A vision on leadership: how do you create?

What is your vision on leadership? When developing a vision for an organisation, people often look for a strong text that inspires, binds and offers direction. To develop this, you all pause to consider what is really important for your client, environment and organisation. But how ‘real’ is it?

This step towards a clear vision is often skipped in a department's policy. Yet for both the manager and the employee it sharpens what is of value to pursue together. For the manager it is important to get clear what his or her ‘view of people’ is. It makes quite a difference whether you see your employees as autonomous, as employees who constantly need direction, or as nuisances who keep you from your work.

Explore how you create. Take a moment to pause and use your creative powers (which every person has!) to develop your vision for the department. It is important to recognise your values profile and that of your organisation and colleagues.

Back to basics: what did you develop as a child?

Go back to your childhood. How did you turn your ideas and dreams into a tangible form? With music, drawing, crafting, photography, building worlds in Lego (or these days Minecraft), Playmobil, music or some other way?

Gather material and add to it with stories from the people around you back then.

=> which (visual) stories did you invent; what and/or who was the subject?
=> which characteristics did your characters have that played an (important) role?
=> what was important to your characters (or to you)?

Examine the answers for underlying values and look at how these can or cannot give direction to and enrich your vision.