The One Thing Every Leader Must Do to Set the Vision

In this episode, Jill Griffin explores what real leadership vision looks like and why teams lose direction, covering:

 • Why teams become overly reliant on their leader
 • The difference between supporting your team vs. being led by them
 • How lack of clarity creates uncertainty and disengagement
 • What it means to lead as the “rudder” and guide direction consistently

Transcript

Why Leaders Must Set Direction;

Service Versus Leading The Team;

How Unclear Vision Hurts Teams;

Using OKRs To Drive Alignment;

Are You The Rudder Or Drift;

Leadership At Any Level;

Cohort Invite And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Hey friends, I'm Jill Griffin, the host of The Career Refresh. And today we are talking about leadership and setting a vision. I'm going to tell you two stories. I find them incredibly emotional. The first is about uh the U.S. president John F. Kennedy. And he announced to the United States that we're going to put a man on the moon. And he visited NASA. And he walked through the facility and he met the engineers. He met with astronauts. He met with operations people, all the people who were tactically working on building the ship. And at some point, he stopped and he talked to a man on the grounds crew. And this man clearly had equipment in his hand. I believe it was a mop. He had a jumpsuit on that was a custodial uh jumpsuit in nature. He was clearly doing custodial work. And Kennedy introduced himself to him and said, Hi, I'm John Kennedy. What do you do here? And this man looked at the president of the United States and said, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. Woof. That gets me so emotional. We're gonna get into why. If you don't, if you don't feel it for yourself, we're gonna get into why. The second is from a mentor of mine. She was doing some fundraising and charity work at a children's hospital for the terminally ill. And when she got into the elevator, she was in the elevator with a woman who was clearly kitchen staff. She had a hairnet, she had a food cart, she was delivering meals to the floor they were getting off on. And my mentor said to her, And what do you do here? And the woman said, I'm helping cure cancer. Two different people, two different roles, each had a crystal clear mission. Why? Because they had a clear vision. The clarity doesn't come from the grounds crew, and it didn't come from the kitchen worker. It came from the leader who set a vision so clearly and so completely that everybody in the building knew exactly what they were to do and exactly what they are in service of. And that's what leadership is, right? It's to create the capacity for others. It is to help the people that are in your service. And here's where I see leadership often breaking down. Leaders, especially high-performing, empathetic, people-oriented leaders, they start to confuse being of service to their teams with being able to lead the team. As a leader, your role is to create the capacity for others. Your role is to be responsible for the people that you are leading. And what often happens is leaders, because they are either not working their mind or not pausing and not being intentional, is they start to ask their team what they want. Listen, we have that off site next week. What do you guys want out of it? Right. They start to form their strategy and they look for people to provide direction or vision, right? And then they wonder why their team isn't taking action or why they're maybe not feeling confident or why there's no initiative. Because your team doesn't need you to ask them where you're going. Your team needs you to tell them and then also invite them to help you get there. That's the difference. You set the vision, they're bringing it to life. That's the distinction. There's a difference in leadership when you're setting that vision and you're saying, hey, you know, we're having that off-site next week, and here's what I want to accomplish. What do you want to add to it? Or what else would you want to have come from it? It's setting that vision first so that the person you're working with kind of knows the container or the purpose or the mission of what we're supposed to do. When the leader doesn't set the vision, and when the direction is unclear, or it's constantly being negotiated or renegotiated, the team feels it. They don't feel confident, they don't really feel safe, they're kind of confused, they may be defaulting to some sort of self-preservation because no one's told them what to do, where they need to build, what they're doing. And I want to be clear again that setting the vision doesn't mean you have to have all the answers. It doesn't mean you have to know exactly what to do at what place, and every piece and every bit and bop needs to be exactly. No, that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is asking your team for input, but it also means knowing that you're asking them because you're in service of everything around you. And we know it's hard. And it's really important that you continue to be in that service, especially when things are hard and not defaulting to your team. You maybe you've lost people to re-orgs or layoffs. Maybe your organization is taking a little bit of a pivot and going in a different direction. Maybe budgets are coming down fast and furious, and they're they're throwing money because they're saying, let's let's raise revenue quickly, let's get product into the market. So it doesn't always mean it's a downturn. It could also be a good thing that's happening, but it's still confusing. And the velocity of business and the speed of the work is creating confusion. When organizations need to make decisions, they need you as a leader to set that decision, that that take that decision and set that vision and make sure that everyone is clear in what they're doing. It's one of the reasons why OKRs, objectives and key results, work so beautifully. Because once we're clear in what the objective is, then we can break down the four or five steps of what the key results are to each objective. You, as the leader, are setting that objective. Your team is setting the clean key results. They're saying, okay, well, if we need to increase sales, here are the five things that we need to do. If we need to get that product shipped within two months, here are the 10 things we need to consider. That's where you're working with them, but you're not defaulting to them. We're not offshoring your brain to your team. You're setting the vision, and then you're inviting your team's excellence, you're giving them agency, you're having them weigh in on it because this is when your team is going to be looking at you the most. They're not asking for perfection, they're asking for direction. And when you are depleted, and my Lord, I know there are moments right now that we are all being depleted. You don't have to generate the vision from scratch. You have to go back to the mission. You know, I've spent the last six months working with executives at Meta, the Federal Reserve, Discovery, Warner Brothers. Trust me, these people are living the hard out in public, right? They are in the news, the work that they're doing is being commented on. There's pivots. They're successful, but there's pivots. It's the time that we spent in getting super clear what does the organization do? What does the department do? What is this team in service of? That's your North Star. And sometimes, you know what? You need to walk in the room and lead. So here's the thing or the question that I'm going to leave you with. In the rooms that you're leading right now, are you the rudder? Are you the strategy? Are you the vision and mission and setting it forth? Or are you waiting to see which way the current is moving and then sort of guessing? Yes, we need to read the room and yes, we need to be able to pivot. But if we're always waiting for somebody else to tell us, we're never going to be in a position to lead our teams. And what I see happening, especially at that VP, SVP, or sometimes at C-suite weather, is we're waiting for the level on top of us or our skip level to tell us what to do. No one's coming to save you for your job. That is for you to do, right? I know that sounds harsh, but that is what we need you to do. And, you know, I use the term leader a lot. I don't care what your title is, I don't care what your paycheck is, I don't care what business you're working for. You all have an opportunity to be a leader at every point. And leaders are setting that vision and then figuring out how we are cascading the goals and working in unison to achieve those goals. Your team knows that when you show up with that clarity, they know what to do. And when you don't, that also is going to shape what the output is. So set the vision, invite them in, and then let them bring the thing to life, the goal, the project, the mission, let them bring it to life. That's the work. I am working with a small cohort of women this spring, six to eight people, to actually start doing this work on next era leadership. If this is interesting to you, check out the information in the show notes. Go to my website. Fellas, you know I love you. This is a women's only cohort. There are other ways that we can work together through our one-on-one coaching or through the group work that I'm doing within organizations. But I would love, if you know women that might be good for this program, also send them this way. I would love to see you in this program. All right, friends, I want to hear from you. So you can email me hello at JillGriffinCoaching.com. And if any part of this episode resonated with you or you think a friend can benefit from it, send it to them because that's how we get the word out and that's how we get this work done. All right, friends, I really appreciate you for being here. Be intentional and always, always, always be kind. All right, I'll see you soon.