Twenty-five years ago Santa Clara University Professors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner wrote The Leadership Challenge, a primer on how to make extraordinary things happen in organizations by helping leaders perform their personal best. Two million copies have been sold and an updated version of the book has just been released. Since the book helped to frame my own ideas on leadership, it was a pleasure to sit down recently with both Kouzes and Posner to talk about a topic I consider the most relevant to this column: how leaders can communicate a vision that gets people excited about going to work each day.
In 1987 when the book was first published, 62 percent of employees said that they admired leaders who were “forward looking.” In 2012, 71 percent of those surveyed said the same. In 1987, 58 percent of employees wanted to work for leaders who were “inspiring.” Today nearly 70 percent want to be inspired. Inspiration and vision go hand in hand. In a Forbes.com column titled The 7 Secrets of Inspiring Leaders, I write that vision is a fundamental characteristic of inspiring leaders.
But what does it mean to have “vision?” Leaders need it to express it, teams and employees want to hear it, but very few people can tell you exactly how to develop one. The authors of The Leadership Challenge offer the following advice.
Communicate a shared vision. “It’s not just the leaders’ vision that’s important. It has to be a shared vision,” says Kouzes. For a vision to really grab the imagination of a team, it has to incorporate the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of those you are attempting to lead. “If they [employees] can’t see themselves in the picture, then they can’t imagine that it’s a possibility for them.” In other words, the vision cannot belong to the leader alone. When a vision is shared—taking into account the hopes and dreams of the team—it’s easier to attract people, sustain a motivated workforce and give people the energy and confidence to withstand hurdles and challenges on the road to building a successful company.
Use symbolic language. Kouzes and Posner are big believers in the use of metaphor in motivational speech. Inspiring leaders “use metaphors and analogies; they give us examples, tell stories, and relate anecdotes.” Metaphors, of course, are everywhere. They include combat and sporting metaphors as well as spiritual metaphors. Metaphors trigger the right hemisphere of the brain, a critical component for persuasion to occur. One of the most famous speeches of our time—Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream Speech—was notable for its abundant use of metaphor. For example, “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood,” or “A state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”
Create word pictures. Kouzes and Posner taught me about a creative exercise they use in their workshops. The authors ask people to say the first thing that comes to mind when they hear the words, “Paris, France.” No one calls out the square kilometers or the population. They call out images they can see in their minds’ eye: Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, etc. Use words and images in your presentation and communication that evoke sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile feelings. “People aren’t persuaded by the facts as much as they are by the emotions, feelings, and images behind those facts,” says Posner.
Practice positive communication. Kouzes and Posner believe that for leaders to foster a team spirit and to rally people around a vision, those leaders must “breed optimism, promote resilience, and renew faith and confidence.” In other words, look on the bright side. “People actually remember downbeat comments far more often, in greater detail, and with more intensity than they do encouraging words. When negative remarks become a preoccupation, an employee’s brain loses mental efficiency. This is all the more reason for leaders to be positive.”
Posner is quick to point out that optimism doesn’t mean being a Pollyanna, where nothing can go wrong. The authors quote research that finds persuasive leaders balance positive to negative statements by a factor of five to one. Don’t project wild optimism while ignoring reality. Admit mistakes and address headwinds, but on balance use more positive statements than negative ones. According to Posner, “It’s that positivity that gets people to want to follow you and to believe enough that they are willing to go through the long nights, the insecurity about funding, etc.”
For more on the power of optimism, please read my earlier column, 5 Reasons Why Optimists Make Better Leaders.
Express your emotions. Kouzes and Posner have studied the research on “charisma” and conclude, “People who are perceived to be charismatic are simply more animated than others. They smile more, speak faster, pronounce words more clearly, and move their heads and bodies more often.” Be animated in verbal delivery and gestures. Put a smile on your face. Have energy in your step and greet people with enthusiasm.
Stories. I agree with Kouzes and Posner when they say that stories are powerful, yet underutilized in most business presentations. The authors remind us that the next time we deliver a PowerPoint presentation, “It’s not just the content that will make the message stick; it’s also how well you tap into people’s emotions.” Personal stories connect with people. Tell more of them.
Speak genuinely. This final piece of advice is one that I’ve given time and time again in these columns—find your passion for a topic and express it. If you’re excited about the vision, show it. According to Kouzes and Posner, “If you’re not excited about the possibilities, you can’t expect others to be…there’s no one more believable than a person with deep passion for something.” I’ve often said that inspiring leaders are more passionate than average leaders and they wear their passion on their sleeve. Employees want to know that their leaders care.
In this column we’ve taken a deep-dive into one quality great leaders have—the ability to inspire through vision. According to Kouzes and Posner, it’s the one quality that many leaders find the most elusive; the most difficult to adopt. These seven techniques should help you communicate an inspiring vision. And make no mistake, your employees, teams, partners, investors, and staff are looking to you for inspiration.