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Addressing the issue of divisiveness is the most critical focus for an effective visionary leader over the next 9 years. Goals are achieved and progress is made not only when conversations are happening, but when active listening is taking place. As a nation, we have a listening problem, and we need visionary leaders to help unifying ideas break through our crocodile brains. The effort isn’t as effective if it only serves pockets of folks.
For an illustrative purpose, I’d like to discuss an alternate path for our country to have taken with COVID-19, which was mentioned in this week’s discussion prompt.
- Identify COVID-19 as a common enemy across all affiliations
- Create a consensus that the preservation of human life should be our #1 goal as a nation. This would serve as our vision statement.
- Explain that this is a time in our nation’s history where we need to live up to our name “united” and think of “US” moving forward together. Explain that the only way to achieve the shared goal is for folks to help strangers and to temporarily abandon any known or unknown biases they may have towards certain affiliations.
- Reiterate the unified message (vision statement) at every opportunity possible. Repetition of a vision makes it sticky. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, “I have a Dream” eight times in his iconic speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. There was the intention behind the speech writing to make the vision sticky.
Margaret Heffernan stated, “Efficiency undermines and erodes our ability to adapt and respond”. She later discussed how this “progress” led us into internet pockets where people were exactly like us. This created a deficiency in empathy and compassion for people who are different than us. I cannot help but think that if our visionary leaders were focused on compassion and empathy, that we could have overcome the last decade of “tech efficiency advances” and grew as a more united nation, even amid a global pandemic.
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