The last part of Leadership Arsenal dealt with Seeking Out and Accepting Criticism. I talked about the benefits of getting the opinions and criticisms of your team and now I think it’s time to talk about vision.

Choose Your Vision

As a leader you will be faced with many choices. One of these will be how you “view” your team and your projects.

One choice may be to use “tunnel” vision. You may choose to focus solely on the task at hand. Focus only on the details that are specific to the one project. This will guarantee that no small part of the task is overlooked or MISDONE. You are assured to be aware the minute there are problems and be able to immediately correct them.

Another choice is to use “peripheral” vision. You are not focusing on the day to day grind of one specific project but are instead seeing the bigger picture. You are aware of how this one project factors into the larger scope of the company’s objectives. The drawback to this is obvious. If your team has made mistakes, you will be unaware and thus unable to make corrections.

Your choosing of a vision style is similar to the previously discussed managerial style and again, balance is the key. While you should be narrowly focused on a specific project, you also have to keep in mind how it fits with other projects and with the company’s goals.

An example of this would be you deciding to have your project’s product manufactured by Company X. Company X subcontracts the work to a company in a country that uses child labour. Meanwhile, your company has been actively and publicly advocating against child labour. Your project comes in under budget but you have placed the entire company’s integrity in jeopardy. There was an episode of The Apprentice that also illustrated “vision” well. The team had to produce a commercial to be viewed by the audience of a movie theatre. One team member was narrowly focused on getting the “perfect” shot for each scene. Sometimes insisting on redoing the scene many times. The other team member was tapping her watch, keenly aware that if they didn’t hurry up there would not be enough scenes filmed to complete the commercial. Fortunately for the team, they managed to compliment each other well enough to finish the project. What they each would have needed was to be balanced on their own without having to rely on the other to such an extent.

Choose your own vision carefully. Guide your team members into also making a choice. If you see them leaning towards peripheral or tunnel vision too much, guide them back. Explain to them how having such a vision can handicap not only the team but the project and company also.

The next installment of Leadership Arsenal will cover Choosing Integrity. I will discuss the importance of corporate and personal integrity in the workplace so don’t miss your chance to add another tool to your leadership arsenal. Come back next week and check out our next piece of advice on integrity.