IDL62 Season 2: Be A Vision Driven Leader
What’s the difference between vision and mission? How do you define leaders’ and managers’ roles? Why does your vision matter?
Throughout the podcast series, there have been a number of pivotal books - books that the IDL roundtable has gotten tremendous value out of, and The Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt is certainly one of them. It makes a fine distinction between mission and vision and asks readers to consider what the meaning of those principles are for them, and the book explains why they are so important for a leader’s philosophy.
ARE YOU EXCITED OR TERRIFIED FOR THE FUTURE?
You know you need to prepare for the future of your organization, but the future can feel big and foreboding.
How do you prepare? When will you find the time? What will the future even look like?
The future of your organization doesn’t have to fill you with fear. You can lead your organization into a better, more exciting future with a clear and compelling vision.
The Vision Driven Leader will help you grow your organization using a simple, attractive, inspiring, and practical vision of the future.
Find out more at visiondrivenleader.com
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Vision and mission are not interchangeable (03:49)
The differences between leaders and managers (04:40)
Why is vision important? (07:33)
Why is the mission important? (09:29)
Vision and mission are not interchangeable
Your vision and mission are not only one-liners that you teach your employees to memorize.
They should be grounding principles in your business, and your employees should be able to explain what they mean, and how to enact them.
The differences between leaders and managers
A leader creates the vision, and the manager executes it
A leader inspires and motivates others towards the vision, while the manager maintains and administers the vision
A leader takes risks to fulfil the vision, whereas the managerial control avoids risks
Leaders focus on the long-term goals, and managers focus on the short-term
You need to know where you are going. The vision is the destination. The vision is where you want to go, and the mission and strategy are what will get you there — and who is coming with you on this journey.
Why is vision important?
If you do not know in which direction you are heading, then nothing can help you get there.
The old saying goes, “if you do not know to which port you are sailing, then no winds are favorable”.
The vision is where you want to go, the mission is who you are bringing with you, and the strategy is what will get you there. If any of these parts are missing, then you are bound to get stuck or go in circles.
Why is the mission important?
1 – Who are we?
2 – Who do we serve?
3 – What problem do we solve?
4 – What transformation do we deliver?
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
BOOK | Michael S. Hyatt – The Vision Driven Leader: 10 Questions to Focus Your Efforts, Energize Your Team, and Scale Your Business
BOOK | Megan Hyatt Miller and Michael S. Hyatt – Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork
BOOK | Andy Stanley and Lane Jones – Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication
Episode 16 - Win at Work and Succeed at Life with Michael HyattJoin the Impact Driven Leader Community
Check out the Impact Driven Leader Youtube Channel
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn
Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
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A vision that is concrete moves people. A squishy vision confuses people.
Tyler Dickerhoof
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Hey, welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. So glad to be here with you today, sharing on this latest episode of the Impact Driven Leader podcast. Thank you for listening. Again, if you're a subscriber, thank you. If you're not, you have somebody shared this episode with you, you found it, I'd love for you to subscribe. I'd love you to do something else too. This is for the benefit of those that are tuning in watching on YouTube. Yes, there's YouTube channel. You can go watch it, YouTube, Impact Driven Leader, YouTube channel, and the link is in the show notes, or I'd love for you to rate, review this episode so other people can find it. Share your comment, share your feedback.
I recently got an email from John Ellsworth. John shared that the last episode with John Houston, he listened to was so good he listened to it twice. I love being able to share that information with the guests. I love to find that out, hear that. One of the great things about this medium is I have no idea who listens and that I'll get random messages from John or others. I love that it adds value to you. One of the things that you'll notice today is today, there's not a guest, it's a solo show. As some people have shared, they've enjoyed a few of these solo episodes.
This happened by chance. It wasn't necessarily on purpose, but I'm so glad to be discussing with you the book that's part of the Impact Driven Leader book club here for the month of April. Okay, you ready for it? Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt. I've previously had Michael as a guest on the podcast. We talked about his work, his book, Win at Work, Succeed at Life that he wrote with his daughter. That was back last year. I'll make sure that you can grab that link in these show notes.
Today I want to talk about this book, The Vision Driven Leader. Let me share with you. I have a platform of books that I'm going to read throughout the year that we're going to read in the book club, that we're going to discuss in the round table. What's fun to me is just being able to pivot along the way. There's a few books, sometimes I got to find between guests, between whatever it may be. Here are books that I really want to talk about. Donald Miller's book, Hero on a Mission that we went through in March, man, I thought it was pretty pivotal. In the round table people have gotten tremendous value from the book. I'm pretty sure people will from this one as well. I also think it's very fitting.
Now why this book came up is I was in conversations with an organization that I have to sit on the board of. We are talking about vision and mission. I quickly understood that certain board members just had no idea what it was and there's no fault to them. I was have the luxury of reading this book, The Vision Driven Leader a couple years ago from Michael Hyatt and it opened my eyes. It opened my eyes so much that I realized everyone needs to read this book. I hosted back in, I believe 2019, when this book came out. A book club, a five week book club, we went through the book and I think there was over 150 people that subscribed, joined in that experience.
That also led me to developing this, the Impact Driven Leader, a nod there, The Vision Driven Leader, the Impact Driven Leader, because I'm driven my impact. This book has been very pivotal for me. Now here are the reasons why I think as we oftentimes corporate culture, we're like, oh, you need a mission statement, a vision statement. I could remember through my experiences going through those with different organizations, building a company and trying to write those out in light. I was clueless. I had no idea. Maybe you're sitting there like I was, or maybe like the organization that I happen to be a part of. We have these one liners, oh, this is our vision. This is our mission. Maybe that's what we think it should be.
Well, Michael Hyatt in this book, The Vision Driven Leader really goes through and clarifies that vision is much different than mission. It's quite funny that after reading this book and talking to people and they'll share their vision or the mission, I'm like, nope, not from what I've been able to learn and see. I'm going to break that down for you a little bit today. I'm going to walk you through some high points from the book and entice you to read the book along with us, join the book club, join the community. If you want to join the round table, there's going to be a spot for you available. That's going to open up again here later in the year. I'd love for you to be a part of the community, for sure.
So let's first start here. If you're a leader, why is it important that you know the mission? Well, Michael breaks this down with a couple different points. He goes, a leader creates vision, a manager, just execute the vision. A leader inspires and motivates others towards a vision, a manager just maintains and administers a vision. A leader weigh and take risks in regards to the vision, managers just control and minimize risks along the way. Leaders focus on the long term, managers focus on the short term. I want to take a side here. One of the things that I've learned, and this comes from some of the different books I've read and different people that have really poured into me.
We often think that who's job is it to carry out the vision? Well, it's everyone's job. That's part of the strategy and implementation but I think what's interesting is really the person that needs to be most focused in an organization on the vision is oftentimes the person that's bogged down in the day to day. The CEO, the chief visionary officer now has been developed in organizations. Their job is to focus on, are we painting that picture of what we want the long term to be? We're going to go through the little bit of that more, especially when we talk about what difference does the vision make?
Well, this is the example that I've used. It's helped me in actually speaking. I read a book from Andy Stanley and it was called Communicating for Change. One of the things that he talked about in that book is if you're speaking, you need to connect with the audience. You need to hook onto them like a tractor hooking onto wagon or truck hooking onto a trailer if you're going to take it somewhere. Well, the other part of that is you need to know where you're going. As a speaker, as a leader, where are you going? That's the vision. The vision is the destination. If I'm sitting here at my house in Spokane Washington, and I want to tell you about this trip that I want to make with my family, we're going to go to Yellowstone that we did a couple years ago.
I say, hey, how are we going to get there? I want to go to Yellowstone. This is amazing. We can get to see old faithful and all the wildlife and the mountain ranges and just everything that Yellowstone is so amazing. I paint that picture. I'm excited. Well, that's the vision. Well, the next part of that is well, who all's going well? Well, that's my family. Well, that's the mission. The next part of that is the strategy. Well, how are we going to get there? Well, we're going to punch Yellowstone into our GPS and it's going to give us the turn by turn. I hope that little example gave you some clarity in the difference between vision, mission and strategy.
Results happen when they all intersect. Imagine three little circles, vent, diagram, all three of them interact. Remind, remember, vision is the GPS direction, destination. Mission is who we are and what are we driving? Strategy is how are you going to get there? So I think learning and thinking about vision in that sense, and it gave me personally tremendous amount of clarity. It's like, oh, okay, well, now all of a sudden let's get a little bit deeper and understand a little bit more about this idea of vision. Vision's important because as I just described, I could tell my family, "Hey, let's get in the RV and let's go for a trip." I drive them around the neighborhood and we just drive in circles and drive in circles.
They're like, "Where are we going?" I'm like, "Oh, we're going on an RV trip." But if there's never a destination, we'll keep driving in that trip. We can drive for hours. We can burn up a lot of fuel. We can stop, we can set up camp but if we have no idea where we're going, if we don't have a destination, a place that we're going to, we can implement the strategy. We can have everyone involved in the mission, but without a vision, man, we're just driving in circles. A lot of organizations find themself in that place. Well, let me help you this, sometimes it's also important to identify well, what's our mission?
Michael shares this in the book. To me, it was a tremendous clarifier. I've used this myself. I've used it with others. I'm going to share with these, the four questions. So these are four questions that help identify a mission. Are you thinking about, wait a second, Tyler, we're talking about vision driven leader. Yes, but it's important to clarify the mission so you can really paint this picture of the destination, the vision. It's like I just shared to you is I can paint this picture of Yellowstone and going to Yellowstone but if I don't explain to our family how we're going to get there or who all's going to go, the vision doesn't matter. Well, same here with the mission.
So the mission asks these four questions and answers them. Who are we? Who do we serve? What problem do we solve? What transformation do we deliver? Now, what's fun about answering those questions is depending on how you answer them, if you really elaborate a lot, you just start to really develop your vision. You really need to condense down the answer to those four questions and make it pretty simple. Maybe two or three lines. Michael says in the book, a mission fits on a t-shirt. A vision statement, you better bring out a notebook. It's going to be pretty robust. It's going to be a lot more. A mission is a movie trailer. The vision is the entire full length movie. It it's something, it's a manifesto that really is something bigger and more.
Well, let me share with you this as we get into describing this idea of a mission, excuse me, of a vision. See I'm tripping on my own words there and confusing, because it can be very confusing. We think in organizations, well let's be mission focused. Well, you can be mission focused, but if you have no vision, doesn't matter. You can't see, you don't know where you're going to go. A vision must be clear. People have to see it. Well, this is what I really think is important. I talk to you about mission being the trailer. Okay, it's smaller, shorter. The vision is the full length movie. It's an hour and a half, two hour long movie that is just this massive descriptive, every last detail.
Imagine you're describing to someone, this amazing story that transpired in your life. You're not going to hit on just a couple details. You're really going to give it a lot of flavor and color. Well, that's what a vision does too. Here's what happens though. We maybe watch the movie once, take it out, delete it from our hard drive or whatever and then we think, oh, everyone's seen the movie. I saw the movie once. I don't need anyone else to see the movie. Well, that's where we get in trouble as leaders. It's been said, once you're sick of hearing it yourself, you're about half done. Once you're sick of hearing the vision, you're like, oh, I've said this enough times, you're about half done.
I think that's really important because there's a part of me in different organizations I've realized I go through a lot of different things in my day. You do as well. Everyone you lead and you're involved in, they go through a lot of different things. If you're not coming together and saying, Hey, all right, let me just clarify. Where are we going together? What are we doing this for? Let me just make sure we're on the same page. We can get distracted and if we think it's obvious to others, the reality it's not. That's when leaders get in trouble. They start to make decisions and they expect everyone else to understand they're making decisions that help them further get to that destination, that vision point and other people, they don't get it. They can't see it. Help them out. Create clarity, provide that picture so they understand.
This is what I also want to share. A vision that's concrete moves people. If it's squishy, it'll confuse people. You might want to write that down. Concrete moves people, squishy confuses people. I may just want to sign off right there. That was pretty good one. I did have to go to thesaurus and trying to find a good word. I wanted to change squishy, but I stayed with it. So remember that. It's constantly reiterate, share your vision, be so excited about it. You want to tell people about it. Man, if you do that, people will be moved.
But if you're wishy washy, if you're here one day going the next year, you're like, ah, I'm [inaudible 00:13:32] you don't talk to people about it, well, they're going to find a different bus to get on. That bus may be going to the Appalachian Parks, not Yellowstone. They may be going to Ban instead of Yellowstone. Well, if we want our organization to go to Yellowstone, we better make sure that they get on the right bus, the bus destined for Yellowstone and not the one going to Ban because one of them takes a right turn and the other one takes a left turn from where I'm at.
Well, this is the other thing. I've used a couple national parks here in the United States. If you're in different countries, I know those are pretty, Yellowstone is to US, Bans in Canada. Yes, but I hope those allegories, those illiteration help you understand that it's so important to have that concrete part of a vision for others and inspire them. Michael states in his book, he said, if your vision doesn't inspire people, they're not going to go with you. Man, I don't know. That's fun at first, but it's the inspiration of something bigger and better that's realistic, practical, that they'll bind onto.
They'll grab a hold of, they'll bind with you and say, let's make this happen because it's important that it needs to be big enough that people don't see this vision everywhere around them today. Yet it needs to be not so big that they can't see it happening. that's the thing with inspiration. It needs to be just far enough ahead of where you're at now, touring like I can do that. Because if it's so far in front of you, there's not a chance. I'm not down with that. I can't do that. That's where it comes to practicality. Mission is the who. Vision is where. I mentioned that earlier strategy is how we're going to get there.
Well, this is the last piece that I think clicks into this practicality of a vision. It's an area that I've long realized is pivotal to healthy leadership. That's values. As Michael describes it in his book here, he goes, values are the people you're going to be on your trip. Values are the things that are going to bind you together and say, if nothing else, this is who we are and this is how we're going to treat others. This is how we're going to show up and be viewed by others because strategies can change. Your vision is evolving and all of a sudden you get a little different view, oh, I got a bigger picture. Your mission maybe, I got to fuel up. I got to, maybe I got to change some tires. Maybe I need to trade out that old RV for a new one, but we're still going to the same destination. We're still going to the same place.
That's strategy changing. There's going to be roadblocks along the way. Remember this, you share the right vision. You accept those strategic changes. You hold onto the values. You're going to attract the right people. You're going to attract the people that want to be on the same trip as you. You won't have those kids kicking and screaming and saying, I want to go to Disneyland when you've sold them a vision of how amazing and spectacular and natural Yellowstone is.
Here's the last part I'm going to focus on before calling this a wrap. You have to sell it. I have no intention to selling you to go visit Yellowstone. If you're excited to go visit Yellowstone, that's great, but you know what I need to do. I need to share with you the vision that I have. I have a vision that leaders are going to be healthy. I have a vision that they're going to put their arms around people and walk with them, that they're going to practice empathy, that they're going to be vulnerable and willing to accept their insecurities. That they're going to be sensitive to those around them. That they're going to choose to be active in engaging with people. They're going to learn how to be patiently intense.
Those are all values that I hold onto. That's a picture that I have, a day when leaders are revered for how much of an impact they make in their community, in their world, outside of their everyday, outside of maybe their business, because they're so intertwined. See to me, it's selling that story that's so important that needs to be done at every single interaction. I hope that I sell that here on these podcasts. That's why I do this, is that I have a vision of a much better day when leaders all work together, put their arms around each other, sit down on a table, help each other grow and learn.
It's the only way I know how to get better as a leader. So that's what's helped me. I hope that it helps you too, because that's a vision that I constantly am watering and fertilizing and providing sunlight. Because if not, it's not going to grow just like any plant won't grow either. There's going to be resistance at times. I have to accept that resistance. I have to see on the other side of it, not dismiss it. Oh, I can't be a better leader. Oh, I'm not in a leadership role. I'm the hardest person but the most impactful person to lead is yourself. When you start leading yourself, it's pretty amazing how people start to look at you and say, all right, what's changed? Why is this different? Man, why do you focus on what you focus on now?
Just as I think it's so important for leaders to grow so do a vision needs to evolve. It needs to evolve and grow with the organization and grow with the person and not in the beginning but all of a sudden, you get to a point on your trip and you're like let's get back in the RV. We're on eight of the 12 hour trip for me to get to Yellowstone. We're about eight hours into it and all of a sudden, I look over my wife, Kelly, and I can guarantee, this is what she's doing. She's on her phone and she is planning the next trip. She's like, where are we going next? Or maybe we get to the park, we get to Yellowstone, but now she's trying to figure out where do we want to go within the park? Let's figure that stuff out because now we actually got close enough to where we can see, and maybe we have some of that strategically planned out, but maybe it's not going to be absolute.
You have roadblocks. You have traffic. You have, I remember when we were there, we had some bison that were just in the middle of the road. Guess what? They were there. We put it in park and we waited. Our strategy changed. That can happen with your business too. As a leader, you need to be able to zag and understand when to zag and don't wait until it's dead. Don't wait until you're done at Yellowstone, you're driving home and you're like, oh, I don't have anything to look forward to. That's the day that no leader wants to be in. It really isn't because not only will everyone else be lost and confused. That's when they're really going to look to you to say, "Hey, help us."
That's the greatest opportunity for a leader, is to help others accomplish what they didn't think they could. To me, that's having a vision and painting a vision and being excited about a vision of a different world, different than what you see today because this is what I know. Everything that is great in our world today was made, became because someone had a vision to do so. Now maybe they didn't have this empty slate and they just imagined this amazing conglomeration of technology. But I believe this one person had a small vision and then it led into another vision and it led into another one.
It's like this. It's like told you, we want to go to Ban. We want to go to Yellowstone. Part of selling the vision and living the vision and continuing to grow the vision is telling people we're going on a trip. You know what, I'd love to have you on the bus for as long as you want to ride it because I know you're going to provide value. You're going to bring great pieces and contributions to this organization in which time for you get off the bus. I'm going to say, thank you for being here. This bus is going to keep on rolling. Maybe I'm the one that needs to get off the bus and let the bus keep on rolling. That's okay. To me, that's a great day for a leader, is to allow someone else to continue to take that bus to the destination and realize I have a new vision for today. I saw something differently and I can create a new world. Who wants to come with me?
As always thank you for listening in to this episode of the Impact Driven Leader podcast. I'd love for you to join the community. You can go to the impactdrivenleader.com. You can visit my website, tylerdickerhoof.com. Check me out on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. Love to be able to share, love for you to consume any of this content.
And I really do hope that you grab this book, The Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt. To me, it was very impactful. It continues to be impactful in realizing now prepping for this podcast and getting ready for it to be part of the book club how important, especially today in our world, that leaders continue to share a vision, to be vision driven, because our world needs more leaders that are vision driven rather than just on the mission. Hey, you need both of them.
As always, I'd love for you to subscribe, share, rate, review. Send me any feedback. Let me know what you thought about this episode if you got value out of it. I surely hope you did. A little condensed version today. A little easier on the listening time. Again, thank you for being part of the audience impacting my life. Till next time, have a good one.
