Seven Characteristics Of Powerful Visions

by GE O RG E AM B L ER on JANUARY 4, 2009
rachaelvoorhees

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be
a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow
an uncertain trumpet.” – Theodore Hesburgh
Vision is central to effective leadership. A leader’s vision is his passion. Leaders
are constantly striving for the achievement of their vision. Leaders adopt
challenging visions, driven by passion… this inspires others to commit to the
journey… they inspire others to volunteer their energies to make it happen.
Consider the following…
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the
work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless
sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
If a leader is to inspire and enlist others to their cause, they will need an
effective vision. This means leaders must be clear about “What is a vision?” and
“What makes a vision effective?” Burt Nanus in his book “Visionary Leadership”
defines vision as:
“… a realistic, credible, attractive future for your organization. It is your
articulation of a destination toward which your organization should aim, a future
that in important ways is better, more successful, or more desirable for your
organization than is the present.”
So how do you know if your vision is effective? Burt Nanus provides the
following characteristics of powerful visions:
1. Appropriateness: “They are appropriate for the organization and the
times. They fit in terms of the organization’s history, culture and values, are
consistent with the organization’s present situation, and provide a realistic
and informed a assessment of what is attainable in the future.”
2. Challenging: “They set standards of excellence and reflect high ideals.”
3. Set Direction: “They clarify purpose and direction. They are persuasive
and credible in defining what the organization wants to make happen…
They provide agendas that create focus and hold out hope and promise of a
better tomorrow.”
4. Inspirational: “They inspire enthusiasm and encourage commitment.
They widen the leader’s support base by reflecting the needs and
aspirations of many stakeholders…”
5. Understandable: “They are well articulated and easily understood. They
are unambiguous enough to serve as a guide to strategy and action and to
be internalized by those whose efforts are needed to turn the vision into
reality”
6. Unique: “They reflect the uniqueness of the organization, its distinctive
competence, what it stands for, and what it is able to achieve”
7. Ambitious: “They are ambitious. The represent undisputed progress and
expand the organizations horizons.”
Review your company and team vision:
 Does your vision exhibit the characteristics of a powerful vision as
described above?
 What change do you need to make to ensure your vision is more
powerful?

Martin Luther King on Effective Vision

by GEORGE AMBLER on OCTOBER 5, 2007
Effective visions provide context, give purpose, and establish meaning. They
inspire people to mobilize, to act, to move in the same direction Every good
leader realizes that effective visions cannot be forced upon the masses. Rather
they must be set in motion by means of persuasion and inspiration. – Martin
Luther King Jr.
The Leadership Insight
Vision is not merely an academic process, resulting in a vision statement. Vision
must be compelling and should evoke an emotional response in others. Without
purpose and meaning vision will fail to inspire action. A vision that is not lived
will not be considered meaningful. Are you living you’re vision? The most
inspirational visions are live every day. Yo need to persuade others everyday
and if necessary use words!
Nine Lives of Leadership ebook
by G E O R G E A MB L E R on MARCH 1, 2006

800-CEO-Read has made the ebook the Nine Lives of Leadership, by Lisa
Haneberg, from Management Craftfame, available for free. It’s a great
leadership resource for all leaders and managers and the read. A sneak
preview of the the Table of Contents for whet you appetite:
 Go Deep Fast – Develop Strong Relationships As A Catalyst For
Success
 Organic leadership – Learn from the career paths of highly successful
mega-leaders
 HOT Teams and Getting into the Mood – Improve results and
satisfaction by optimizing team member performance
 Let’s Get Radical – Add energy and velocity to you and your employees’
career growth
 The Start-up Spirit – Infuse your employees’ work environments with
the energy of a start-up while leveraging their well-established systems and
processes
 The Clarity State – Make tough decisions in an easier and more
effective manner
 Organizational DNA – Determine your organization’s predominant style
and use this information to more effectively drive change
 Emotional Acumen – Increase employees’ impact and influence with
others
 Betting at Work – Up your odds for success and take control of your
destiny

Effective Communication: A Leading Indicator of

Financial Performance
by G E O R G E A MB L E R on MARCH 24, 2006

The 2003/2004 Watson Wyatt Communication ROI Study™ demonstrated the

correlation between communication effectiveness, organizational turnover and
financial performance. The 2005/2006 study confirms our earlier study findings
and goes a step further, by showing that effective communication is a leading
indicator of an organization’s financial performance. Some of the key findings
include:
 Companies that communicate effectively have a 19.4 percent higher
market premium than companies that do not.
 Shareholder returns for organizations with the most effective
communication were over 57 percent higher over the last five years (2000-
2004) than were returns for firms with less effective communication.
 The 2005/2006 study found evidence that communication effectiveness
is a leading indicator of financial performance.
 Firms that communicate effectively are 4.5 times more likely to report
high levels of employee engagement versus firms that communicate less
effectively.
 Companies that are highly effective communicators are 20 percent more
likely to report lower turnover rates than their peers.
An interesting finding from the research is that “two-thirds of the firms with high
levels of communication effectiveness are asking their managers to take on a
greater share of the communication responsibility, but few are giving them the
tools and training to be successful.”

The Management of Attention Through Vision

by G E O R G E A M B L E R on DECEMBER 7, 2008

ckaroli
“The scarcest resource for today’s business leaders is no longer just land,
capital or human labor, and it certainly isn’t information. Attention is what’s in
short supply..” – Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, “The Attention
Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business” (Harvard Business
School Press, 2001)
In other words, it’s not about managing time effectively, its about managing
attention….! In the book “Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge” Warren
Bennis and Burt Nanus discuss the practice of managing attention through
vision.
The management of attention through vision is about the creation of
focus. Leaders are results-orientated people, they know what they want, they’re
committed and focused on outcomes. It’s this intense focus and commitment to
results, draws people to them. Effective leaders have a clear vision of the
future. A clear vision guides effective action as it provides the all important
bridge from the present to the future. Vision provides the
necessary focus required to limit distractions and drive meaningful action. The
intensity of the leaders vision coupled with the high levels of commitment
required to successfully execute the vision, creates a powerful force of
momentum that draws people into the flow. It’s this passion and commitment
dynamic that grabs attention.
This vision becomes shared by the organisation and drives action as Warren
Bennis and Burt Nanus state that…
“A shared vision of the future also suggests measures of effectiveness for the
organization and for all its parts. It helps individuals distinguish between what’s
good and what’s bad for the organization, and what it’s worthwhile to achieve.
And most important, it makes it possible to distribute decision making widely.
People can make difficult decisions without having to appeal to higher levels in
the organization each time because they know what end results are desired.”
Vision is central to leadership success, without it leaders and their teams are
flying blind!
 Do you have a clear vision of your future?
 Does your team understand and share this vision?
 Are all your plans and actions aligned behind this vision?

Seeking Powerful Leadership Experiences

by G E O R G E A MB L E R on FEBRUARY 27, 2006
Design By Zouny
Leadership development is about personal development and the experiences
we have on our life’s journey creates the necessary personal capacity required
to lead. Consider the biography of the life of Winston Churchill, “Winston
Spencer Churchill: The Last Lion, Visions of Glory” describes Churchill as:
“Sickly, an uncoordinated weakling with the pale fragile hands of a girl, speaking
with a lisp and a slight stutter, he had been at the mercy of bullies. They beat
him, ridiculed him, and pelted him with cricket balls. Trembling and humiliated,
he hid in a nearby woods. This was hardly the stuff of which gladiators are
made.”
Similarly, Peter Senge in his book “The Fifth Discipline” made the following
observation of leaders:
“Most of the outstanding leaders I’ve worked with are neither tall nor especially
handsome; they are often mediocre public speakers; they do not stand out in a
crowd; they do not mesmerize an attending audience with there brilliance or
eloquence. Rather, what distinguishes them is their clarity and persuasiveness
of their ideas, the depth of their commitment, and their openness to continually
learning more”
It seems to me that life’s experiences and our response to them are key to, how
leaders are formed, and the kind of leaders they become. The experiences that
shape us as leaders, as we journey through life are referred to aspassages by
David Dotlich in the Ivey Business Journal article, “Adversity: What Make a
Leader the Most” describing life’s adverse and diverse experiences
as passages because:
“they take you from one place to another. You see the world and yourself
differently after you’ve gone through the events and emotional states that define
each passage…these passages are emotionally and cognitively intense….as a
result your sense of self changes in a fundamental way. Who you are, what
you’re capable of doing and your place in the world will all shift”
These adverse and diverse passages are effectively illustrated by David using
the following matrix:

The power of experiences to shape a leader’s life is huge, in fact experiences

are so powerful they can have the opposite effect, just as experiences can
make us stronger they can also paralyse us, causing us to cower and retreat
from life. Fearful of having another similar experience, we rather play it safe, not
venturing out, not taking risks, seeking the safety of “positional leadership”. The
key is in how we respond to our life passages.
Bad Experience + Poor Response = Shaky Foundation Bad Experience +
Good Response = Learning and Growth
The result is that we have two types of leaders:
 Leaders who responded poorly to life’s passages, they developed
negative or faulty worldviews and lead out of fear, abusing their power,
controlling others and seeking position as a means to exert influence.
 Leaders who responded to life’s passages from a learning stance,
looking for the opportunity and lessons to be learned, remaining open and
vulnerable. They lead authentically, not from pride, exerting influence
through relationships and personal character and commitment (as described
by Peter Senge above)
This is described by Warren Bennis in “On Becoming a Leader” stating that:
“Until you make your life your own, you’re walking in borrowed clothes. Leaders,
whatever their field, are made up as much of their experiences as their skills,
like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, they use their experiences rather than
being used by it.”
As mentioned in a previous post, “If you honestly evaluate your “leadership
career”, do you have ten years of leadership experience…….or do you have a
one year leadership experience repeated ten times?.” To develop, leaders need
to seek experiences that will create a shift in their worldview, either through
changes in career, industry, travel or exposure to other cultures. Whilst seeking
diverse experiences leaders should simultaneously, strive to ensure a positive
response and always looking for opportunities to learn and grow though the
experience.

Transformations and Powerful Leadership Experiences

by G E O R G E A MB L E R on MARCH 1, 2006

I’ve been exploring the concept of “powerful leadership experiences“, and one
key is to undergo numerous “passages” of adversity or diversity. I found a post
on a similar topic on the blog Communication Nation, titled “When was your last
transformation?, a very good question, transformation is described in the post
as:
By transformation I mean one of the following:
 You started to see the world in a fundamentally different way.
 Something made you question your assumptions or belief system.
 You made a life-changing decision.
 You were converted to a new way of thinking or a new pattern of
behavior.
 You changed your mind about something that you felt strongly about.
I think transformations are key to personal and leadership development. The
problem I feel is that we need to have transformations more frequently. We get
too easily stuck in our comfort zones when traps us into a routine and prevents
growth and transformation. Perhaps we need to understand how frequently we
have transformations by mapping our life onto a time line and indicate the
transformations (as defined above) on the time line. Then step back and ask
yourself, “Am I having major transformations at intervals of approximately 2
years?”, “Do I have 10 years of leadership experience or 1 year experience
repeated 10 times?” Any thoughts?

The Current State of Leadership – Research Findings

by GEORGE AMBLER on AUGUST 15, 2011
Development Dimensions International (DDI) a respected, global talent
management company recently published their Global Leadership Forecast
2011. This report is one of the largest leadership studies of it’s kind, with more
than 2,600 participating organizations. The research provides some interesting
perspectives on thecurrent state of leadership and future leadership needs.
Specifically, the report looked to uncover the answers to the following
questions:
 What is the overall quality of leadership in organizations today? How
does it compare to previous years?
 Do organizations have a sufficient supply of capable leaders to meet
tomorrow’s business challenges?
 What can HR professionals do to revolutionize the development of their
leaders?
 Is it time to radically innovate not only products and business models, but
also the very way we manage?
 What impact can we have by moving the needle on leadership quality?
The research defined a leaders as “someone who manages the performance or
responsibilities of individuals in an organization.”
Research Findings
This research study produced interesting findings I have extracted some of the
research findings I found interesting, those that stood out and caught my
attention.

Effective Leadership Matters

 The research demonstrated that organizations with the highest quality

leaders were 13 times more likely to outperform their competition in
key bottom-line metrics such as financial performance, quality of products
and services, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction.

 Leaders who reported that their organization’s current leadership quality

as poor, only 6% of them were in organizations that outperformed their
competition.
 Organizations with higher quality leadership were up to three times
more likely to retain more employees than their competition.
Future Leaders Are Few
 Only 38% of the 12,423 leaders in the study reported that the quality of
leadership in their organization is very good or excellent.
 According to both leaders and HR professionals, leadership quality was
rated highest in North America (52% of leaders and 30% of HR rated it
highly) and lowest in Europe and Asia (33% of leaders rated it high, as did
only 21% of Asian HR professionals).
Leadership Development Needs
 Only 33% of leaders and HR professionals rated their leadership
development efforts as highly effective.
 Driving and managing change will remain the number one
priority for leaders over the next three years, see illustration below.

 About 50% of leaders are currently ineffective in the skills critical for
the next three years.
 The most common personality derailers of leaders in their organization
were risk aversion, distrust, and approval dependence (58% selected
risk aversion and 44% selected distrust and approval dependence).
Leadership Development Effectiveness
 Only 18% of HR professionals surveyed reported strong bench strength
to meet future business needs.
 Research into the use and effectiveness of leadership development
methods is illustrated below.

 Only 31% of leaders and HR professionals rated the effectiveness

of leadership selection as high.
 Only 26% of organizations have effective programs to ensure
smooth leadership transitions.
The Importance of Culture
“Right now, your company has 21st-century, Internet-enabled business
processes, mid-20th-century
management processes, all built atop 19th-century management principles.” –
Gary Hamel
DDI partnered with Gary Hamel and his Management Lab to identify the key
factors that either facilitate or hinder the way in which the work of management
is carried out, these are illustrated below.
 Organizations with effective management cultures were more than 2½
times more likely to have
highly passionate leaders.
Wrapping Up
I found this report provided interesting insight into the current state of
leadership. Within this research report are some insights that will help improve
the effectiveness of leadership in your team and organisation, consider the
following:
 Do you have a strategy and plan for improving your organisations
leadership effectiveness?
 What are you doing to improve your ability to drive and manage change?
 What are you doing to develop future leaders?
 What is the state of your organisations culture? How are you planning to
change it?