Posted by Stew Friedman on August 7, 2008 1:14 PM; published 8.20.08 Harvard Business Publishing

For the past couple of years, I’ve had the good fortune of speaking at the Broad Advantage conference in New York. Part of Janet Hanson’s amazing organization, 85 Broads, this weeklong program offers an array of speakers and experiences for about 100 college women who are interested in business careers.

A few days ago I asked each member of this year’s group to sketch and then describe to the rest of us her personal leadership vision–a compelling image of an achievable future. Leadership vision is an essential means for focusing attention on what matters most; what you want to accomplish in your life and what kind of leader you wish to be. A useful vision has to be rooted in your past, address the future, and deal with today’s realities. It represents who you are and what you stand for. It inspires you, and the people whose commitment you need, to act to make constructive change towards a future you all want to see.

Let’s look a bit more closely at the four key components:

• A compelling story of the future is engaging; it captures the heart, forces you to pay attention. Those who hear it want to be a part of it somehow. And they are moved.
• What does your future look like - what’s the image? If others could travel into the future with you, what would they find? A well-crafted leadership vision is described in concrete terms that are easy to visualize and remember.
• The story of your future should be a stretch, but it must be achievable, too. If it were not achievable, you would have little motivation to even bother trying.

Finally, future simply means out there - some time from this moment forward, but not so far away that’s it’s out of reach.

Stewart D. Friedman is Practice Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. He is the founding director of Wharton’s Leadership Program and of its Work/Life Integration Project, and the former head of Ford Motor’s Leadership Development Center. He is the author of numerous books and articles on leadership development, work/life integration, and the dynamics of change, including Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life, forthcoming from Harvard Business Press.

For more, please visit www.totalleadership.org.

Category: Getting There · New Directions