Vision is among the most overused words in the civilian and military world. Often, leaders create short-term concepts that only impact the organization when they are in leadership positions. However, a vision must outlive you and scare others due to its sheer scope. Take Bill Gates, for example. His vision is to place one PC on every desk in the world. That requires long-term commitment built on shared values. When leaders cast a vision for their future, they force collaboration and communication in their team and personal lives. To achieve the extraordinary, you must frame the challenges relative to your capacity. Too small of a vision leads to expected results; too bold, it becomes unrealistic, and you fail to develop the required resources. I've created a system called VISION to help you break through the mental fog and start building traction for your personal and professional life. Purposeful Accountable Leaders (PALs) inspire themselves and others by creating a realistic vision aligned with their heads and hearts.
Vision is among the most overused words in the civilian and military world. Often, leaders create short-term concepts that only impact the organization when they are in leadership positions. However, a vision must outlive you and scare others due to its sheer scope. Take Bill Gates, for example. His vision is to place one PC on every desk in the world. That requires long-term commitment built on shared values. When leaders cast a vision for their future, they force collaboration and communication in their team and personal lives. To achieve the extraordinary, you must frame the challenges relative to your capacity. Too small of a vision leads to expected results; too bold, it becomes unrealistic, and you fail to develop the required resources. I've created a system called VISION to help you break through the mental fog and start building traction for your personal and professional life. Purposeful Accountable Leaders (PALs) inspire themselves and others by creating a realistic vision aligned with their heads and hearts.
You're listening to the Tales of Leadership podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader what I like to call a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership.
Speaker 2:
All right team. Welcome back to the Tales of Leadership podcast. I'm your host, josh McMillian. I'm an active duty service member, I'm an army leadership coach, I run my own leadership coaching company and I'm just on a journey to become the best leader possible, and I'm on a mission to end toxic leadership and build a better leader what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader and I'm going to do that by sharing transformational stories and skills. And on today's episode we are going to be doing a deep dive and something that I have been using for several years now in my life, and I call it vision. And we're gonna break down that word of what I mean when I say vision, and going through the acronym, because if you've listened to me at any length of time, you know that I love acronyms. So I have created a system that you can use to create a vision for your life, for yourself, or you can even apply this to work, to start leaning into the future and grow into the person that you want to be. So let's go ahead and jump right in.
Speaker 2:
So vision is among the most overused words in, I believe, the civilian or the military realm. Often, leaders create short-term concepts that only impact the organization when they are in a leadership position. However, a vision must outlive you and scare others due to its sheer scope, and here is a good example of that. Take Bill Gates, for example. His vision is to place one PC on every desk in the world. That requires long-term commitment built on shared values.
Speaker 1:
When leaders cast a vision for their future they force collaboration and communication.
Speaker 2:
So remember that when we have a long-term vision, two things collaboration and communication in their teams and in their personal lives. To achieve the extraordinary, you must frame the challenges relative to your capacity. Too small of a vision leads to expected results. You're going to get easy wins. That's too easy To be bold, to be unrealistic, you fall into developing the required resources. Too small a vision leads to expected results. Too bold, it becomes unrealistic and you fail to develop the resources required to actually achieve it.
Speaker 2:
So I've created a system that I call Vision V-I-S-I-O-N to help you break through that mental fog and start building traction for your personal and professional life. And remember this purposefulful, accountable leaders or pals inspire themselves and others by creating a realistic vision that gets the head and the heart aligned. And here's a quote to start this off A vision inspires scares and demands a response all at the same time. So the first one, starting off with with V, is validate your pillars. Regardless of your background or the current season of life that you're in, we all have areas that are extremely important to us. Pillars are areas in life that act as anchor points as we progress on our leadership journey. Remember, when I define leadership, I really mean that. That's life. We're all on this journey together and we are all leaders because we have to learn to lead ourselves first before we can lead other people. Your pillars must be broad enough to look into the future but specific enough to inspire others to act. Here's a great book and it's called Vivid Vision and it's a great resource to really's called Vivid Vision and it's a great resource to really help you to discover what your pillars are. But one thing I've learned if you read ULA how to Build a Balanced Life in an Unbalanced World, or that one thing all the books, they all have the same pillars. So it's really up to you. You need to create your own pillars and some of those areas may be the same, but what's important is that you're setting those areas in life that you choose to intentionally grow in. That's key. Be intentional To inspire you. My pillars follow. I like to call KISS that's another acronym within an acronym You're welcome, keep it simple, stupid, and I use it all the time and those are family, faith, finance, field, fitness, fun and fulfillment, and those all lead into what I like to call my seven freedom growth goals. So everything that I do in life is really gained towards freedom. But those seven individual pillars that I just provided you hopefully inspired you to find your own all lead to my long-term vision of what I'm trying to achieve. And again, these are not groundbreaking. If you read any of those books that I just provided you, they are in there.
Speaker 2:
Tony Robbins says success leaves breadcrumbs, and there's a reason why these are all essentially the same. They are anchor points. They allow you to gauge if you are on course, and there's no perfect number of these areas that you should have in your life. However, I highly recommend that you limit yourself to no more than seven. You are only diluting your vision once you cross that threshold and allow your goal mindset to really start to take place.
Speaker 2:
So remember what I mean between a growth mindset and a goal mindset. Growth mindset is the stretching us beyond our current capability. Growth mindset is or goal mindset is, essentially, we're knocking down targets and we're chasing that dopamine kick. We're never really growing into anyone that we want to. We're only solely focused on the goal, and that's what I mean growth versus goals. When we have a growth mindset, we may not achieve some of our short-term goals, but that's okay because we're iterating. We're becoming better every single time and that's what is most important. Remember, it's not about creating goals and accomplishing them.
Speaker 2:
The more profound point of casting a vision is identifying the person you choose to become, and purposeful, accountable leaders are intentional with their chosen pillars and they understand that goals are not the outcome but the process to achieve those results. And if you go to McMillianLeadershipCoachingcom and I probably should have said this at the beginning you can read this blog article that I have accompanied with this and to include, have said this at the beginning, you can read this blog article that I have accompanied with this and to include, listen to this podcast, and that way you don't have to take any notes. But there's a picture that I shared underneath in the article and it's a Glasgow Cathedral. It's one of the oldest cathedrals in the United Kingdom and my wife and I had the honor to kind of visit this beautiful place and when you're walking inside almost a thousand year old structure and you just see these pillars that have stood the test of time, that is what foundations are built upon, and I could not think of a better picture to kind of illustrate the point of validating your pillars. So the next one that we're going to be going into is I for.
Speaker 2:
Identify where you are After you selected your pillars. Identify where you are in those areas, understand where you are is essential in casting a long-term vision for your future. The hardest part is selecting the pillars that serve as the anchor points for our growth goals. Each area is not equal to each other, and this is extremely important and you need to understand and that will impact the goals that you set. So I've developed a tool that I call the will of leadership and I use it in my coaching, and essentially what it is is. It's a tool that gauges where you are within those pillars. For example, applying three basic questions that can universally be pulled to any pillar that you chose, which really applies the Likert scale, and here's some example questions that you could potentially see how would it feel if I failed to meet my 10-year goals in the area of family? I would then rate my response on a scale from 1 being not that bad to 10 being absolutely the worst. And then, by calling out your pillars with powerful questions, you begin to see which areas are most important to you, and I'll tell you right now family is the most important area to me.
Speaker 2:
Discovering your pillars are weighted different is critical in setting those goals, and we talked about that before. That goals are not important, but this is An area that you're not emotionally drawn to should not have very challenging goals. They should be more reasonable goals. However, if you are developing a growth plan for the most critical areas in your life, your goals must inspire, scare and demand action. To illustrate this point, I provided the will of leadership on my coaching website, mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom, and if you want a free copy of this, you can just shoot me an email at mcmillianleadershipcoaching at gmailcom and I'll send it over to you Absolutely no strings attached, because everything that I do, I do it to genuinely make this world better, and I'm sharing everything that I've discovered on my leadership journey. Purposeful, accountable leaders own their areas and create a growth plan matching their emotional connections.
Speaker 2:
So the next one on our acronym vision is S for strength statement, and I shared a picture from my platoon that I led in southern Afghanistan in 2012. And this picture really validated one of my strength statements that I've developed throughout my life, and it's every day is a gift, and I'm going to say this again in just a second. I'm not going to waste mine, but that picture always brings me back to that moment going to waste mine, but that picture always brings me back to that moment, those nine months that I spent in afghanistan and some of the men and women that I had the absolute honor and privilege to serve with and that I still talk to to this day. That affords me into the leader that I am now part of. Casting a vision is creating alignment in your life, creating a burning desire to find ways to achieve your goals, regardless of the obstacle.
Speaker 2:
A strength statement is just that. It is the fuel source or energy depot for when times get tough. As my friend and vocal coach, liz Howard and if you haven't heard that episode, make sure you go back, because she just gets me fired up every time I talk to her. She has this level of just enthusiasm and charisma that is inspiring and I love, love having conversations with her because she really pushes me outside of my comfort zone and I like surrounding myself with people like that. But she is an amazing person. She is a purposeful, accountable leader. Make sure you go. Listen to that episode. But she said once you find the right note in life, anything is possible. A strength statement is your unique note, only found by deep reflection. It serves as an affirmation in impossible times where moving forward seems unimaginable.
Speaker 2:
I've developed my strength statement that I've just talked about before through some of the past experiences. What are some of the most memorable, tragic, triumphant moments in your life? How did you feel during those timeframes? What pushes you to move forward every single day? And again, I discovered my mantra in Afghanistan and a combination of going through all these different types of schools, some struggles personally with my family and mine was every day is a gift. I refuse to waste any moment that I have on this earth, any moment that I have on this earth. Eventually, I built what my strength statement is now that every day is a gift. I'm not going to waste mine. So here's the question what is your strength statement? Purposeful, accountable leaders develop a powerful strength statement that shines light in the darkest of times.
Speaker 2:
So we're working through the acronym vision. The next one is illustrate 10, five and a one year growth plan. So the fourth step in casting a vision is engaging your head, heart and getting alignment with the hands. So you actually go do the work, you see where you want to go and you find intrinsic motivation to go do that Now, getting the hands enlisted into the fight, and it's time to put pen to paper. I believe casting a vision is best by looking 10 years out. And again, if you read Vivid Vision, they will agree with me why. It's because I think life consistently changes and we all have seasons Thinking too far. Forward defeats the purpose of creating a long-term vision unless it's for an organization. Forward defeats the purpose of creating a long-term vision unless it's for an organization, and then that is okay because you can have long arching goals. But I think I would argue that 10 years can easily be focused on in life as well as organizationally. Beyond that timeframe, I believe mental fogs will take place over time and the purpose of the 10 years is to create a realistic growth plan that allows you to move forward. So start at 10 and work your way back to five and finally one year, list the areas you've chosen to grow in and create three to five goals per pillar Team.
Speaker 2:
Let's take a quick break from this episode and I want to share an additional leadership resource with you, and that is one-on-one leadership coaching through McMillian Leadership Coaching. So what do I do? I help leaders discover their purpose, create a long-term growth plan and take inspired action. I believe everything rises and falls on leadership and, regardless of where you are in life, one fact is true you are a leader of others, you are a leader of your family and, most importantly, you are a leader of yourself. To lead others well, that starts by leading yourself well. If you want to learn more, you can go to mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom and schedule a free call today. Back to the episode.
Speaker 2:
I recommend not surpassing the five goal mark, because your attention will shift from a growth to a goal mindset. Remember we're trying to set growth goals that stretch us outside of our capacity. To ensure you're creating powerful growth plans, use the acronym SMARTS. So I add an S to this, and you probably heard this framework before. It's very popular in systems engineering and the engineering trade. By just broad definition. It's specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-based. And then I add the S is share it, because if you don't share it with someone, no one's going to hold you accountable, and I don't care who you are, even me you're going to have times where you just say, hey, I need a middle break and, to be honest, one of those times is really where I'm at in my life right now, but I have people in my life that keep me accountable.
Speaker 2:
Each goal must check the block, allowing your next five and one year plans to become traceable goals to the leader that you want to be. At that 10 year mark, as you're developing your growth plan, ensure that you're sharing it Again, we just talked about that. If you're married or have a significant other plan, it with them. I've learned that a vision is useless unless you have a partner that is willing to grow intentionally with you. At a minimum, they can be an accountability tree and we've talked about this before and if you haven't heard some of the previous episodes of where I explain this and what accountability tree is but essentially it's someone who is deeply rooted that doesn't want to hear any of your nonsense. They're here to help you. They're here to be leaned on in times when it's tough and provide shade when the environment is too much, but at the end of the day, they're unwavering in their support to push you to be the best version possible.
Speaker 2:
Purposeful, accountable leaders. Develop a 10, five and one year growth plans, guiding them to become their best version and think of it like this 10 years is. That is who you want to be and we're going to talk about this in the next step of this is where I want to be in life. Against all these different pillars, five years are traceable anchor points or TRPs target reference points along that vision, and the one year is the action plan. This is your 365 day action plan to get you towards your 10 year vision. It's all tiny steps. Think of it like this If you want to shove an orange which is your one big goal into a Mason jar, you're not going to be able to get that in there.
Speaker 2:
Or if you do, it's definitely not going to be an orange anymore. It's probably going to be orange juice and just tattered pieces of oranges to get in there. It's probably going to be orange juice and just tattered pieces of oranges to get in there. It's definitely going to break. But if you had equal weight in Skittles, I prefer Skittles over M&Ms because they just taste better. Let's be real with each other. That is also my weakness Skittles. I love Skittles and equal weight.
Speaker 2:
Each one is an individual step. Eventually you will hit your target goal, which is that weight in oranges. But it's taken you 40, 50, 60, maybe a hundred Skittles, who knows. Sometimes I eat a hundred Skittles in the setting, but that is the point. Individual steps it's not just about going out and making that 10-year vision happen immediately. It's going to take time. It's going to take tons of individual steps to get you towards that. So that takes us to our next one for O in vision. That's own your story.
Speaker 2:
After you develop that 10, 5, 1-year growth plan, it's time to bring them to life. In systems engineering, there is a term called a use case, and use cases show how users will interact and use a system being developed. They help visualize how the system is intended to identify unseen areas. Each use case is tied to a requirement and it is traceable back to the user. So you see where I'm going here.
Speaker 2:
When casting your vision, the goal is to create use cases centered around your pillars. For example, how will you grow financially at the end of that 10 year mark? For me, I want to be a millionaire, not for selfish reasons, because I want to have freedom. I want to live where I want to live. I want to be able to spend time with my family. I want to be able to travel and go see my daughter, who's going to be in college. Those are tools that I need to feed into my 10-year freedom goal To use these types of use cases. You must incorporate your goals but, more importantly, bring them to life. You need to create that emotional intrinsic motivation. It's going to get you out of bed and do these things, especially when you don't want to do them. Each pillar must describe your future so vividly that you can see it, you can feel it and you can taste it. Creating use cases for your pillars allows you to develop that intrinsic motivation. How will you feel in 10 years if you're successful? I guarantee you you will thank yourself for all those countless hours and individual steps that have helped you get to where you are. What will it mean if you fail when you're completing your use case? If you fail when you're completing your use case, you can start to see the leader that you intentionally want to grow in, and the purposeful, accountable leaders develop narratives for their future that inspire them to act.
Speaker 2:
And I shared a picture of me when I was in Scotland. It was the same trip with the Glasgow Cathedral, but this is me wearing a kilt. And if you ever watch the series Outlander, this was oh man, I'm going to skip the name, it's the McKenzie's Lollybrook. There we go, I think Lollybrook. I was in that castle and I got to wear a kilt. This was a bucket list item for me. For sure of being able to wear a kilt. I want to go back and redo it because I wore pants under the kilt. I want to be super authentic because I am. My family comes from Scotland and, a fun fact, back behind me, I actually have my family crest that I'm going to be getting framed, and we have a castle on the Western side of Scotland. So I think I'm just going to go claim that for my birthright, because why not? Right? But I was sharing the picture, for the standpoint is that that was something that I intentionally wanted to do when I started this 10 year vision for my life, and not only was I able to achieve it, I was also to bring my wife with me so we could share it together. And that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:
If you're intentional, you know where you want to go. The road may be bumpy, it may not be the exact path that you thought it would be, but you're still going to get to that desired end state. So here's the final one Envision, navigate your battle, rhythm. The final step in casting a vision comes down to one word and that's consistency. Will you stay routine, accountable and disciplined RAD remember RAD, another acronym within an acronym of routine, accountable and disciplined leader on your journey To stay the course, you have to develop a battle rhythm, given direction weekly, to make sure you're actually taking action.
Speaker 2:
Start off by setting your daily top three goals. What three goals will you accomplish today and why are they important to you? Second, develop a weekly battle rhythm, a plan of attack, with no more than seven goals Out of those seven. What is the one big thing that you have to get done this week? And that one growth goal, if achieved, you still are successful. Having family appointments, birthdays, work events or self-growth goals is okay. And again, remember these are intentional growth goals to help you in that year plan, to help you on the five-year plan, to help you on the 10-year plan. These are not just normal, routine things. I need to go to the grocery store today. I need to set up a doctor's appointment today. These are things that are going to push and stretch you to the individual leader that you want to be. Each week is different because life gets a vote and that is a hundred percent okay.
Speaker 2:
Your goal is to develop a plan that intentionally forces you forward. Now, I always love this metaphor of the American patch American flag on service members and why the stars is always facing forward, because the wind is blowing to the front and we never surrender, we never retreat. We're always moving forward. When we act without a plan, it only causes an energy loss and we end up in the same spot. Finally, I recommend developing a quarterly plan focused only on significant life events, for example, family date nights, significant travel, or one year targets of where you intentionally have planned for. So, for example, this year we want to go to Great Wolf Lodge.
Speaker 2:
When we get to a next quarter cycle, meaning every three months, we will look at the calendar and we'll try to figure out when we can fit that into our life, because life gets a vote. I'm getting ready to start another job, which I've only been working in the job that I'm in right now for eight months. Welcome to the Army, and that's okay, because we practice what we preach of being resilient and trying to adapt to the ever changing situation, and I'm going to go in there with the same principles and lessons that I've learned throughout my military career and I'm going to make it the best possible team that I can. For instance, under one of my faith pillars and this is another one my one year goal was to attend a marriage retreat and we're trying to do that in August, but maybe I can't do that with the job that I'm getting ready to take. But the point is we need to plan out our yearly events and three month chunks to help deconflict life's competing goals.
Speaker 2:
If you're playing significant events in the present, you will find an a hundred percent cause. I used to do this. Excuses to not do them. My wife and I would always talk about doing these amazing things going back home taking the kids trout fishing. Going back home taking my daughter hunting and I love hunting.
Speaker 2:
I grew up in rural West Virginia. It's a part of who I am. My family is poverty stricken Virginia. It's a part of who I am. My family is poverty stricken, meaning that we didn't really have food to get and, by the way, where we live there's only one grocery store and it's almost 30 miles away. I grew up in the holler, if you're familiar with that term, but that is who I am. Born and bred. Appalachian, raised on bluegrass music, and my grandmother, my grandfather both my grandfathers, my dad can play a banjo and an acoustic guitar a mandolin like no one else. That gene has skipped me, but it's picked back up with my daughter because she's starting to play the violin. But that's the point. I want to be able to share those types of experiences with my family. All right, team.
Speaker 2:
So here's some final thoughts as we wrap up this episode. What makes highly successful people able to advance forward consistently? It's not luck, it is a plan. They understand the importance of casting a long-term vision. If you want to stay consistent, it's on you and no one else. Day in and day out, action is required to close the distance and become the person you intentionally choose to become. The moment you give excuses a voice and stop planning your day, others will fill that void. Time is precious and I place it on high because I have so many different competing events that try to take away my time. Take your time and use this vision framework to cast a vision for your future. If you want, you can set up a free coaching call with me and then I could potentially be your accountability partner to take the next steps on this journey for you, and I will work with you to create a custom growth plan or a plan of attack.
Speaker 2:
So here is our after action review, the top three questions that I want you to spend some time reflecting on. The first question is what would your areas in life be? Number two where are you in those areas currently and are you happy with the answers? And number three what would it mean to have a 10-year vision to work towards? All right team. Do me a favor, make sure you share this podcast, make sure you rate this podcast. Go, follow me on social media and, as always, you can go to mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom. You can find the leadership tab and you can find this blog article and the podcast with an additional article, all free of charge, because I want to provide you with as much powerful leadership content possible to go out into this world and be the best leader, best version of yourself possible. As always, I'm your host, josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.