Category Archives: Vision

Teamwork and Your Career – What Kind Of Leader Are You?

Posted on 10 June 2013 by | 1 Comment

Teamwork and Your Career – What Kind Of Leader Are You?

do unSo, if you had a choice, what kind of person would you want to follow? It is a good question to ask yourself if you are leader in any capacity – from a hobby group, a small work team to a major corporation.

Well, there are some obvious characteristics, aren’t there? For example, we would all want a leader who acted with integrity. Integrity is the very bedrock of trust and we all hope that we can trust the person who is showing us the way ahead.  As for me, I want to follow someone I can believe when they tell me it is safe to take a risk. I’m not going to walk across that rope bridge to a what you tell me is a bright future unless I believe that it really is strong enough to keep me out of the river. Now, sometimes of course you won’t know any more than I do – but you will certainly know how to find out as much as possible. And you’ll tell me clearly what the facts are and why I should take the risk anyway, if I should.

Then, of course, we want a leader who has a clear vision of where we are trying to go and can paint it in a way that we can see the destination too. We want someone who can paint the future in colours that lead us to have enough faith to step out with them. We need a message that gets us all turning in the same direction and marching a long together. That vision needs to be bright enough to illuminate the way.

Most of all we would like to follow a leader who wasn’t working for their own ends but for ours; a servant leader who is prepared to act with compassion. John Maxwell put it this way: “Servant-leaders never pursue a mission at the expense of their people. Rather, servant-leaders earn the loyalty and best efforts of their people by serving the interests and investing in the development of those they lead. A servant-leader wants to see others succeed.” Good leaders know that they’re only as good as the people who support them and so they invest time and energy in ensuring the well-being and success of their team.

So, what kind of leader are you? Are you demonstrating integrity, vision and compassion? If not, what changes do you plan to make? You will need to change something won’t you, if you are serious about your career and expect others to follow you.

If you would like some help in developing your leadership skills please get in touch. Good leaders are modest enough to know that working with a coach really can make a difference.

Wendy Mason is the The Career Coach – helping you to find fresh perspectives on your Job Search and Career. She helps you work towards your goals and aspirations, in a way that fits in with both work and home life. Email her at wendymason@wisewolfcoaching.com,  find her on Skype at wendymason14, or call +44 (0) 2081239146 (02081239146 for UK callers) or +1 262 317 9016 if you are in the US.

A free trial/consultation allows you to try phone coaching from the comfort of your own home and without risk. Don’t forget to ask about the Summer Special Offer 

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Leadership:To Lead, Create a Shared Vision!

Posted on 21 January 2013 by | Leave a comment

What do followers want? A leader with a compelling vision of the future – which is not usually that leader’s personal view. New research shows that followers respond to a leader who can articulate a vision.  I hope you enjoy this post from Harvard Business Review.

vision

To Lead, Create a Shared Vision

Being forward-looking—envisioning exciting possibilities and enlisting others in a shared view of the future—is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from nonleaders. We know this because we asked followers.

In an ongoing project surveying tens of thousands of working people around the world, we asked, “What do you look for and admire in a leader (defined as someone whose direction you would willingly follow)?” Then we asked, “What do you look for and admire in a colleague (defined as someone you’d like to have on your team)?” The number one requirement of a leader—honesty—was also the top-ranking attribute of a good colleague. But the second-highest requirement of a leader, that he or she be forward-looking, applied only to the leader role. Just 27% of respondents selected it as something they want in a colleague, whereas 72% wanted it in a leader. (Among respondents holding more-senior roles in organizations, the percentage was even greater, at 88%.) No other quality showed such a dramatic difference between leader and colleague.

This points to a huge challenge for the rising executive: The trait that most separates the leaders from individual contributors is something that they haven’t had to demonstrate in prior, nonleadership roles. Perhaps that’s why so few leaders seem to have made a habit of looking ahead; researchers who study executives’ work activities estimate that only 3% of the typical business leader’s time is spent envisioning and enlisting. The challenge, as we know, only escalates with managerial level: Leaders on the front line must anticipate merely what comes after current projects wrap up. People at the next level of leadership should be looking several years into the future. And those in the C-suite must focus on a horizon some 10 years distant.

So how do new leaders develop this forward-looking capacity?

You can read the rest of this post at this link

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Leader – are you ready to go on the vision quest?

Posted on 3 September 2012 by | 1 Comment

Leader – are you ready to go on the vision quest?

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
Helen Keller

Vision is insight. It is the ability to see something others do not see – to see something that does not yet have a physical reality.

You begin to see something  in your mind’s eye, something that is imagination but it is usually founded on reallity.  And a leadership vision certainly needs to be rooted in reality.

A vision may start as an abstract idea or a concept but it needs to be made real through creative work.  The goal is to express your vision; to share your ideas and your concepts with your audience.  How clear your vision is, and how closely you define it, sets out how successful you will be in conveying your vision to others.

I have heard vision described as inspiration made reality.  It is going beyond today’s practical constraints to reach for something that is a potential future and it might be quite other. But for a leader, it can’t be so other, that those you need to share it with can’t engage.

Finding and expressing your vision can be a challenge.  Because your vision starts out invisible to others, you have to begin the process yourself. It demands an unwavering commitment. It also demands that you follow up this commitment with work because only through that can you begin to share your vision with others in a way that they too can commit.

Vision is message – it is about creating a story. It is about sharing an emotion, a feeling and a belief rather before sharing  a picture of systems and organization. That comes later.  A vision is about sharing meaning and faith.

Put your ideas into words and pictures so that you can share them with others. The words turn your vision into a reality.  But Vision is the stage at which thinking about your work is just as important as creating your work. You need to reflect on what you have done so far and what else you need to do.  But don’t lose sight of what inspired you to start and never forget the value of being able to share that inspiration with others.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they originated.

Emerson

If  you are serious about being a better leader and doing your best in your career while having a good life at home, I think you will find our new programme interesting!   http://gettingtherewithwisewolf.com/

Wendy Mason is a career coach working mainly with managers and professionals who want to make that jump to senior level while maintaining a good work/life balance. Before working as a coach, Wendy had a long career in both the public and private sectors in general management and consultancy as well as spells in HR.  She now divides her time between face to face coaching, and coaching and blogging on-line. You can contact Wendy at wendymason@wisewolfcoaching.com and find out more at http://wisewolfcoaching.com

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Organizational culture, what organizational culture?

Posted on 14 September 2011 by | Leave a comment
Sample mission statement

Really?

An organization’s culture is a complex system with a multitude of interrelated processes and mechanisms that keep it humming along.   Sometimes it is hard for the leadership team to really understand the culture of the organization they lead.

This is true particularly if they follow the traditional pattern and don’t move much from the leadership floor!

The leading team may think they determine the culture when they agree a vision and define the values that go with it.

“Oh yes, we are on a mission and we have a mission statement too! It is all in the hands of our Comm’s Director, so I’m sure people understand what it means and reflect it in our culture!”

Really? Unless those vision and mission statements are truly reinforced throughout the organization, they can be meaningless in terms of the culture.

So how do you know what is happening where you are?  Well here are a few questions for you to think about;

  • Are your organization’s vision and values reflected in performance reviews and training programmes?
  • What about you financial reward systems – do they reinforce them?
  • What about memos and communications do they highlight what the leadership team thinks are important.
  • What about management actions — for example, are more junior promotions for people who toe the line or are they for people who go out on a limb to pursue your vision?

In reality, in most organizations the culture develops unconsciously and organically to create a system that, while not always ideal, does work.

Changing a culture is a real challenge!  It is hard to do without losing the good things you have now.

Of course, that assumes as a leadership team, you are clear about the good things you have now!

If you are serious about your vision and you really want to see your values in practice, then you may have some hard work ahead!

But, of course, until you understand the culture you have now, you won’t know what you need to do, will you?

Time to start asking some questions, I think!

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I am Wendy Mason and I work as a Personal Development Coach, Consultant and Writer I work with all kinds of people going through many different kinds of personal and career change, particularly those;

  • looking for work
  • looking for promotion or newly promoted
  • moving between Public and Private Sectors
  • facing redundancy
  • moving into retirement

I am very good at helping you sort out what you want, overcome obstacles and handle change.   Email me at wendymason@wisewolfconsulting.com for more information


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Leadership, Vision and Steve Jobs

Posted on 26 August 2011 by | 3 Comments

I’ve been looking at the biographies of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook on the Apple Website. Gosh what a contrast!

There is Steve whose picture is now, strikingly, in colour, with his background in the Imagineering world of Disney and Pixar.

While Tim looks bright, cheerful, pleasant and just a little corporate.

But let us hope Tim has learned much from the master. It really is vision, quality and understanding the market that marks out success for Apple, rather than sensitive handling of employees or the supply chain!

Steve Jobs spent 12 tumultuous, painful years of failure before returning to Apple to make it the success it is today. He learned about leadership the hard way!

Yes, leadership, because his management style still sounds unusual at best!

“Steve might be capable of reducing someone to tears,” according to former colleague Pat Crecine, “but it’s not because he’s mean-spirited; it’s because he’s absolutely single minded, almost manic, in his pursuit of quality and excellence.”

John Sculley adds: “He possessed an innate sense of knowing exactly how to extract the best from people.”

Steve’s view: “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”

The Australian newspaper, Herald Sun, published a story about a girl from Melbourne (Hollie) with vision problems whose life was changed with iPad and its ability to zoom in on text materials. She wrote to Steve and he replied as follows;

“Thanks for sharing your experience with me. Do you mind if I read your email to a group of our top 100 leaders at Apple? Thanks, Steve”

He even asked for the picture above! Steve has had a habit of taking what he considered to be “Apple’s top 100 people” to a yearly offsite retreat and another habit of his is to read his favourite emails to an audience as inspiration.

A year ago the Telegraph described him as messianic, evangelistic and utterly devoted to the art of making beautiful products that ‘just work’!

Steve Jobs is thought of very highly not just by those within his industry, but in the wider business community.

Even Bill Gates, widely seen as Jobs’ nemesis, has a great deal of respect for his rival, and the way he revitalised Apple’s fortunes. “He’s done a fantastic job. Of all the leaders in the industry that I’ve worked with, he showed more inspiration and he saved the company.”

Rupert Murdoch rates him as the best chief executive around. “He’s got such incredible focus. He’s got such power inspiring the people around him who work for him”.

Kevin Compton, who was a senior executive at Businessland during Steve’s years in the wilderness described him after his return to Apple: “He’s the same Steve in his passion for excellence, but a new Steve in his understanding of how to empower a large company to realize his vision.”

Let us hope for Apple’s sake that he has passed on that particular gift to Tim Cook.

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