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

Change can take many ‘shapes’:

You might go in a straight line, from here to there.

You might take a zig-zag path, but still move forward.

You might move forward and then take a U-turn, going back to where you were.

You might move forward, with ups and downs, like a roller coaster.

You might move forward, get into the flow, rise up, go backwards and crash down, pick yourself up, and move forward again, like the Loop de Loop at a carnival.

Which path are you on?

Category: Getting There · New Directions

Personality and career tests can be very helpful in understanding yourself, in understanding the best types of work for you, in understanding how you interact with others, and multiple other reasons!

One test that is useful for career is the MAPP Assessment. This test can be taken free, and results given to you, by going to www.assessment.com . You then have fee-based options to obtain more detailed results.

Another test that I often used is the Myers-Briggs personality test. This is used by career counselors, relationship counselors, psychotherapists, etc. The purpose of the Myers-Briggs is to make the theory of psychological types described by Jung understandable and useful to people’s lives. The test results in describing you as one of sixteen possible personality types, on four scales:

Favorite world: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or your own inner world? This is called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).

Information: Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning? This is called Sensing (S) or Intuition (N).

Decisions: When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances? This is called Thinking (T) or Felling (F).

Structure: In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options? This is called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).

NOTE: The above information was taken from the Myers-Briggs Internet site [www.myersbriggs.org] where you can learn much, much more.

From this, there are 16 personality types; for example, an INJT means someone who is introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging. Further explanation describes this type as a Rational, and the subtype as The Mastermind. Explanations are given for each category, type, subcategory, etc.

The test is also available through several options on the site, to include taking the test and having a one-hour discussion with an expert, for a fee. The test is available free at www.humanmetrics.com , which provides you with results, career options that suit your personality, some discussion about how you interact with others, and famous people who have your own personality type.

Category: Getting There · New Directions