Managing the Tension between Leadership and Vision

Believe it or not there is a tension between leadership and vision. Your ability to gain the hearts of people and get them to follow you to a desired future.

Here’s a tool that will help you begin to understand where your team members are at and at the same time help you identify your next steps in leading each of them.

It starts with asking 2 simple questions. But they’re two questions that a majority of leaders are too afraid to face an honest answer to.

#1 Has your team bought into you?
#2 Does your team believe in where you’re going?

Crew Leaders:

Crew Leaders are all in. They’ve bought into you, and they’ve bought into where you’re going. Not only will they go with you if you lead them, they have the potential to join you in leading others to go along with you.

Crew Members:

Crew Members are loyal. They believe in you, they’re just not sure about the direction the ship is sailing. Good leaders know how to leverage the trust that they’ve built over time with their crew and recast the vision.

Stowaways:

Stowaways want to go where you’re going, that is to say they believe in the vision. They’re just not sure you’re the one they want to follow there. The most important thing you can do with Stowaways is take the time to relate to them. As a leader you have to build trust with the people you’re leading because trust is the foundation of leadership. But be ware these are the most dangerous members on your team, because if they don’t buy into you as the leader you aren’t going anywhere.

Pirates:

Pirates don’t believe in where you’re going and they don’t want to go there with you. The best thing you can do with Pirates is counsel them out of your church. Or in Pirate lingo…have them walk the plank!

So do you have the courage to work through this exercise? Where do your team members plot out on this chart? More importantly, are you leading each team member they way they need you to?