Leaders must set the Vision!

  1. Home
  2. /
  3. Business
  4. /
  5. Leaders must set the Vision!
Leaders Managers Coaches

Leaders must set the Vision, and then never lose sight of it in everything they do!

The vision is Everest

It is my view that leaders, managers and coaches need to ‘take people where they have never been before’ as Henry Kissinger was once quoted as saying.

The role of a coach is to challenge individuals and teams with possibilities and take them outside their comfort zones into the realms of uncertainty. In experiencing these situations we learn more about ourselves and grow as people.

This is how a baby learns to crawl, and then walk. This is how we first learn to ride a bike. It is how we move through our education. And it is how we make it through to day two of our first job.

Achieve Milestones

In order to achieve milestones such as these, we are prepared to move outside the safe and comfortable ‘world we know’ into a world that is unknown. We usually fall down a few times, but if we get up one more time than we fall, we have learnt something new. If we don’t, we won’t gain that extra learning, but do discover something valuable about ourselves.

Like parenting, coaching is about creating a vision and providing a safe environment that allows individuals to fall down a number of times during their learning, their growth and their development, as they journey towards becoming a whole person.

Before I was appointed coach of the Australian Cricket Team in October 1999, I was always struck by the huge potential of the team and the players in it. I also believed the team was only scratching the surface of its potential.

From the first Meeting

So, in my first meeting with the players in Brisbane before the First Test against Pakistan, I talked about a vision I saw for the team. The vision was about taking a journey together to a symbolic place called Everest. However, Everest is never reached because it is constantly being redefined. What we set out to achieve was a higher base camp than we had reached before.

For the first meeting I wanted to give the vision some substance. I also wanted to link history with the present, so I used the word ‘invincibles’. This was the name given to the Australian cricket team captained by Sir Donald Bradman in 1948. The team journeyed to England, won the Ashes, and left the country undefeated in all their games – a feat never repeated.

The vision was not that the current team be regarded as invincible, or even compared with that 1948 team. The vision for this team was to aspire to being better than it already was, and it had that capacity. Time and history will ultimately label this team and its era; however, the players had the collective abilities to take this team from being regarded as very good to one that could be referred to as great!

Please message us your thoughts and comments!

Lead for World Class Performance— Join our Free Mini Course!

Share This Post:

Get The First Chapter Of Our eBook For FREE!

Short description of the resource and explanation why it might be useful for one’s choice.

Related Posts

Art Skill Mindfulness

Leadership and the art or skill of Mindfulness


There have been plenty of articles written on this topic such as the one included by HBR – ARTICLE LINK The article discusses some of the work of Daniel Goleman, one of the great proponents of EI. The article also discusses the range of techniques to allow people especially busy…
Read Full Article
Art Skill Mindfulness

Having those tough conversations


As Leaders, managers, coaches – we are all faced with those difficult conversations…………the tough ones that neither the person giving, or the person receiving likes. Dr Phil Jauncey is a performance psychologist, and a good friend. I have had him involved in a number of different projects with which I have…
Read Full Article
Great Deal Patience

Leaders, visionaries … a common vision


Spend time influencing the team visionaries to accept a common vision that then becomes part of everything done. This influencing process will take many guises and requires a great deal of patience. It will not always be direct and quick. It will require placing notes under the door, circulating information,…
Read Full Article

PROVEN TEACHING METHODS

Here’s The Three Ways You Can Work
With Us To Achieve Better, Lasting Results.

A coach and a leader with a unique perspective on the world, John is at home in any environment which seeks change, a desire for peak performance, and a vision to be the world’s best.

Speaking

Speaking

Are you planning to reach your Everest…be at the top of your game like a world champion team? Master Coach and Strategist John Buchanan will give you the road map, the tools and the inspiration you need to reach your summit.

Coaching

Coaching

This world champion coaching model will provide you, your team and your business with a road map to the top and the sacrificial acts that world champion teams embrace to give the best chance of having a “PB day”, every day at work.

Online Programs

Online Programs

I will be building relevant, insightful, practical courses and modules which will help you as a Leader and/or Coach to quickly make changes to the way you lead your teams, and indeed, the teams you want to create.