In a recent posting, Seth Godin offered an illustrator’s analogy about visualizing goals. “If you can’t see it (in your mind, not with your eyes), then you can’t draw it.” (Drawing an owl – 1/7/14)
Leadership is about communicating purpose, vision and direction. But it is also about helping your people engage so they can contribute to the big picture.
As Seth mentions, there are thousands of concepts about how to lead people, how to manage, how to market, how to sell, how to work together, etc. But learning requires a sense of direction towards some objective. It helps to “see” where you are headed as you work through a project or process. When someone does a great job satisfying a customer, what does it look like? When teamwork achieves a goal, how does that look and feel? What behaviors demonstrate initiative or quality assurance? When a sales or production person succeeds, what does that look like?
Few people reach a goal in one leap. It takes practice, perseverance and encouragement. Leaders are responsible for guiding their personnel through the iterative process of trial and error.
“This worked well moving towards the goal…why?”
“This needs to improve…how?”
Seth describes it this way: “The process of drawing and erasing and drawing some more is how we learn to see the world.” Coaching your people works best when they engage in interactive learning, striving to reach the target, after you have helped them “see” it and aim for it.
How could you improve your iterative coaching process?
What does success look like once this process is improved?
