The Vitality Imperative. Mickey Connolly

the company and them personally. Leaders lecture employees about better behavior instead of demonstrating the behavior themselves. The company makes brand promises in marketing campaigns that feel nothing like how it operates day-to-day.

      We are not saying that these leaders are committed to fear, mechanics, and manipulation; we are saying that the Superior Leader approach frequently generates these experiences as the enterprise outgrows the personal brilliance of its leaders. If any of your associates are reporting these types of experiences, it is good evidence that Vitality is at risk or already seriously damaged in your organization.

       The Positive Impact of the Connected Leader Model

      Employees of a Connected Leader organization report very different things than those of a Superior Leader organization. The former group reports a culture of energized high performance, which is The Vitality Imperative in action. When asked what explains their energy, commitment, and success, they report three things:

       1. Community is a sense of belonging, rooted in common values and common purpose—the experience of being “in this together,” and looking out for one another on the journey to a shared achievement. In a genuine high-performance community, our differences combined with trust produce brilliance. Whereas most leaders only think about trust when it is at risk, Vitality leaders create trust ahead of time so there is always more trust in the relational bank when they need to make a withdrawal.

       2. Contribution means making a meaningful difference. The enjoyment of contribution is deeply human. Have you ever stopped in the middle of mowing a lawn and admired the difference between the short grass and the long grass? We all love being valuable and leaving things better than we found them. When vitality is the norm, people report feeling like the solution rather than the problem. They feel recognized for their contributions and believe that their leaders work to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard in support of those contributions.

       3. Choice is the victory of commitment over compliance. Each of us chooses to be devoted or not; it cannot be demanded. When vitality is present, people report thoroughly understanding strategy and priorities and personally choose to support success. They report a personal relationship to organizational values and adopt them as their own. This deep clarity and ownership lead to more decision-making discretion. Colleagues feel trusted, and it takes less time to get things done. Connected leaders have the awareness and skill needed to inspire committed choice rather than merely demand compliance.

      Vital organizations reliably achieve more with less time, money, and stress. When that energized performance is present, people report experiences of community, contribution, and choice.

      Betting on vitality, however, requires different awareness and skill than betting on personal brilliance and position power. For the last twenty-five years, we have appreciated that awareness and skill in leaders around the world, and we now know this: there is a design to vitality, and a committed leader can learn the design and put it to work—both personally and organizationally.

       Fanning the Flame of Vitality

      Eons ago, humans valued fire and yet could not create it. When lightning struck (literally), people captured the fire and tended to it carefully to keep it available for warmth, protection, and cooking. Keepers of the flame sustained the precious resource. When the fire went out, it was gone until lightning struck again. Eventually, we learned to create fire, not just catch it, and the human experience was transformed.

      Vitality is a bit like that. Most leaders are grateful when it strikes but are not all that great at conjuring it at will. From our research into vitality, leaders who reliably create and fan the flame of vitality have organized their awareness and skills into seven promises that are divided into two categories: igniting vitality and sustaining it over time.

      In our experience, the defining difference between those who employ the Superior Leader model and those who champion the Connected Leader model is the willingness to engage with and keep these seven vital promises.

       Igniting the Fire

      Igniting the fire of vitality takes creating the right conditions. Just as you can’t start a fire in the rain without the proper spark or without combustible materials, you cannot create vitality in an organization without inviting connection. This takes intention and commitment. In our experience, there are four key elements that create an environment conducive to igniting vitality:

       1. Presence: Awareness without prejudice

       Presence is to vitality what oxygen is to fire. Each of the other promises depends on the quality of presence. So, cultivating presence is a crucial act of leadership.

       2. Empathy: The power to appreciate the purposes, worries, and circumstances of others

       Leadership without empathy is ill-informed at best and bullying at worst. Empathy is not “soft.” It is courageous, skillful, and wise to quickly comprehend the world of another and all influence depends on it.

       3. Purpose: The mutual resolve of a community

       Authentic purpose lowers supervision costs while improving performance. It is not only logical, but felt emotionally and physically. We will share ways to locate the intersection between the deep personal purposes of individuals and the important purposes of an enterprise.

       4. Authenticity: Accelerating achievement through truth

       Living true to ourselves and to our word sounds right and yet doing so can be a major challenge. Authenticity, however, is not just a moral imperative, it is also a skill. We will explore how a well-told truth creates connection and turns conflict into useful intelligence.

       Sustaining the Fire

      Igniting vitality in an organization is not enough, however. If not sustained, cared for, and fed, vitality will eventually blow out. In our experience, there are three more promises that must be kept to sustain vitality in an organization once it has been ignited:

       5. Wonder: Fueling the fire and keeping our best day in front of us

       Creativity and innovation rest on wonder. In this book, we will show how practices that combine curiosity and possibility free us from imaginary limits and inspire fresh thinking.

       6. Timing: The victory of evolution over revolution

       Revolution is an act of desperation for people who have been bad at evolution. When we are good at seeing and acting on what it is time for, we create less resistance and more cooperation. We will share what we have learned about timing and how it builds organizational agility.

       7. Surprising Results: Making a meaningful, continual, and energizing difference

       Vitality grows in cycles of surprise. When people produce valuable results beyond their own expectations, there is widespread, energizing delight. The key is designing and delivering short cycles of surprise, and we will show you how.

      This book will explore each of these promises and show how, together, those promises ignite and sustain community, contribution, and choice. The image below summarizes our offer. If it is attractive to you, then we welcome you as a fellow traveler and ask that you read on.

      Throughout the book, we will invite you to visit thevitalityimperative.com, an online resource intended to be a “reader’s companion” that supports and deepens your exploration of these ideas.

      PROMISE #1

       PRESENCE:

       Awareness without Prejudice

       It is easy to miss valuable “weak signals” often hidden amid the noise.

       —McKinsey Quarterly