Leadership is about vision, getting people to buy into that vision and empowering others to execute the vision, according to an article by John Kotter in the Harvard Business Review. Often times leadership is mistaken as management, but management is more about the process and operations of a business. Leaders are needed to help move organizations forward. They set paths for visions that are challenging, and they should be, according to a Forbes.com article.
Recently I was able to catch up with a former classmate of mine who has been living overseas for a number of years. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in accounting at a university in New Zealand. His research is geared more toward how social effects accounting has on business (I’m simplifying his research significantly, so please forgive me if you’re reading this friend), but his vision about sharing this information leads me to see him as a leader. His biggest question is about how to share his research in a timely fashion, but questions whether the traditional media model is going by the wayside, including peer reviewed journals. His vision includes a multifaceted approach to sharing scholarly research through digital mediums, while still satisfying requirements for being a published academic.
What makes my friend a leader is that he sees the future of peer reviewed journals and wants to find a way to keep the industry relevant. He asked me if he should take a communication or public relations class to help him get a better sense of the industry. I told him that he is already a leader by having a vision of a problem and a potential way to fix it.
The amount of time leaders spend setting the vision is low. According to a Harvard Business Review article, researchers say that leaders spend only about 3% of their time setting vision and enlistment. This means we need to produce and train leaders and potential leaders the importance of spending time to create vision to aspire to.
To me, strategic communication is the practice of setting a vision and getting others to follow and achieve the common the goals. As a professional communicator, in order to distinguish myself as a leader means that I have provide a strategic vision. Currently, I’m working on redoing my organizations advertising messaging. Part of my directive for my advertising agency include creating messaging that can be recycled or slightly altered to ensure the ads have a long shelf life.
Our last set of ads ran for three years and so due to expense and message alignment, my goal is to keep the new set of fresh ads for the next three years. Part of the change of messaging includes evaluating the current competition and finding what will make our organization stand out amongst the crowd.
Hopefully, by creating a vision of where we want to be with our organization within the next five years will help position our communication efforts for the better. This includes a vision for my organization’s internal communication efforts. Currently, we do not have the ability to communicate with all teachers and staff at various private schools within the system. A vision that I have, and the rest of my office, includes using technology to reach our internal audience of teachers. My vision is within two years we will have the ability to reach all teachers without any stipulations. My goal is to increase communication with our internal audiences to help create conversations and hear feedback that can be used to improve campuses for the better. Opening up bottom up communication, listening, and implementing specific feedback will build and reinforce trust with this audience.
We need more leaders in our world to continue to progress not only organizations and businesses, but move humanity forward. There’s a great quote from the 1995 movie The American President about leadership. Check it out at the clip below to hear the quote.
The absence of leadership forces companies to living project-to-project with no greater vision. Let’s make concentrated efforts to create vision for our organizations, and ourselves to lead us to the future.
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