Getting clarity is the first practice of personal leadership. When you are clear about what you want, you are able to describe it in vivid detail—you know a little something about what it will take to get there and how it will feel to arrive. You connect to an inner source of inspiration that will call you forth and compel you to achieve a powerful new vision.
As leaders, we don’t always make the effort to get a deep sense of clarity. We get lost in the details. We zero in on the now, and if we’re really lucky, we look ahead to next week. But that’s a shortsighted view. Business needs leaders who can see farther into the future—not just for their organizations but also for themselves.
Three strategies will help you get clarity, and will help bring you insight on who you are and who you could be as a leader, any time you need it:
1. The Inner View. This strategy refers to exploring. Ask yourself a range of questions on a variety of topics: your hopes, fears, concerns, questions, and needs. You ask these questions to uncover your thoughts and feelings that influence your ability to be successful. Doing this helps you see where you stand now in relation to what you ultimately want—that long-range vision. But you don’t just answer the questions; you explore them. Exploration is not an interview, it’s the inner view.
Identify the topic, what exactly you need to get clear about. Then ask open-ended questions and explore the answers.
2. You and Improved. The second process for getting clarity is envisioning the future. Envisioning the future means using your imagination to see yourself in the future—what Wharton School of Business researchers call “the leadership skill of time travel.” You close your eyes and get a visual picture of what you want. It’s a daydream with meaning. In your mind you see yourself succeeding. You… and improved.
Envisioning helps you see a more complete picture than you get from answering questions in words. When you envision the future (as opposed to just ruminating on it), you see it in the form of vibrant images, alive with details. The pictures serve to amplify important internal messages, explain gut reactions, and reveal intuitive wisdom. They are imbued with meaning, which can help you make decisions and take action.
Envisioning is not fantasizing. Quite the opposite, it’s a practical, efficient technique to get clarity instantly by tapping into these rich stores of knowledge that sometimes get obscured in the chaos of daily life.
3. The Path. Ironically, the problem with envisioning as we’ve discussed it so far is that it all happens in the future. Of course, that’s the idea, but it can be a little intimidating. You may be able to see how a visit to the future can help you gain confidence, clarity, and practical ideas about where you’re headed, but that still doesn’t solved the problem of how to get from here to there. And that can be a pretty daunting proposition.
The Path is an organizing metaphor—a scenario that helps you order your thoughts so you get clarity where otherwise there might be darkness or confusion.
To visualize yourself moving along your path only takes a few minutes, and it’s easy to do. But the real journey starts when you reflect on the experience and interpret what you saw. Analyze the visualization. Ask yourself: If this path were a metaphor for my life, what would there be to learn? If I were to lead myself down a path like this, what would I need to do now? What meaning does that have for me in real life?
Although this process may be new to you, it is actually a version of a technique called “histories of the future” used by organizational development experts, and it helps effective leaders make sense of their realities in a fast-changing world. I often have used this kind of visualization with leaders when they feel overwhelmed about the big decisions they have to make (“I want to leave my job and go out on my own” or “I’m ready to take this business to the next level”) or when they feel discouraged about their reality to achieve their goals (“I don’t know what I’m doing!” or “I know what I want, but I have no idea how to do it!”). I offer The Path to you as one more way to get clarity about what you want… and how to get it.
In order to achieve success in your life and as a leader, you don’t just need a clear vision of the future. You need to have the skill of getting clarity again and again. Both your intuition and your imagination are important access points to valuable information—information that you need to surface in order to clarify your vision.
Getting clarity can move you quickly out of overwhelm, distraction, and confusion into excitement, confidence, and peace.
Excerpt from “The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership” by Dr. Joelle K. Jay (Praeger).
Dr. Joelle K. Jay is a principal with global leadership development firm Leadership Research Institute (LRI) and the author of The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. For a free summary, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com or e-mail Info@TheInnerEdge.com. As an executive coach, author and speaker, Dr. Jay helps leaders leverage their talents to achieve top performance and business results. Her clients include global businesses in investment services, finance, hospitality, health care, pharmaceuticals, education, communication, and technology. Dr. Jay earned her Ph.D., with an emphasis on learning and leadership, from the University of Washington. She also has a Master’s degree from Boston University, a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, and the highest level of certification awarded by the International Coach Federation. For more information, visit www.JoelleKJay.com
