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Welcome to Episode 97 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Today I want to focus on your most important role as a leader, and that is to discern and cast vision for the team that you lead.

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A leader has many tasks depending on your role. This could be finance and administration, marketing, programming, human resources. If you are a pastor, that can also include things like preaching and pastoral care. And it's important to note that you don't have to be the chief executive or spiritual leader of an organization. To the extent that you lead any sort of team, even if it's within the context of a larger organization, your primary role is to discern vision and communicate it effectively.

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Vision, done well, can create energy and enthusiasm, or at the very least, it can enlist commitment to the direction that you are headed. It also helps create focus so that people understand that there are certain things that are going to be more important than others. You can't do everything and it really matters that you're able to focus on the things that will move you toward your preferred future.

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It's also important to remember that vision can depend on the time frame. During this pandemic, it's more likely that your vision is going to be more short term. It will likely be about getting through this pandemic in the best shape possible while being an effective team. For example, I recently did a virtual event for our top donors, and I was able to communicate to them that our vision for getting through this pandemic is to keep our core staff intact, to provide programming for those who want it, and to ramp up quickly as the larger environment moves towards greater activity.

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Now, full disclosure here. I realized as I was preparing for this podcast that I have not clearly communicated this to our staff. I've given it to them in bits and pieces. I guess I've kind of assumed that they would understand the coherent thoughts that have occurred in my mind. But I think I have fallen short in actually communicating this focus, this vision clearly. So I will do that this week at our staff meeting. This leads to the major downside of not having a clearly defined and properly communicated vision: without it, the system you lead will increase in anxiety.

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People don't necessarily have to agree with the direction that the leader wants to go, but they do need to know what the leader thinks. A corollary to this is that when you try to lead by consensus without clearly stating what you believe, then you will actually create more anxiety in the system. If you've ever been in a situation like this, you know that people on the team are reluctant to share what they think because they don't know where the leader stands and they don't want to end up on the wrong side.

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And while they might be reluctant to share what they believe, even if they do know the vision, if you are a non-anxious, self-differentiated leader, then it's more likely that they will be willing to share what they think. I want to remind you that self-differentiation is the ability to claim your own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. And leadership through self-differentiation is the ability to clearly communicate these goals and values, this vision, this direction, and then stay connected emotionally to the most resistant in the system.

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When you put these two together, vision is all about being able to know what you believe, know what you think is best for the team or the organization that you lead, and then being able to cast that vision, to clearly communicate it, so people have the ability to follow effectively.

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Now that I've shared why I believe vision is so important in your role as a non-anxious leader, I want to get into the four components that I believe are important for the effective use of vision.

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The first component of an effective vision is that it must be consistent with the mission of your organization. If you are a faith based leader, then your job is to discern what God's will is for the team that you are leading. Even if you are not a faith based leader, if your vision is not consistent with the mission of the organization, then you need to rethink it. A vision that is perceived as being self-serving for the benefit of the leader will actually increase anxiety in the system.

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One of the best things that you can do as a leader to be a non-anxious presence and to keep the anxiety in the system lower is to focus on the mission first. The mission of the ministry that I lead is to provide Christian hospitality and programming that promote God-inspired, life changing experiences through camp and retreat ministries. The short term vision that I shared earlier may not seem related to that, but the primary idea here is that if we don't survive the pandemic, we can't get back to doing our mission.

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The second component of an effective mission is that it must be communicated clearly. This highlights the mistake that I made in not communicating clearly to our staff, but just assuming they understood what I was thinking. When the vision is clearly communicated, people will understand it and will have the opportunity to get behind it. Not everybody will get behind it fully. But as long as people agree that it's in the best interests of the organization, then it at least has a chance to get the support that it needs.

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And when it's communicated clearly, it will provide the opportunity for those who do agree with it to support it passionately. It's important to note that the vision must be clear enough and brief enough that people can get it without a lot of interpretation. While they may have questions about certain components, a long, drawn out vision statement rarely creates focus or energy. It's more likely to confuse people and to depress the energy levels on the team.

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The third component of an effective vision is it must create enough healthy emotional space to receive feedback. I hate to sound like a broken record, but non-anxious leaders say what they believe while giving others the freedom to disagree.

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Communicating the vision, as you understand it, is taking responsibility for yourself, it is claiming your own goals and values. It is sharing where you think things should be headed. But doing so in a way that gives people the freedom to disagree is really critical. You want to be able to hear that constructive feedback. And while it's not always true that the leader is able to correctly discern God's vision for the team, I believe it is more likely because nobody thinks about this more than you do as the leader.

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That being said, being willing to hear feedback will help you to refine and improve whatever vision you have discerned. In some cases you might find you are totally off base and you need to go back to the drawing board. This has certainly happened to me. And this leads to the final component, which is really where understanding family systems theory can make a difference for the effective use of vision.

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This fourth item isn't actually a component of the vision itself, but it is a component of your leadership as you cast vision and set direction for your team. That is the ability to manage self and to avoid a conflict of wills. A conflict of wills is when you, as a leader, focus all your time trying to convince others that they need to agree with you. Because nobody likes to be told what to do, we know that as soon as you start to do this, people will push back and will entrench in their resistance. Doing this is trying to define them rather than defining yourself.

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Conversely, if you share where you believe the team should be heading while giving people permission to either come along or not, you actually give it more of a chance. For those who are extremely anxious and who are resisting because of their own issues that have nothing to do with the vision, this actually puts a burden on them to convince you to change your mind.

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That's probably the subject for another whole podcast episode. But the idea here is that you spend your time managing your own anxiety and reactivity rather than responding to that of others.

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This is where understanding the difference between emotional process and content is critical. When people resist through their own anxiety by lashing out or withdrawing, that is emotional process. Something is going on in them that has nothing to do with the vision, which is the content. In this case, you don't want to argue, you don't want to give in and agree, but you do want to stay emotionally connected. By its very nature, listening to other people without arguing or agreeing keeps you emotionally connected, but avoids this conflict of wills.

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And when you do have to take a non-anxious emotional stand, a little humility never hurts. You've probably heard me use these phrases before, but saying things like. "I may be wrong, but this is what I believe." Or, "You don't have to agree with me, but this is where I feel God is leading us." Saying things in this way, helps to avoid that conflict of wills because you are not trying to change the mind of the others.

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You are not trying to define other people. You are defining self. Another part of understanding emotional process is knowing when to listen to what other people have to say. When people disagree with you in a healthy way, when they are able to self-differentiated and take a non-anxious emotional stand, then you definitely want to listen. When somebody comes up to you and says in a calm manner, "I heard what you said, but I don't agree with you," this is a sign emotionally that they are defining themselves and not trying to define you.

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This is when you want to listen, because this is when you will hear things that will help you to improve, refine or even go back to the drawing board with your vision. And this leads to the macro takeaway for me regarding vision. You don't have to be spot on with it, what you do have to do is to try to discern it and try to communicate. If you're able to do this and manage yourself effectively, to define yourself and not others, to self regulate in terms of your own reactivity in response to the anxiety of others. If you are able to do those things, then casting the vision will help the organization, help the team move in the right direction. Even if you are not entirely correct, because you will create healthy, emotional space to get the feedback of the team to enlist the support of the team.

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The leader doesn't always have to be right, but the leader does need to say what she believes. And that's why vision is so important.