Leadership Advice

Leaders move others forward

Leaders envisage a better future and know how to motivate others to share this desire. This means using both actions and words at set points in time to motivate and excite your workers about the cause. Leaders are in fact on the threshold between the here and now and what lies ahead. How you communicate your vision of the future helps determine whether your workers follow your example. If you know how to appeal to them, they will want to help you make this future happen.

Construe your story about the future around the different stages in which it will transpire. Nancy Duarte aptly conveys the process.

  1. Begin with the dream, expressing how the ideal future might appear.
  2. Next, challenge your audience to leap. Keep in mind that implementing change requires great courage from your workers.
  3. Then describe the course to pursue. Stress that it will not always be easy,
  4. The journey will feel like climbing a mountain. Forging ahead is wonderful, but it is far from easy.
  5. Once you reach the summit, though, you have succeeded: victory is sweet! At that moment, the dream comes true. That is the reward!

This brings the story full circle. From a dreamy ‘wow’ at the start, to the ultimate ‘wow’ moment at the end.