Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People. Joseph O’Connor

Then close your eyes. Now describe your surroundings. It would take a long time, wouldn’t it? But someone who knew the scene would recognize it from your first sketchy description. A vision statement in words has little meaning unless it can connect with and evoke the experience it refers to.

      More difficult still, unlike your surroundings, a vision does not yet exist, it is an imaginary picture, like the form of a sculpture that only exists in your mind’s eye. It becomes solid only as you work towards it. At first it’s an outline. An evocative word sketch will allow people to create it in their own minds, to see it in their own terms. Then they will add to it, give it different perspectives and the vision will grow stronger. The more people share the essential vision, the more robust and multi-dimensional it becomes.

      There is an art to putting a vision into words. The words need to be clear enough to capture the idea, yet vague enough for others to make their own meanings from it and enrich it. ‘To put a man on the moon in 10 years’ is one example of a vision. ‘A family growing and being happy together’ is another. ‘A reliable overnight delivery service’ is a third. How about ‘Redefining what is possible in the media market’? The words need to be suggestive and evocative. To modify Einstein’s famous dictum, ‘Vision needs to be as simple as possible, but no simpler.’

      I think it is natural to have a vision. It may be clear and central in your life. It may be hovering on the edge of your horizon – you may have a peripheral vision, as it were. Leadership takes that vision and puts it more fully into your life. You become more aware of it and start to act on it.

      A vision can be about creating an international company, playing a leading role in your local community, being an inspiring manager, a top athletic coach, designing a killer software application, building a high-performance team or launching a new business project. It comes down to a simple question: what’s worth doing?

      Another question is, how long will the journey take? This depends on what you want to accomplish. Too short a journey and people are not stretched. They will not be interested if the end goal is too easy – no one needs a leader for an expedition to the corner shop. Too long a journey and there is too much tension – people will not even try, if the goal seems impossible. A leader skilfully stretches the distance just far enough to set up the right tension, but not far enough to strain or snap the link between the present and the future.

      Suppose the journey has to be a long one? No business goes from sinking to soaring in less than a couple of years and if your vision is social change, that can take decades. The larger and more pervasive the change, the longer it takes. A long journey must embody something very important and be truly compelling for people to sign up. Alternatively, present conditions have to be very bad to get people moving. The leader must break a long journey into stages so it looks more manageable. No one climbs a mountain in one unbroken expedition, they welcome the resting points on the way to the top. The higher the mountain, the more breaks there are and the more comfortable they will be. Imagine looking up at a huge mountain and knowing you have to climb it in one trek. Your heart will sink to the bottom of your mountain boots. There have to be intermediate goals along the way or no one will even want to start in the first place. The leader will be left marching off into the distance on their own.

      Exploring Mental Perspectives I: Vision

      It seems natural to represent time as distance in our minds. We talk of events ‘far in the future’ or ‘close to the present’ and the law of perspective operates in our minds as well as in the outside world. The longer a goal takes to achieve, the further away we represent it, and the further away, the smaller it seems. The smaller it seems, the less motivating and the less real it may feel, so why bother to start? Perspective is governed by an inverse square law. In other words, if you retreat to twice the distance from an object, it does not seem to become half the size, it becomes a quarter of the size – the size varies as a square of the distance. So the attraction a goal has for you will vary tremendously depending on whereabouts you put it in your mental field. A small distance can make a big difference.

      

      Try this thought experiment. Think of something important you want to achieve in your personal or professional life. Imagine it in your mind. Make a picture of it.

      

      Whereabouts in space is your mental picture? For example, it may be directly in front of you or to one side. You may be looking up at it or down on it.

      How far away is it? Is it within arm’s reach or further?

      How long do you expect it will take to achieve?

      Experiment by moving it further away. How do you feel about it now?

      Does it seem more or less attractive?

      Does it get smaller, larger or stay the same size as you move it further away?

      Does the distance correspond to how much time you think it will take to achieve it?

      Does it seem as though the further away it is, the further in the future it is?

      Move it so far away that you can hardly see it. How do you feel about it now? Still motivated?

      Now move it closer.

      How does that change it?

      Does it seem more attractive?

      Does it get bigger, smaller or stay the same as you move it towards you?

      Does it seem more achievable? Does it seem that you will get it any sooner?

      How do you feel about it?

      Explore whether you experience a threshold effect – a point beyond which your picture loses any attraction. Also find the point where it is ‘too close for comfort.’

      Move your picture back to the most comfortable distance. Was that where it started?

      Play with these distances. You will find them interesting. If a goal ever seems unrealistic or not attractive enough it may be too far away. The further away, the less clearly you can see it.

      When you plan your goal, begin by making a picture close to you and then move it to a suitable distance. Any time you need to ‘get in touch’ with it again, pull it closer.

      

      Leaders make their goal seem possible however far into the future it may be. One way to do this is to create a sense of movement, for example:

      ‘The day is approaching …’

      ‘We can reach out and grasp …’

      ‘Hitting a moving target …’

      ‘We can reach it together …’

      ‘It’s within arm’s length …’

      ‘Headlong into the future …’

      ‘Nothing can stop us …’

Leaders in Perspective

      Mental perspective influences how leaders are perceived too. Some leaders seem more accessible than others and this may have to do with how closely we imagine them in our mind’s eye. Take the saying: ‘A general commands, a good leader leads and a great leader finds out where everyone’s going and gets out in front.’ A leader goes out in front, perhaps literally, certainly metaphorically. How far out in front should they be? Think about emotional distance. We talk about people being ‘distant’ and of ‘staying in touch’ and of ‘hands on’ management and ‘close’ friends and family. When a leader ventures too far ahead, the smaller they appear, and they get ‘out of touch’ and no longer understand the mood and feelings of those they are supposed to be leading. A distant leader can make the goal seem distant too.

      Hierarchies create distance in another dimension, as we talk about a leader being ‘above’ their followers. In my view, vertical distance represents