SECTION V LEAD-DOWN PRINCIPLE 6

Lead-Down Principle #6

TRANSFER THE VISION

Let’s say that you’re doing a good job as a 360-Degree Leader, and you’re leading down effectively. You’re modeling the way. You’re developing relationships with your people and building them up. You’ve trained them. You’re developing them and plan to continue doing so. Now what? It’s like you’ve taken the time to build a fine weapon and load it. So what do you do? You aim at the bull’s-eye and pull the trigger! In the area of leadership, that means transferring the vision.
If you were the leader at the top of the organization, you would be transferring your own vision. As a leader in the middle of the organization, you will be transferring what is primarily the vision of others (as we discussed in Section II, Lead-Up Principle #6: “The Vision Challenge”). Leaders in the middle are the crucial link in that process. The vision may be cast by the top leaders, but it rarely gets transferred to the people without the wholehearted participation of the leaders lower in the organization who are closer to them. Though leaders in the middle may not always be the inventors of the vision, they are almost always its interpreters.
Though leaders in the middle may not always be the inventors of the vision, they are almost always its interpreters.

So how do 360-Degree Leaders interpret the vision in a way that fires up the people and sets them off in the right direction? If you include the following seven elements, you will be well on your way to hitting the target.
1. CLARITY
When I lived in San Diego, I used to go to a lot of Padres baseball games. I had great seats right behind the dugout. Back then, the team wasn’t very good, and the organization would do a number of promotions, games, and activities to try to keep the crowd engaged. One of the regular things they would do between two of the innings was a fan game where they would put a player’s picture on the big-screen in the stadium. But they didn’t put the picture up all at once. They had divided it into about a dozen sections, and they would put up one piece at a time until finally the whole picture was complete.
When preparing to cast vision, ask: What do I want them to know, and what do I want them to do?

I know that’s not very exciting. What was really interesting to me was the crowd’s reaction. You could tell by the sound of their reactions when people would get it. Early on, there was anticipation, but you could tell that nobody knew whose picture it was because it was just too disjointed and incomplete. Then you’d start to hear a murmur—that was the sound of the really quick people getting it. Then it would get a little louder as more got it, and suddenly, it got very noisy. That was when most of the people in the stadium had the picture.
The casting of vision is very similar. If the vision isn’t clear, the people aren’t clear. They just can’t figure it out. You have to put all the pieces together for them to help them “get” it. When preparing to cast vision, ask yourself: What do I want them to know, and what do I want them to do? And once you know the answer, keep communicating and filling in the blanks until you can sense that most of your people get it—not just the quick ones.
2. CONNECTION OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
I’ve noticed that most people who cast vision focus almost entirely on the future. On one level that makes sense. After all, vision is by its very nature focused on the future. But any leader who casts vision and neglects to tie in the past and present is really missing an opportunity.
Talking only about the past gives no hope for the future, so you certainly don’t want to put your focus there. But if you ignore the past, you fail to connect people to the organization’s history. If you show that you value what has gone before and honor the people who laid the foundation to get you where you are today, you validate those people who have worked hard and sacrificed to build what already exists. You also give the people who are new to the process the added security of knowing they are part of something bigger.
When people are able to touch the past, they will be more inclined to reach for the future. Anytime you can show that the past, present, and future are unified, you bring power and continuity to your vision casting.
3. PURPOSE
Although vision tells people where they need to go, purpose tells them why they should go. Not only does that help people to make sense of what they are being asked to do, but it also helps them to stay on target. It helps them to make adjustments, improvise, and innovate as they encounter obstacles or experience other difficulties.
Although vision tells people where they need to go, purpose tells them why they should go.

4. GOALS
In Leadership, historian and political scientist James MacGregor Burns writes, “Leadership is leaders inducing followers to act for certain goals that present the values and the motivations—the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations—of both leaders and followers” (Harper Perennial, 1978). Without goals and a strategy to achieve them, vision isn’t measurable or attainable.
I’ve met many leaders over the years who had a pie-in-the-sky idea, but little more than hope when it came to figuring out how to get there. Hope is not a strategy. When you give people a process, they realize that the vision is realistic. And that increases their confidence in you and the vision.
5. A CHALLENGE
Just because you make the vision realistic doesn’t mean you can’t make it challenging. In fact, if vision doesn’t require people to stretch, they may wonder if it is worthy of their dedication.
Some leaders seem to be afraid to challenge their teams, but a challenge makes good people want to spread their wings and fly. It fires up the committed people—and fries the uncommitted ones. You will accurately define your people if you ask them to stretch.
6. STORIES
If you want to put a human face on a challenging vision, then include stories. They make the vision relational and warm. Think about people who have been involved in the advancement of the organization so far. Tell about their struggles and victories. Praise their contributions. Make it personal. When you do that, you make the vision and the process identifiable to the average people who are wondering, Should I be a part of this? Can I be a part of this? Can I make a difference? A story helps them to see that even though they may have to reach to help achieve the vision, it is within their grasp.
7. PASSION
The final piece of the vision puzzle is passion. If there is no passion in the picture, then your vision isn’t transferable; it is just a pleasant snapshot. Who’s going to work hard, put in long hours, fight through obstacles, and go the extra mile for that? The wonderful thing about passion is that it is contagious. If you are fired up, then they will get fired up, and they will need that fire to keep them going.
There is definitely a link between ownership and success. You don’t get the latter without the former, and 360-Degree Leaders cultivate the ownership. They take the vision “from me to we.” The best person I’ve ever had on my staff when it came to the transfer of the vision was Dan Reiland. When I was at Skyline Church, Dan was my executive pastor. He did a great job of transferring the vision with the staff, but what impressed me most was the way he did it with the laypeople in the congregation.
If there is no passion in the picture, then your vision isn’t transferable.

For more than a decade, Dan led a class here of young professional couples called Joint Venture. The people he attracted were really the up-and-coming leaders of the organization. During the last five years I was at Skyline, I think every new board member emerged from the ranks of Dan’s leadership.
Every year at Christmas, Dan invited me to speak at Joint Venture’s big Christmas party. It was always a first-class affair. It was usually hosted at a nice hotel or conference center, the food was great, and everybody was dressed to the nines—the ladies were in evening wear, many of the men in tuxes. It became a tradition that they were the first group of people in the congregation to whom I would cast vision for the coming year.
There were two reasons I did that. First, there were many influencers in that group. The second reason was that they always got it. They were right there tracking with me. Why? Because they were like their leader, Dan, who was continually transferring my vision to them the other fifty-one weeks of the year. I feel certain that the church would not have moved as quickly as it did if Dan hadn’t been such a good leader in the middle of the organization.
People say that the bigger a ship is, the harder it is to turn. That may be true of ships, but it’s really different in organizations. An organization is one big entity that has many small ones in it. If every leader in the middle of the organization is a 360-Degree Leader who excels at transferring the vision to the crew in their area, then even a huge organization would be able to turn very quickly. It is not the size of the organization that matters; it is the size of leaders within it.