This is the first of three leadership skills and how to use them:
1. Inspiring a Vision
Why is there a company vision? The vision is a broad statement that aligns your company’s services with your clients’ needs. Your leadership skills are necessary to bring this vision alive for each of your employees. This is why it is important that you not only fully understand the direction your company is going in but also to continuously monitor the direction your clients are going in. The very essence of a vision is the core of why you do what you do. Without this core your leadership skills are not as effective because you lack the true direction of your company and your clients.
Knowing your vision is just the beginning. You can know your vision – take for example the vision of my company is to “Provide Service Above Self.” You might say, well that’s pretty broad and certainly doesn’t sound directive. And quite frankly, you would be correct and it is built that way on purpose.
It is up to you – the leader – to help your employees incorporate this vision into all they do.
You must believe in this vision and live every day in every way the vision of your company. Your leadership skills are necessary to instill this in your team members every day is the next step. How do you do this? Simply, build it into your goals and their goals, responsibilities, and every day discussions. Take for example, if you had a goal (which would of course follow the S.M.A.R.T. goal model) to meet with three new clients a day and close one.
You would follow the vision by identifying your new prospects’ needs first before you talked about your product. Again the vision “Service Above Self” means clients’ come first – then we fulfill their needs with our services and if we can’t, we help them find the right solution. This builds long-term deep relationships because your client now realizes it’s not about the dollar, it’s about their needs.
OK that might not sound so simple – but it is. Without a clear vision every day, you cannot effectively manage your team.
Can you can perform your vision? To me, the business owner, I instill in my employees the fact that if you are not serving our clients and doing everything in your power to go above and beyond in helping our clients then you are not performing the vision or the your job.
You may choose different techniques and skills to get to the end result – the vision. The reality is that it must be fulfilled every day and if it is not, you need to figure out how to fix what didn’t work. The end result…happy clients that willingly tell others of the results they received from your services.
Look for the second blog of “Three Leadership Skills and How to Use Them” which the leadership skill will be “Fostering Collaboration”
