that.
You're listening to the SherpaLeadership Podcast, your guide
to climbing higher in life andleadership.
I'm Reed Moore and, alongsideChase Williams, we're here to
help you break through obstacles, scale your potential and lead
with greater clarity and purpose.
Leaders, welcome back to theSherpa Leadership Podcast.
(00:59):
I'm Reed Moore, here with mygood friend, chase Williams.
We're here to help you climbhigher in life and leadership,
and I'm so excited about today'stopic because it's an
absolutely critical componentfor you mastering as a leader.
As always, go toSherpaConsultingGroupcom for our
action guides as well as allkinds of other resources and to
be able to get in touch with us.
All right, chase, how are youtoday?
Great man, how are you Doingwell, man, doing well.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I'm excited for this episode.
Yeah, this is an importantpiece of leadership we're going
to unpack today.
Yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So what are we talking about today?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, we're talking about vision really, but it's
kind of modeled under this Iserve leadership model that we
follow and the S in I serve issee and shape the future.
Yes, kind of another way ofsaying vision, Right.
Right, so when you think ofseeing and shaping the future,
having vision as a leader, whatdo you think of?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I always kind of go back to this core idea of what
is leadership, and there's allthese definitions that we've
talked about.
Of course, will continue to,but ultimately, somebody who is
leading is not going on ajourney by themselves.
They're taking other people andthe question is always where am
I taking them, where are wegoing?
And that creates an immenseamount of pressure as a leader.
(02:08):
There's a huge obligation there, and one of those obligations
is to stretch our vision, muscleour ability to see into the
future, which for us, as well aseverybody else, is really,
really unknown.
But because we're leading otherpeople, we are moving people
forward into a direction and, asa leader, that's a core piece
of what we have to grow in.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, I agree, and you said a couple of things
there that I think are reallyimportant.
You think about the power ofvision, right, like.
This country was founded onsomeone's vision of what could
be or should be before it evenreally existed, right?
Businesses same way, right,like if you think of a startup
as an example, existed, right.
Businesses, same way, right,like if you think of a startup
as an example, sometimes they'regathering millions, hundreds of
(02:52):
millions of dollars for an idea, a vision, before there's
really even a company behind it,right?
So we know it's super powerful,which is why there's a big
responsibility around it forleaders.
I think one of the challengesthat even great visionary
leaders have is not that theydon't have clear vision, it's
how do they communicate clearvision to others?
Because if you're a reallystrong visionary and you have an
idea that's so powerful, but Idon't know what it is, I can't
(03:15):
see inside your head, then itmeans nothing to me, right?
Or anyone else who might beinterested in going on the
journey toward that vision withyou, right?
And that's one of those piecesof the skill that you can
actually improve and practiceand get better at.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that we talk about
, like in marriage and differentthings, is you know, there's
there's this, this idea of youknow, I deeply love my wife, but
if she never hears, the words Ilove you come out of my mouth,
or specifically, I love you, andthen and then an actual list of
like these are the things thatcause me to love you, and it's
(03:49):
all inside of my head, there'sthis dissonance in my leadership
at home, and that is that I amexperiencing all of my emotions
and all of my gratitude, butnobody else gets to experience
that it's the same way, right?
And if you look at the bestleaders out of the course of
history, they have all beengreat communicators,
specifically communicators ofvision.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, what do you say ?
Read to somebody who'slistening, who thinks that, well
, I'm just not a very strongvisionary or I don't feel like I
have strong vision.
That's really something I'm notgood at.
What do you say to that person?
The first place?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I would start is.
I would say I would take a stepback and say, okay, so are you
operating from a fixed or agrowth mindset?
And fundamentally, a fixedmindset is this idea there are
lucky people and there's unluckypeople.
There are visionaries andthere's those who can't see the
future.
And it's a really hard way tolive life, and I think it's a
very wrong way in general tothink about things like vision.
(04:40):
So it's kind of like saying youknow the person that doesn't go
to the gym and they say, well,I'm not strong, yeah, like that.
That's.
That's a totally reasonablestatement.
But the the, the underlyingchallenge is can you become
strong?
Or is this, you know, apartfrom a significant physical
disability, can you do somethingabout it?
And so the challenge here iswe're saying, like, as a leader,
(05:02):
your job is to grow Right andit's to lead.
Well, we have to stop and say,ok, I might not be somebody who
has substantial vision right nowand I can do something about
that.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, I would also say too, that you can get better
at having a vision Right, andhere's what I want to say about
that.
Sometimes people think ofvision as like.
I woke up one morning and itwas like perfectly clear in my
head.
It was like an idea that hadall this clarity to it.
That can happen.
That's very rare, very rare.
Setting a vision or getting goodat being a visionary can
(05:36):
sometimes look like sitting downwith a blank piece of paper and
a pen and thinking way out intothe future.
What do you want your businessto look like?
What pen?
And thinking way out into thefuture.
What do you want your businessto look like?
What do you want the country tolook like?
Right, what do you?
What things would you envisionhappening if other things
happened right?
It's actually a practice thateven very highly successful
people don't take the time to dooften enough Right, right.
(06:00):
So if you're having trouble,like thinking that you have the
strong vision for the future,you might just need to set aside
some time to work on what thatcould or might look like and
over time your vision can becomestronger and have more clarity,
not just like the second youwoke up one morning.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Absolutely, and it's one of the reasons we, instead
of just saying vision, we saysee and shape the future.
Because there's two disciplineshere.
One is for me to be able toextend my vision out, but that
can be kind of like this thisprognostication, right, so you
start getting into.
I forget the guy's name.
They wrote the, the, the, thebook, the big short about right
and, and the joke is that he has, you know, he has successfully,
(06:39):
you know, prophesied, you know,17 of the last two recessions,
right, yeah, 17 of the last two.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And so there's this idea of, like he clearly sees
this thing.
No, he clearly saw a thing, andnow he's kind of stuck in this
trap.
But the other one so we do wantto see things more further, you
know, further in the future,which requires stopping and
thinking what is it that I'mobserving and what was the
application to me and the peopleI lead?
The other one is actuallyshaping the future, kind of like
(07:09):
thinking about this country orthinking about a city, or even
thinking about something likebuilding a new house for your
family there is.
That's actually what you'redoing when you sit down with an
architect or you sit down with ablank piece of paper and you
start envisioning what thathouse could look like, what the
future could look like.
This is vision and this isspecifically you carving out or
building or shaping the future,which is also a significant
(07:32):
skill set and something to togrow in.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, we talked a little bit about kind of like
the power of vision.
Right, like why?
Why is it so powerful forothers?
Why is it such an importantskill for great leaders to have
to be able to see and shape thefuture?
What does that do for a leader?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
so one of the things I think it does is it connects
current activities or actions orhardships with hope.
Okay, right, so if, if I'm in asales business or I'm building
out a brand new product,everything that shows up today
is just nothing but hard.
Yeah, it's hard, it'smonotonous, it's coding's,
(08:09):
planning, it's making phonecalls, it's it's, you know,
setting meter meetings withinvestors.
It's just flat out hard, it'srejection, and the list goes on
and on and on.
And so if I can connect today'shard with what the future hope
could be from that that is, youknow, people run off of hope.
Yeah, people run off ofencouragement all of us, right,
(08:31):
not just like the week, buteverybody does.
And so vision, really, it tiesa current, uh, hard thing to a
future preferred reality yeah,otherwise what you're doing
might start to lose meaning,purpose.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
It becomes just like a grind.
For what grind sake?
And that's really what I hearyou saying, right?
And so, from a leader'sperspective, if we are setting
and communicating a strongvision, we can see and shape the
future and help others see andshape the future.
Then all the hard stuff they'redoing every day takes on
meaning, takes on purpose.
They can keep going towardssomething with this hope, as you
(09:07):
mentioned, for the future.
Right, like the Bible says thatin the absence of vision, the
people perish.
Yes, well, that sounds a littlebit like they get tired of
doing the hard things, right,they just get they, they, they.
They get disenchanted ordisenfranchised.
What am I doing this for?
There's no rationale behind it.
So that's what creates thatpower to move people, move an
(09:29):
organization, move a countrytowards something that can be
better.
Right?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, and I think that that, like you know, that's
exactly right.
And I think sometimes the moreseasoned a leader gets, the more
distance there is between themand the reality that the people
that are following themexperience.
And that is that you might,behaviorally as a leader, be
wired to have seen a vision,seen something, been hopeful,
(09:53):
and then just go to work andgrind and put your nose down and
go and go and go and you lookup and you don't see people
going and going and grinding.
You just get super mad, right,what's everybody's problem?
And you go down this wholenegative, you know, like
negative mindset space.
But you actually, as anindividual, might have way, way
longer of a period of timebefore you get disillusioned,
(10:14):
right, Before you lose hope.
Although you know when ithappens with a leader, it shows
up sometimes prettycatastrophically right, they
will wake up one day and theyhaven't been casting vision even
to themselves and it's reallydark and really hopeless.
So it applies and it'simportant for the leader as well
.
But the other piece of this isthat as a leader, you have
(10:36):
processed it and thought itthrough so much sometimes that
you just forget again that youhaven't talked about this
externally and there's kind ofthis desire of like you know,
why doesn't everybody justfigure this out for their own
life?
Well, you're the leader right.
Fundamentally, they're lookingat you and saying, hey, you know
, you pointed us in a directionand now you got to help us stay
clear, because we decided tomove a part of our life at least
(10:59):
forward with you at the helm.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, so okay, I, I I've got this strong, clear
vision.
I stood up in front of thecompany and I communicated it
really powerfully.
Am I done?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You are done as a company.
If that's it, okay.
Yeah, that's the deal, okay.
So we as people are very wehave a significant challenge
hearing something for the first,second, third, fourth, tenth
time, right, so kind of you know, there's all kinds of different
metrics that get thrown outfrom stages.
Patrick Lencioni says peopledon't literally don't hear
(11:34):
anything that you say untilyou've said it at least 13 times
.
I don't know if that'sscientific or not, but I think
leaders that ultimately do agood job casting vision make
peace with a pattern, and thatis you say something long enough
that you get sick and maybeeven embarrassed that you're
saying it again and you eitherstop and that's right at the
(11:55):
point where somebody might haveheard you for the first time or
you make peace with what you'reexperiencing and you say it at
least you know a 2x of thatbefore it really even catches.
You know, and that's one ofthose disciplines as leaders is
if you get caught up in theyshould have.
The question always goesthrough my mind as a coach is
(12:15):
there are ways that you thinkthings should be, and then
there's being committed to beingeffective.
Yeah, right, do you want to beright?
Do you want to be effective.
If your goal as a leader is tobe effective, you just have to
make peace with some of thesethings around vision.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, and repetition of communicating.
It is important, right, becauseregardless of how many times it
took for someone to hear peopleforget, still they might have
actually heard you.
They inspired them, and thenmonths go by and hard things in
their life happen and no onesaid it again and they forget.
Why am I doing this?
Why does this matter?
So it's almost like being agood leader in part is being
like a parrot yes, saying thesame important things vision,
(12:52):
seeing and shaping the futureover and over and over again.
Here's another practical reasonright, reed, organizations, by
nature, are changing all thetime.
Yeah, new people are enteringthe organization.
Some people move on.
We like to think that's not thecase, but it is.
Yeah, and so you might behaving a meeting and saying this
thing for the hundredth timeand that employees it's their
first meeting, yeah, it's thefirst time they've ever heard
(13:13):
this.
Vision, right, right, or in thehiring process, you're
attracting talent into yourorganization.
You had better be talking aboutthe vision if you want to
attract great talent over andover and over again, because the
, the concept that we talkedabout is like vision leaks, yes,
right, what does that mean toyou?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
right, it leaks so, yeah, vision, uh, hope,
encouragement, all of thesethings are kind of like eating
right or sleeping or going tothe gym, like you do it and and
you've gotten enough for thisperiod of time.
Yeah, but if you don't continueto go back, then it goes away
eventually to nothing.
Another way of thinking thatmaybe is uh, running a business
or leading a family or leadingin any capacity is it's like
(13:52):
steering a ship.
It's not like being on traintracks, right where it's
completely perfectly defined andvery rarely is there a
derailment.
It's you're going to hit astorm and you're going to have
to change course and then you'regoing to have to readjust and
point to true north again, andyou're going to have to do that
over and over and over again formaybe even months, right, like
old school journey across theAtlantic.
So it's this constantreorienting, constantly letting
(14:14):
people know where we're goingand that we're on course.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, I love that.
Okay, so beyond communicating astrong vision well, and what
you see for the future, and thenyou know how you're going to
shape the future, what else dowe have to do as leaders in
regards to vision, after we'vecommunicated it?
So after we've communicatedvision.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We have to embody the vision right.
We actually have to.
We have to be able to showpeople by our words and our
actions that we are on missionwith them, that we are casting a
vision and then and then we'removing forward with that right.
If we don't, don't do that,it's.
It's one of the things I'vejust kind of observed about, uh
like, human experience is thatpeople aren't deeply moved until
(14:57):
they see things embodied right.
So we call it in our company, wecall it, uh, you know like,
until they see somethingincarnate right, which is like a
biblical idea, and that is that, you know, as a leader of a
company, if somebody can hear mywords and then they can watch
me, they're like that's whatthat looks like, right?
That's really inspirational.
And as an organization grows,the ideal is that more and more
(15:20):
and more people embody thevision, right.
So you've said it so many timesthat all these light bulbs
start going off, and then you'velived it for long enough that
they start modeling the way thatyou work around the vision.
And now you look inside of acompany of 50 people and you
have 10 or 20 or 30 people thatyou can almost say are the
vision that is a magical placeto be inside of company.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, the reality is is that most companies will take
on the characteristics of theirleader.
So if you look around and youdon't like what you see, you
better look in the mirror aswell.
Right, because that's thatembodying piece around the
vision.
The other powerful part about astrong vision is that it will
help you make really difficultdecisions as you go along.
That's the shaping part, right,like, does this align with the
(16:06):
vision we have for where we'regoing?
Because otherwise every ideacan look like a good idea or
every idea can look like a badidea either way, right?
So if we don't have somethingthat's kind of North star
pointing us in the rightdirection, then decision-making
gets exponentially harder.
Yeah, right, and no one willreally even understand why
you're doing what you're doingor why you're not doing what
(16:27):
you're not doing because there'sno shape to it.
Yes, right, because there's novision there.
They forgot, right, where we'reheading and why that matters.
And that's something else that Ilove to communicate to leaders
is people will be excited aboutsomething that is extraordinary
or bigger than themselves, orsomething they can, they can be
part of creating.
(16:48):
Right, and everyone has alittle bit of what's in it for
me and them, sure, right thewith them.
What's in it for me?
So, when you're communicatingvision, it should demonstrate
and show people how everyoneinvolved will benefit not just
the owners of the company, theemployees, as well the people we
serve, the communities weoperate in and beyond.
(17:11):
Right, like, how does thisvision actually create something
of value that serves everybodyconnected to?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
it.
I love it.
You know one of the things Iused to love?
This show that was on TV forquite a while and it was
Mythbusters yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Oh, great show.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Great show, and one of the myths was that.
So Adam and Jamie decided to gotry to prove out.
Is the myth was that if you werelost in the forest, you could
find your way out or find anavigable path If you had
blinders and all you could seewas, you know, basically your
(17:44):
feet, or within like a couplefeet in front of your footprint,
and both of them, as I rememberit, uh, said, yeah, we actually
think we could do it.
Here's the plan.
Turns out that if you actuallycan't see, uh, even in a
situation like that, if you, ifyou can't see beyond, you know,
as my dad you say, the tip ofyour nose what they did is they
spent hours and hours, and hours, and, and they actually covered
(18:06):
almost no ground at all, maybe,maybe, like 100 yards of a
circle in all kind of a randompattern.
And so, if you think about, ifwe don't have vision as leaders
and we don't have vision aspeople, where is our life going?
Well, the answer is probablywhat you could easily observe
with somebody who's not leadingwell or somebody who's not being
(18:27):
led well, and that is yearafter year, sometimes decade
after decade.
There's actually not progressmade.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, love that.
And we've heard it said beforemaybe, like the vision, strong
enough, we'll find a way,something like that, right, I
believe that's true, right.
But the opposite is also true,which is what you're describing.
If I'm just looking straightdown and walking, I can get
somewhere, but I just don't knowwhere.
Right, and I've seen thishappen with business owners and
entrepreneurs over the years.
You have to.
It's like they actually keeptheir head down so much, never
(18:54):
look up that they.
They have some level of successin certain areas and they can
go years, decades, and when theyfinally look up, they're not
always happy with where they'vearrived.
Right, and it doesn't mean theydidn't have some successes by a
lot of people's measure alongthe way, whether that's income
or profit or whatever but theygot to a destination that they
(19:15):
didn't, they don't really like,all of a sudden.
Yeah, right.
And so that's kind of thedanger of that.
I want to tell you like a quickstory of where I experienced the
power of vision and then thepower of not having vision.
So I took over a company anumber of years ago, a decade
ago, as the primary leader ofthe company, and there was
already kind of a strong visionthere that I had gotten from the
(19:37):
person who hired me into therole and he articulated the
vision well, here's where we'regoing as a company.
Here's the size that we want toget to.
This is actually a real estatebrokerage, right, and the idea
was we're going to go to 300plus real estate agents and we
were a third of that size at thetime, which is already pretty
big.
And I'll be honest, reed, likeat first I had I it took me a
(20:00):
minute to wrap my head around abusiness of that size because
from my experience, I had neverled or run a business anywhere
near that size or that number ofpeople.
But I was able to do it and itkind of crystallized in my mind.
I said, ok, let's go, take thehill right, let's go and do it.
And so I got to work on castingthat vision to the rest of the
organization and talking aboutyou know why that number
actually mattered and the marketshare that it would give us and
the what's in it for me type ofthings for all the agents that
(20:22):
would be connected to that.
Lo and behold, with a greatbunch of a great bunch of people
, a solid team and lots of hardwork and years later we eclipsed
that number.
We eclipsed that size as acompany, yeah, right.
So I saw the power of visionwork.
And then here's where the storyturns the other way.
That vision alone wasn't bigenough because we had
accomplished it, and my mistakeas a leader was I didn't reset a
(20:46):
different vision or a biggervision or however you might
think about that.
Right, kind of like we had kindof gotten there and then,
without resetting the vision,the, the, the company got a
little funky.
The results started to change alittle bit.
People started to wonder, like,what are we doing this for?
Why does this matter?
Right, like a lot of the thingsthat we don't want to show up
in our organization showed up inmine.
(21:08):
Yeah, and looking back on it, Iknow now one of the reasons,
one of the primary reasons, wasI wasn't looking farther, I
wasn't seeing and shaping thefuture beyond this, this, you
know, place that we had arrivedto so that we could continue to
go collectively.
And it took really yearsactually for for me to realize
(21:28):
that, others to help me realizethat, and then ultimately to go
back to okay, where are we goingagain and why does it matter
again.
And then how do we get peopleback on board again?
That was a really tough lesson.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, it's really interesting because there's this
idea of vision, or even likemission, which is something that
we teach, we do workshops on,and that is that if you can
actually hit it, it's too small,right, and it creates problems.
The classic example of thatactually is Microsoft, right.
So Bill Gates came out withthis audacious vision, right,
(22:01):
which was to put a computer inevery household in the world.
Right, no way that's ever gonnaget accomplished.
Functionally, it did, yeah,functionally it did Right Faster
than he would have everimagined, way faster than he
imagined Like.
It was so audacious at the timeand, of course, that
accelerated Microsoft justthrough the roof.
But then, all of a sudden,microsoft had this massive
(22:23):
identity crisis and it lastedabout 10 years, maybe a little
bit longer, where they juststruggled and I knew I have some
friends really high up inMicrosoft and the company had an
identity crisis because theyhad accomplished the mission,
they had fulfilled the vision.
It was a problem.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, so that's something to watch out for,
right.
If you feel like you set avision that you thought would
never get accomplished becauseit was so big, and now you're
getting close to accomplishingit as a leader, you need to take
some time and re-see the futureright See a bigger future than
what you thought was possiblebefore, because otherwise you
can end up in that same placethat I did, same place that
(23:01):
Microsoft did Lots of companiesright.
This is a common problem thatcompanies run into if you're not
paying attention and you forgetor don't understand the true
power of vision.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So there's a flip side of this coin and that is
that, for the outliers that arelistening to us, there are some
people that are so incredible atcasting vision and so
incredible at, like, wonder andideating the future that they
can use the unbelievable.
If I could quantify vision as,like you know, one of the, I
(23:32):
would say vision is one of thetop five most powerful things in
the world, I mean maybe topthree it is unbelievably
powerful and I had an experienceof being in business with
somebody we, we were in apartnership with a few partners
and we set out to build a reallylarge national level company.
His ability to cast vision waslight years beyond mine and the
(23:53):
talent that we attracted and thepeople that we brought into
that company from around thecountry was it was amazing and
it was electric because, uh, we,we, we worked so hard on the
mission statement and when wenailed it like it just resonated
right and his ability to castit and to just constantly be a
visionary, it created anenvironment that we were able to
(24:15):
hold together even though,looking back, the rest of the I
serve model was reallyproblematic.
Yeah, we actually didn't do alot of the other things that
caused for longevity.
There is this, maybe,responsibility as a leader, and
that is, if you have thisability to cast massive vision,
you'll have the ability toattract people really fast to
(24:36):
yourself and to be able to kindof build from this place of hope
in the future areas, becausethe vision itself over the
course of time, you could almostsay it becomes toxic because
people are hoping in a futurethat actually will never happen
(24:56):
and there's a tension there,because everybody who's built
anything has purely ran on hopefor a very long period of time.
That's right.
When we started, when westarted our primary company you
know the people that I don'teven know why.
They joined me at first, like Ihad a vision, like we're going
over here, and it was just.
Else was a mess.
(25:16):
Yeah, it was a disaster, right,but it was a really fun one.
And then, over the course oftime, they stuck with the vision
long enough for theinfrastructure and for all the
other pieces of my leadership,as well as the company, to come
together.
So we just have to beresponsible.
I would say, if you aresomebody who has a visionary,
use it full throttle, cast thevision, but your growth is going
to be massive to making surethat this is not people buying
(25:37):
into something that thatultimately can't succeed.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
So sometimes it just flat out won't and that's hard,
but it can't if you don't growyeah, I think one of the the key
lessons that you're sharing is,although the ability to see and
shape the future, having visionis maybe the most powerful
thing you need and have to do asa leader, it's just not the
only thing.
Right, I was taught this yearsago.
It's called the sevenprinciples of leadership and it
(26:00):
kind of demonstrates this idea.
Beyond having and setting avision, there's other things
that have to happen beyond that,so I'm going to read through
them really quickly.
The first one is set a visionand, by the way, like you can
get better at that.
That's a skill you can improveon if you don't feel like you're
amazing at it, naturally, right.
The second one clearlycommunicate the vision.
We talked about that Right, soI have it in my head.
(26:20):
Now I got to communicate itwell to others so that they can,
it can resonate with them, theycan connect to it, be attracted
to it.
Number three is recruit a teamto the vision.
Right, there might be a lot ofpeople that actually get excited
about your vision and areattracted to your vision, but
you've got to recruit the rightteam.
Not everyone's going to be, youknow, the perfect fit, or even
(26:40):
the right fit as you go alongaccomplishing the vision right
After you've recruited a team,you have to define each person's
portion of the vision right,like their role in achieving the
vision.
So they all got attracted aboutthis thing we're going to go
and do or this place we're goingto end up.
Now we got to just startdefining each person's role so
that they can get into actionshaping it right.
(27:02):
That means you have to alsoempower people to achieve the
vision as a leader.
It's not about just the thingsthat you do.
It's not about just the shapingthat you do.
It's not about just the shapingthat you do.
It's ultimately about theshaping that others do too,
right.
So that's that empowerment.
Piece number six is measuretrack and hold people
accountable to the vision, right?
Yeah, that's a whole episoderight, this is this idea.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It doesn't.
It doesn't feel very visionyyeah, it's hard and
accountability that's exactlyright.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I'm sure we'll get the chance to unpack that.
And, of course, the seventh oneis respond quickly when issues
arise that threaten the vision.
Such a big deal.
Right, it tells us like, ooh,that's not going to work because
that's not where, that's notpart of where we're going, or
that doesn't help us get wherewe're going.
If you make the mistake ofinviting someone into your
company or your world thatactually doesn't want to go
(27:55):
there, as an example, sometimesthat can turn toxic not always,
but it can just be an anchorwithout being toxic.
As a leader, it's your job togo and solve those issues.
Yeah, either get those peopleon board by re-articulating the
vision right, like re-engagingthem and why they were
passionate about in the firstplace, or frankly identifying
that they just flat out don'twant to go there and they're
(28:17):
they're not going to be an assetor a resource to the company.
That can actually be ahindrance and anchor or toxic to
the place that the rest of uswant to go.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
So let's land the plane with some practical.
Okay, so let's land the planewith some practical.
How do I grow in my ability tocast vision, like?
How do I grow in my ability tobring people along with the
vision?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Well, I think I mentioned one thing before, and
that's set aside time to thinkabout the future your future,
right, and maybe it's vision foryour family, maybe it's vision
for your financial situation orthe wealth you want to build.
It could be for yourorganization.
That's a lot of what we talkabout, but actually take time,
block time, right, like this iscalled thinking time.
(29:01):
If you've read the book theRoad Less Stupid, yeah, thinking
time, that's what KeithCunningham calls it.
This can be used for gettingbetter at actually thinking
about what it can look like 10years from now, 50 years from
now, 500 years from now.
Stretch yourself, right.
It's kind of like a musclePractice doing that and
articulating what that lookslike.
(29:22):
So, if you start to see it, butit's kind of fuzzy like,
articulate what it might looklike, because you can change it,
you can tweak it as you go, canchange it, you can tweak it as
you go.
But the more detail that youcan you can get down or think
through, yeah, the better youcan then communicate and
articulate that.
It just creates color and itcreates contrast for the other
people and eventually you'regoing to start communicating
(29:44):
this too, and that's the otherthing I would say is get to work
, practicing, communicating it.
Share it with a friend, ask themwhat they think about it, see
if it stirs something in themthat you're hoping that it would
, because if it's not, you cantweak it, you can change it, you
can say it differently.
It doesn't have to be adifferent vision, you might just
need to communicate itdifferently.
It's really like anything else.
Read like practice makesperfect.
(30:05):
We've heard that.
Well, I don't know if perfect'sthe right word, but practice
definitely makes better.
Yes, and so get get to work insharing that, casting that
vision with people that youtrust, those that are close to
you, and let them help you, kindof give some feedback and help
you tweak it, improve it, makeit better.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I love it.
A couple things I'd probablyadd to that is uh, as number one
is, as a leader, just set it inyour mind that every time I
open my mouth it's to castvision.
There's always a reason thatI'm going to talk, but it's
always secondary, and that isthat every time I open my mouth
to talk to somebody in a meeting, talk to somebody in front of
(30:42):
my people, it's an opportunityto recast the vision,
opportunity to reset the vision,and it's not always the same
talking point every time, butit's taking this conversation
and tying it to vision.
Taking this conversation andtying it to vision, taking this
action that you just saw in thatperson and tying it to their
future.
Every time I get theopportunity, it's a chance to
tie it to vision.
So then it kind of erases thisquestion of have I talked about
(31:04):
this enough?
It's no.
Every single time you open yourmouth is to cast vision, is to
cast vision, is to cast vision.
Single time you open your mouthis to cast vision is to cast
vision is to cast vision.
Secondly, something I've uh,you know, I've just experienced
over the years is if I have anew vision to cast or a new
thing to work on.
I think I'm just going todouble down on your last thing,
and that is I'm going to go andtalk about it with people, I
trust, when it's still clunkyI'm gonna say, hey, chase, what
(31:26):
do you think about this idea?
and I'm gonna pitch it with itwith like here's all my energy,
and you're going to look at melike let's beat that up a little
bit, try again, right, and sothen I'm just going to say it
again and again and somewherearound you know the 20th time.
It's refined enough that all ofa sudden it's not just clear in
my mind but the other person'slike oh, that makes sense.
Now I have my, the beginning ofmy talking points.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, love that.
Awesome.
What else?
Anything to close us out onvision?
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I think that's it, like.
Oh well, there's, there's.
You know, there's 80 more hoursof vision that we'll we'll get
to over time, but functionally Ithink this is the lay of the
land and that is a seeing andshaping.
Seeing and shaping the future.
It really, really matters toyou and your business and your
people.
And secondly, it's a skill thatcan be developed.
It's not an inherent trait thatonly some people have.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
You are a visionary.
Right, you are a visionary.
That's a growth mindset.
You can get better at it, butsaying you're not one is almost
like saying you're not a leader.
It is Thanks for listening tothe Sherpa Leadership Podcast.
If this episode inspired you,we hope that you'll subscribe,
leave a review or share it witha fellow leader.
For more resources and tools,you can go to
(32:34):
SherpaConsultingGroupcom andremember that leadership is a
journey.
Every step you take matters.
Keep climbing.
We'll see you next time.
One of the challenges that even great visionary
leaders have is not that theydon't have clear vision, it's
how do they communicate clearvision to others?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
grow right and it's to lead well.
We have to stop and say, okay,I might not be somebody who has
substantial vision right now andI can do something about that.
You're listening to the SherpaLeadership Podcast, your guide
to climbing higher in life andleadership.
I'm Reed Moore and, alongsideChase Williams, we're here to
help you break through obstacles, scale your potential and lead
with greater clarity and purpose.
Leaders, welcome back to theSherpa Leadership Podcast.
(00:59):
I'm Reed Moore, here with mygood friend, chase Williams.
We're here to help you climbhigher in life and leadership,
and I'm so excited about today'stopic because it's an
absolutely critical componentfor you mastering as a leader.
As always, go toSherpaConsultingGroupcom for our
action guides as well as allkinds of other resources and to
be able to get in touch with us.
All right, chase, how are youtoday?
Great man, how are you Doingwell, man, doing well.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I'm excited for this episode.
Yeah, this is an importantpiece of leadership we're going
to unpack today.
Yes, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
So what are we talking about today?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, we're talking about vision really, but it's
kind of modeled under this Iserve leadership model that we
follow and the S in I serve issee and shape the future.
Yes, kind of another way ofsaying vision, Right.
Right, so when you think ofseeing and shaping the future,
having vision as a leader, whatdo you think of?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I always kind of go back to this core idea of what
is leadership, and there's allthese definitions that we've
talked about.
Of course, will continue to,but ultimately, somebody who is
leading is not going on ajourney by themselves.
They're taking other people andthe question is always where am
I taking them, where are wegoing?
And that creates an immenseamount of pressure as a leader.
(02:08):
There's a huge obligation there, and one of those obligations
is to stretch our vision, muscleour ability to see into the
future, which for us, as well aseverybody else, is really,
really unknown.
But because we're leading otherpeople, we are moving people
forward into a direction and, asa leader, that's a core piece
of what we have to grow in.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, I agree, and you said a couple of things
there that I think are reallyimportant.
You think about the power ofvision, right, like.
This country was founded onsomeone's vision of what could
be or should be before it evenreally existed, right?
Businesses same way, right,like if you think of a startup
as an example, existed, right.
Businesses, same way, right,like if you think of a startup
as an example, sometimes they'regathering millions, hundreds of
(02:52):
millions of dollars for an idea, a vision, before there's
really even a company behind it,right?
So we know it's super powerful,which is why there's a big
responsibility around it forleaders.
I think one of the challengesthat even great visionary
leaders have is not that theydon't have clear vision, it's
how do they communicate clearvision to others?
Because if you're a reallystrong visionary and you have an
idea that's so powerful, but Idon't know what it is, I can't
(03:15):
see inside your head, then itmeans nothing to me, right?
Or anyone else who might beinterested in going on the
journey toward that vision withyou, right?
And that's one of those piecesof the skill that you can
actually improve and practiceand get better at.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that we talk about
, like in marriage and differentthings, is you know, there's
there's this, this idea of youknow, I deeply love my wife, but
if she never hears, the words Ilove you come out of my mouth,
or specifically, I love you, andthen and then an actual list of
like these are the things thatcause me to love you, and it's
(03:49):
all inside of my head, there'sthis dissonance in my leadership
at home, and that is that I amexperiencing all of my emotions
and all of my gratitude, butnobody else gets to experience
that it's the same way, right?
And if you look at the bestleaders out of the course of
history, they have all beengreat communicators,
specifically communicators ofvision.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, what do you say ?
Read to somebody who'slistening, who thinks that, well
, I'm just not a very strongvisionary or I don't feel like I
have strong vision.
That's really something I'm notgood at.
What do you say to that person?
The first place?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I would start is.
I would say I would take a stepback and say, okay, so are you
operating from a fixed or agrowth mindset?
And fundamentally, a fixedmindset is this idea there are
lucky people and there's unluckypeople.
There are visionaries andthere's those who can't see the
future.
And it's a really hard way tolive life, and I think it's a
very wrong way in general tothink about things like vision.
(04:40):
So it's kind of like saying youknow the person that doesn't go
to the gym and they say, well,I'm not strong, yeah, like that.
That's.
That's a totally reasonablestatement.
But the the, the underlyingchallenge is can you become
strong?
Or is this, you know, apartfrom a significant physical
disability, can you do somethingabout it?
And so the challenge here iswe're saying, like, as a leader,
(05:02):
your job is to grow Right andit's to lead.
Well, we have to stop and say,ok, I might not be somebody who
has substantial vision right nowand I can do something about
that.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, I would also say too, that you can get better
at having a vision Right, andhere's what I want to say about
that.
Sometimes people think ofvision as like.
I woke up one morning and itwas like perfectly clear in my
head.
It was like an idea that hadall this clarity to it.
That can happen.
That's very rare, very rare.
Setting a vision or getting goodat being a visionary can
(05:36):
sometimes look like sitting downwith a blank piece of paper and
a pen and thinking way out intothe future.
What do you want your businessto look like?
What pen?
And thinking way out into thefuture.
What do you want your businessto look like?
What do you want the country tolook like?
Right, what do you?
What things would you envisionhappening if other things
happened right?
It's actually a practice thateven very highly successful
people don't take the time to dooften enough Right, right.
(06:00):
So if you're having trouble,like thinking that you have the
strong vision for the future,you might just need to set aside
some time to work on what thatcould or might look like and
over time your vision can becomestronger and have more clarity,
not just like the second youwoke up one morning.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Absolutely, and it's one of the reasons we, instead
of just saying vision, we saysee and shape the future.
Because there's two disciplineshere.
One is for me to be able toextend my vision out, but that
can be kind of like this thisprognostication, right, so you
start getting into.
I forget the guy's name.
They wrote the, the, the, thebook, the big short about right
and, and the joke is that he has, you know, he has successfully,
(06:39):
you know, prophesied, you know,17 of the last two recessions,
right, yeah, 17 of the last two.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And so there's this idea of, like he clearly sees
this thing.
No, he clearly saw a thing, andnow he's kind of stuck in this
trap.
But the other one so we do wantto see things more further, you
know, further in the future,which requires stopping and
thinking what is it that I'mobserving and what was the
application to me and the peopleI lead?
The other one is actuallyshaping the future, kind of like
(07:09):
thinking about this country orthinking about a city, or even
thinking about something likebuilding a new house for your
family there is.
That's actually what you'redoing when you sit down with an
architect or you sit down with ablank piece of paper and you
start envisioning what thathouse could look like, what the
future could look like.
This is vision and this isspecifically you carving out or
building or shaping the future,which is also a significant
(07:32):
skill set and something to togrow in.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, we talked a little bit about kind of like
the power of vision.
Right, like why?
Why is it so powerful forothers?
Why is it such an importantskill for great leaders to have
to be able to see and shape thefuture?
What does that do for a leader?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
so one of the things I think it does is it connects
current activities or actions orhardships with hope.
Okay, right, so if, if I'm in asales business or I'm building
out a brand new product,everything that shows up today
is just nothing but hard.
Yeah, it's hard, it'smonotonous, it's coding's,
(08:09):
planning, it's making phonecalls, it's it's, you know,
setting meter meetings withinvestors.
It's just flat out hard, it'srejection, and the list goes on
and on and on.
And so if I can connect today'shard with what the future hope
could be from that that is, youknow, people run off of hope.
Yeah, people run off ofencouragement all of us, right,
(08:31):
not just like the week, buteverybody does.
And so vision, really, it tiesa current, uh, hard thing to a
future preferred reality yeah,otherwise what you're doing
might start to lose meaning,purpose.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
It becomes just like a grind.
For what grind sake?
And that's really what I hearyou saying, right?
And so, from a leader'sperspective, if we are setting
and communicating a strongvision, we can see and shape the
future and help others see andshape the future.
Then all the hard stuff they'redoing every day takes on
meaning, takes on purpose.
They can keep going towardssomething with this hope, as you
(09:07):
mentioned, for the future.
Right, like the Bible says thatin the absence of vision, the
people perish.
Yes, well, that sounds a littlebit like they get tired of
doing the hard things, right,they just get they, they, they.
They get disenchanted ordisenfranchised.
What am I doing this for?
There's no rationale behind it.
So that's what creates thatpower to move people, move an
(09:29):
organization, move a countrytowards something that can be
better.
Right?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, and I think that that, like you know, that's
exactly right.
And I think sometimes the moreseasoned a leader gets, the more
distance there is between themand the reality that the people
that are following themexperience.
And that is that you might,behaviorally as a leader, be
wired to have seen a vision,seen something, been hopeful,
(09:53):
and then just go to work andgrind and put your nose down and
go and go and go and you lookup and you don't see people
going and going and grinding.
You just get super mad, right,what's everybody's problem?
And you go down this wholenegative, you know, like
negative mindset space.
But you actually, as anindividual, might have way, way
longer of a period of timebefore you get disillusioned,
(10:14):
right, Before you lose hope.
Although you know when ithappens with a leader, it shows
up sometimes prettycatastrophically right, they
will wake up one day and theyhaven't been casting vision even
to themselves and it's reallydark and really hopeless.
So it applies and it'simportant for the leader as well
.
But the other piece of this isthat as a leader, you have
(10:36):
processed it and thought itthrough so much sometimes that
you just forget again that youhaven't talked about this
externally and there's kind ofthis desire of like you know,
why doesn't everybody justfigure this out for their own
life?
Well, you're the leader right.
Fundamentally, they're lookingat you and saying, hey, you know
, you pointed us in a directionand now you got to help us stay
clear, because we decided tomove a part of our life at least
(10:59):
forward with you at the helm.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, so okay, I, I I've got this strong, clear
vision.
I stood up in front of thecompany and I communicated it
really powerfully.
Am I done?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You are done as a company.
If that's it, okay.
Yeah, that's the deal, okay.
So we as people are very wehave a significant challenge
hearing something for the first,second, third, fourth, tenth
time, right, so kind of you know, there's all kinds of different
metrics that get thrown outfrom stages.
Patrick Lencioni says peopledon't literally don't hear
(11:34):
anything that you say untilyou've said it at least 13 times
.
I don't know if that'sscientific or not, but I think
leaders that ultimately do agood job casting vision make
peace with a pattern, and thatis you say something long enough
that you get sick and maybeeven embarrassed that you're
saying it again and you eitherstop and that's right at the
(11:55):
point where somebody might haveheard you for the first time or
you make peace with what you'reexperiencing and you say it at
least you know a 2x of thatbefore it really even catches.
You know, and that's one ofthose disciplines as leaders is
if you get caught up in theyshould have.
The question always goesthrough my mind as a coach is
(12:15):
there are ways that you thinkthings should be, and then
there's being committed to beingeffective.
Yeah, right, do you want to beright?
Do you want to be effective.
If your goal as a leader is tobe effective, you just have to
make peace with some of thesethings around vision.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, and repetition of communicating.
It is important, right, becauseregardless of how many times it
took for someone to hear peopleforget, still they might have
actually heard you.
They inspired them, and thenmonths go by and hard things in
their life happen and no onesaid it again and they forget.
Why am I doing this?
Why does this matter?
So it's almost like being agood leader in part is being
like a parrot yes, saying thesame important things vision,
(12:52):
seeing and shaping the futureover and over and over again.
Here's another practical reasonright, reed, organizations, by
nature, are changing all thetime.
Yeah, new people are enteringthe organization.
Some people move on.
We like to think that's not thecase, but it is.
Yeah, and so you might behaving a meeting and saying this
thing for the hundredth timeand that employees it's their
first meeting, yeah, it's thefirst time they've ever heard
(13:13):
this.
Vision, right, right, or in thehiring process, you're
attracting talent into yourorganization.
You had better be talking aboutthe vision if you want to
attract great talent over andover and over again, because the
, the concept that we talkedabout is like vision leaks, yes,
right, what does that mean toyou?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
right, it leaks so, yeah, vision, uh, hope,
encouragement, all of thesethings are kind of like eating
right or sleeping or going tothe gym, like you do it and and
you've gotten enough for thisperiod of time.
Yeah, but if you don't continueto go back, then it goes away
eventually to nothing.
Another way of thinking thatmaybe is uh, running a business
or leading a family or leadingin any capacity is it's like
(13:52):
steering a ship.
It's not like being on traintracks, right where it's
completely perfectly defined andvery rarely is there a
derailment.
It's you're going to hit astorm and you're going to have
to change course and then you'regoing to have to readjust and
point to true north again, andyou're going to have to do that
over and over and over again formaybe even months, right, like
old school journey across theAtlantic.
So it's this constantreorienting, constantly letting
(14:14):
people know where we're goingand that we're on course.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, I love that.
Okay, so beyond communicating astrong vision well, and what
you see for the future, and thenyou know how you're going to
shape the future, what else dowe have to do as leaders in
regards to vision, after we'vecommunicated it?
So after we've communicatedvision.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We have to embody the vision right.
We actually have to.
We have to be able to showpeople by our words and our
actions that we are on missionwith them, that we are casting a
vision and then and then we'removing forward with that right.
If we don't, don't do that,it's.
It's one of the things I'vejust kind of observed about, uh
like, human experience is thatpeople aren't deeply moved until
(14:57):
they see things embodied right.
So we call it in our company, wecall it, uh, you know like,
until they see somethingincarnate right, which is like a
biblical idea, and that is that, you know, as a leader of a
company, if somebody can hear mywords and then they can watch
me, they're like that's whatthat looks like, right?
That's really inspirational.
And as an organization grows,the ideal is that more and more
(15:20):
and more people embody thevision, right.
So you've said it so many timesthat all these light bulbs
start going off, and then you'velived it for long enough that
they start modeling the way thatyou work around the vision.
And now you look inside of acompany of 50 people and you
have 10 or 20 or 30 people thatyou can almost say are the
vision that is a magical placeto be inside of company.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, the reality is is that most companies will take
on the characteristics of theirleader.
So if you look around and youdon't like what you see, you
better look in the mirror aswell.
Right, because that's thatembodying piece around the
vision.
The other powerful part about astrong vision is that it will
help you make really difficultdecisions as you go along.
That's the shaping part, right,like, does this align with the
(16:06):
vision we have for where we'regoing?
Because otherwise every ideacan look like a good idea or
every idea can look like a badidea either way, right?
So if we don't have somethingthat's kind of North star
pointing us in the rightdirection, then decision-making
gets exponentially harder.
Yeah, right, and no one willreally even understand why
you're doing what you're doingor why you're not doing what
(16:27):
you're not doing because there'sno shape to it.
Yes, right, because there's novision there.
They forgot, right, where we'reheading and why that matters.
And that's something else that Ilove to communicate to leaders
is people will be excited aboutsomething that is extraordinary
or bigger than themselves, orsomething they can, they can be
part of creating.
(16:48):
Right, and everyone has alittle bit of what's in it for
me and them, sure, right thewith them.
What's in it for me?
So, when you're communicatingvision, it should demonstrate
and show people how everyoneinvolved will benefit not just
the owners of the company, theemployees, as well the people we
serve, the communities weoperate in and beyond.
(17:11):
Right, like, how does thisvision actually create something
of value that serves everybodyconnected to?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
it.
I love it.
You know one of the things Iused to love?
This show that was on TV forquite a while and it was
Mythbusters yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Oh, great show.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Great show, and one of the myths was that.
So Adam and Jamie decided to gotry to prove out.
Is the myth was that if you werelost in the forest, you could
find your way out or find anavigable path If you had
blinders and all you could seewas, you know, basically your
(17:44):
feet, or within like a couplefeet in front of your footprint,
and both of them, as I rememberit, uh, said, yeah, we actually
think we could do it.
Here's the plan.
Turns out that if you actuallycan't see, uh, even in a
situation like that, if you, ifyou can't see beyond, you know,
as my dad you say, the tip ofyour nose what they did is they
spent hours and hours, and hours, and, and they actually covered
(18:06):
almost no ground at all, maybe,maybe, like 100 yards of a
circle in all kind of a randompattern.
And so, if you think about, ifwe don't have vision as leaders
and we don't have vision aspeople, where is our life going?
Well, the answer is probablywhat you could easily observe
with somebody who's not leadingwell or somebody who's not being
(18:27):
led well, and that is yearafter year, sometimes decade
after decade.
There's actually not progressmade.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, love that.
And we've heard it said beforemaybe, like the vision, strong
enough, we'll find a way,something like that, right, I
believe that's true, right.
But the opposite is also true,which is what you're describing.
If I'm just looking straightdown and walking, I can get
somewhere, but I just don't knowwhere.
Right, and I've seen thishappen with business owners and
entrepreneurs over the years.
You have to.
It's like they actually keeptheir head down so much, never
(18:54):
look up that they.
They have some level of successin certain areas and they can
go years, decades, and when theyfinally look up, they're not
always happy with where they'vearrived.
Right, and it doesn't mean theydidn't have some successes by a
lot of people's measure alongthe way, whether that's income
or profit or whatever but theygot to a destination that they
(19:15):
didn't, they don't really like,all of a sudden.
Yeah, right.
And so that's kind of thedanger of that.
I want to tell you like a quickstory of where I experienced the
power of vision and then thepower of not having vision.
So I took over a company anumber of years ago, a decade
ago, as the primary leader ofthe company, and there was
already kind of a strong visionthere that I had gotten from the
(19:37):
person who hired me into therole and he articulated the
vision well, here's where we'regoing as a company.
Here's the size that we want toget to.
This is actually a real estatebrokerage, right, and the idea
was we're going to go to 300plus real estate agents and we
were a third of that size at thetime, which is already pretty
big.
And I'll be honest, reed, likeat first I had I it took me a
(20:00):
minute to wrap my head around abusiness of that size because
from my experience, I had neverled or run a business anywhere
near that size or that number ofpeople.
But I was able to do it and itkind of crystallized in my mind.
I said, ok, let's go, take thehill right, let's go and do it.
And so I got to work on castingthat vision to the rest of the
organization and talking aboutyou know why that number
actually mattered and the marketshare that it would give us and
the what's in it for me type ofthings for all the agents that
(20:22):
would be connected to that.
Lo and behold, with a greatbunch of a great bunch of people
, a solid team and lots of hardwork and years later we eclipsed
that number.
We eclipsed that size as acompany, yeah, right.
So I saw the power of visionwork.
And then here's where the storyturns the other way.
That vision alone wasn't bigenough because we had
accomplished it, and my mistakeas a leader was I didn't reset a
(20:46):
different vision or a biggervision or however you might
think about that.
Right, kind of like we had kindof gotten there and then,
without resetting the vision,the, the, the company got a
little funky.
The results started to change alittle bit.
People started to wonder, like,what are we doing this for?
Why does this matter?
Right, like a lot of the thingsthat we don't want to show up
in our organization showed up inmine.
(21:08):
Yeah, and looking back on it, Iknow now one of the reasons,
one of the primary reasons, wasI wasn't looking farther, I
wasn't seeing and shaping thefuture beyond this, this, you
know, place that we had arrivedto so that we could continue to
go collectively.
And it took really yearsactually for for me to realize
(21:28):
that, others to help me realizethat, and then ultimately to go
back to okay, where are we goingagain and why does it matter
again.
And then how do we get peopleback on board again?
That was a really tough lesson.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, it's really interesting because there's this
idea of vision, or even likemission, which is something that
we teach, we do workshops on,and that is that if you can
actually hit it, it's too small,right, and it creates problems.
The classic example of thatactually is Microsoft, right.
So Bill Gates came out withthis audacious vision, right,
(22:01):
which was to put a computer inevery household in the world.
Right, no way that's ever gonnaget accomplished.
Functionally, it did, yeah,functionally it did Right Faster
than he would have everimagined, way faster than he
imagined Like.
It was so audacious at the timeand, of course, that
accelerated Microsoft justthrough the roof.
But then, all of a sudden,microsoft had this massive
(22:23):
identity crisis and it lastedabout 10 years, maybe a little
bit longer, where they juststruggled and I knew I have some
friends really high up inMicrosoft and the company had an
identity crisis because theyhad accomplished the mission,
they had fulfilled the vision.
It was a problem.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, so that's something to watch out for,
right.
If you feel like you set avision that you thought would
never get accomplished becauseit was so big, and now you're
getting close to accomplishingit as a leader, you need to take
some time and re-see the futureright See a bigger future than
what you thought was possiblebefore, because otherwise you
can end up in that same placethat I did, same place that
(23:01):
Microsoft did Lots of companiesright.
This is a common problem thatcompanies run into if you're not
paying attention and you forgetor don't understand the true
power of vision.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So there's a flip side of this coin and that is
that, for the outliers that arelistening to us, there are some
people that are so incredible atcasting vision and so
incredible at, like, wonder andideating the future that they
can use the unbelievable.
If I could quantify vision as,like you know, one of the, I
(23:32):
would say vision is one of thetop five most powerful things in
the world, I mean maybe topthree it is unbelievably
powerful and I had an experienceof being in business with
somebody we, we were in apartnership with a few partners
and we set out to build a reallylarge national level company.
His ability to cast vision waslight years beyond mine and the
(23:53):
talent that we attracted and thepeople that we brought into
that company from around thecountry was it was amazing and
it was electric because, uh, we,we, we worked so hard on the
mission statement and when wenailed it like it just resonated
right and his ability to castit and to just constantly be a
visionary, it created anenvironment that we were able to
(24:15):
hold together even though,looking back, the rest of the I
serve model was reallyproblematic.
Yeah, we actually didn't do alot of the other things that
caused for longevity.
There is this, maybe,responsibility as a leader, and
that is, if you have thisability to cast massive vision,
you'll have the ability toattract people really fast to
(24:36):
yourself and to be able to kindof build from this place of hope
in the future areas, becausethe vision itself over the
course of time, you could almostsay it becomes toxic because
people are hoping in a futurethat actually will never happen
(24:56):
and there's a tension there,because everybody who's built
anything has purely ran on hopefor a very long period of time.
That's right.
When we started, when westarted our primary company you
know the people that I don'teven know why.
They joined me at first, like Ihad a vision, like we're going
over here, and it was just.
Else was a mess.
(25:16):
Yeah, it was a disaster, right,but it was a really fun one.
And then, over the course oftime, they stuck with the vision
long enough for theinfrastructure and for all the
other pieces of my leadership,as well as the company, to come
together.
So we just have to beresponsible.
I would say, if you aresomebody who has a visionary,
use it full throttle, cast thevision, but your growth is going
to be massive to making surethat this is not people buying
(25:37):
into something that thatultimately can't succeed.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
So sometimes it just flat out won't and that's hard,
but it can't if you don't growyeah, I think one of the the key
lessons that you're sharing is,although the ability to see and
shape the future, having visionis maybe the most powerful
thing you need and have to do asa leader, it's just not the
only thing.
Right, I was taught this yearsago.
It's called the sevenprinciples of leadership and it
(26:00):
kind of demonstrates this idea.
Beyond having and setting avision, there's other things
that have to happen beyond that,so I'm going to read through
them really quickly.
The first one is set a visionand, by the way, like you can
get better at that.
That's a skill you can improveon if you don't feel like you're
amazing at it, naturally, right.
The second one clearlycommunicate the vision.
We talked about that Right, soI have it in my head.
(26:20):
Now I got to communicate itwell to others so that they can,
it can resonate with them, theycan connect to it, be attracted
to it.
Number three is recruit a teamto the vision.
Right, there might be a lot ofpeople that actually get excited
about your vision and areattracted to your vision, but
you've got to recruit the rightteam.
Not everyone's going to be, youknow, the perfect fit, or even
(26:40):
the right fit as you go alongaccomplishing the vision right
After you've recruited a team,you have to define each person's
portion of the vision right,like their role in achieving the
vision.
So they all got attracted aboutthis thing we're going to go
and do or this place we're goingto end up.
Now we got to just startdefining each person's role so
that they can get into actionshaping it right.
(27:02):
That means you have to alsoempower people to achieve the
vision as a leader.
It's not about just the thingsthat you do.
It's not about just the shapingthat you do.
It's not about just the shapingthat you do.
It's ultimately about theshaping that others do too,
right.
So that's that empowerment.
Piece number six is measuretrack and hold people
accountable to the vision, right?
Yeah, that's a whole episoderight, this is this idea.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It doesn't.
It doesn't feel very visionyyeah, it's hard and
accountability that's exactlyright.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I'm sure we'll get the chance to unpack that.
And, of course, the seventh oneis respond quickly when issues
arise that threaten the vision.
Such a big deal.
Right, it tells us like, ooh,that's not going to work because
that's not where, that's notpart of where we're going, or
that doesn't help us get wherewe're going.
If you make the mistake ofinviting someone into your
company or your world thatactually doesn't want to go
(27:55):
there, as an example, sometimesthat can turn toxic not always,
but it can just be an anchorwithout being toxic.
As a leader, it's your job togo and solve those issues.
Yeah, either get those peopleon board by re-articulating the
vision right, like re-engagingthem and why they were
passionate about in the firstplace, or frankly identifying
that they just flat out don'twant to go there and they're
(28:17):
they're not going to be an assetor a resource to the company.
That can actually be ahindrance and anchor or toxic to
the place that the rest of uswant to go.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
So let's land the plane with some practical.
Okay, so let's land the planewith some practical.
How do I grow in my ability tocast vision, like?
How do I grow in my ability tobring people along with the
vision?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Well, I think I mentioned one thing before, and
that's set aside time to thinkabout the future your future,
right, and maybe it's vision foryour family, maybe it's vision
for your financial situation orthe wealth you want to build.
It could be for yourorganization.
That's a lot of what we talkabout, but actually take time,
block time, right, like this iscalled thinking time.
(29:01):
If you've read the book theRoad Less Stupid, yeah, thinking
time, that's what KeithCunningham calls it.
This can be used for gettingbetter at actually thinking
about what it can look like 10years from now, 50 years from
now, 500 years from now.
Stretch yourself, right.
It's kind of like a musclePractice doing that and
articulating what that lookslike.
(29:22):
So, if you start to see it, butit's kind of fuzzy like,
articulate what it might looklike, because you can change it,
you can tweak it as you go, canchange it, you can tweak it as
you go.
But the more detail that youcan you can get down or think
through, yeah, the better youcan then communicate and
articulate that.
It just creates color and itcreates contrast for the other
people and eventually you'regoing to start communicating
(29:44):
this too, and that's the otherthing I would say is get to work
, practicing, communicating it.
Share it with a friend, ask themwhat they think about it, see
if it stirs something in themthat you're hoping that it would
, because if it's not, you cantweak it, you can change it, you
can say it differently.
It doesn't have to be adifferent vision, you might just
need to communicate itdifferently.
It's really like anything else.
Read like practice makesperfect.
(30:05):
We've heard that.
Well, I don't know if perfect'sthe right word, but practice
definitely makes better.
Yes, and so get get to work insharing that, casting that
vision with people that youtrust, those that are close to
you, and let them help you, kindof give some feedback and help
you tweak it, improve it, makeit better.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I love it.
A couple things I'd probablyadd to that is uh, as number one
is, as a leader, just set it inyour mind that every time I
open my mouth it's to castvision.
There's always a reason thatI'm going to talk, but it's
always secondary, and that isthat every time I open my mouth
to talk to somebody in a meeting, talk to somebody in front of
(30:42):
my people, it's an opportunityto recast the vision,
opportunity to reset the vision,and it's not always the same
talking point every time, butit's taking this conversation
and tying it to vision.
Taking this conversation andtying it to vision, taking this
action that you just saw in thatperson and tying it to their
future.
Every time I get theopportunity, it's a chance to
tie it to vision.
So then it kind of erases thisquestion of have I talked about
(31:04):
this enough?
It's no.
Every single time you open yourmouth is to cast vision, is to
cast vision, is to cast vision.
Single time you open your mouthis to cast vision is to cast
vision is to cast vision.
Secondly, something I've uh,you know, I've just experienced
over the years is if I have anew vision to cast or a new
thing to work on.
I think I'm just going todouble down on your last thing,
and that is I'm going to go andtalk about it with people, I
trust, when it's still clunkyI'm gonna say, hey, chase, what
(31:26):
do you think about this idea?
and I'm gonna pitch it with itwith like here's all my energy,
and you're going to look at melike let's beat that up a little
bit, try again, right, and sothen I'm just going to say it
again and again and somewherearound you know the 20th time.
It's refined enough that all ofa sudden it's not just clear in
my mind but the other person'slike oh, that makes sense.
Now I have my, the beginning ofmy talking points.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, love that.
Awesome.
What else?
Anything to close us out onvision?
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I think that's it, like.
Oh well, there's, there's.
You know, there's 80 more hoursof vision that we'll we'll get
to over time, but functionally Ithink this is the lay of the
land and that is a seeing andshaping.
Seeing and shaping the future.
It really, really matters toyou and your business and your
people.
And secondly, it's a skill thatcan be developed.
It's not an inherent trait thatonly some people have.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
You are a visionary.
Right, you are a visionary.
That's a growth mindset.
You can get better at it, butsaying you're not one is almost
like saying you're not a leader.
It is Thanks for listening tothe Sherpa Leadership Podcast.
If this episode inspired you,we hope that you'll subscribe,
leave a review or share it witha fellow leader.
For more resources and tools,you can go to
(32:34):
SherpaConsultingGroupcom andremember that leadership is a
journey.
Every step you take matters.
Keep climbing.
We'll see you next time.
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