“Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.” ~ Vaclav Havel

Moving yourself and others to action is at the core of influential leadership.

In ImpactBank’s Kickass Koach podcast Episode 18:  Moving Your Conversations to Action, the story is about developing alignment.  Whether you are in conversation with an individual on your team or the team as a whole, when you focus on developing alignment great things happen.

While a powerful flow in conversation doesn’t start here, when you’ve earned the right to move to action, the place to start is alignment.  If you have listened to my whole series on Conversation or read the blog posts you will remember I emphasize the importance of:

  1. Developing a positive intent as you open every meeting or conversation.  This is where your leadership presence is established and sets the tone for a constructive and meaningful conversation.
  2. Authentic acknowledgements of the strengths and abilities of the other person or people is important throughout and is useful early in the conversation to focus people on contributing their best in a solution orientation.
  3. Compassionate listening is essential, both so that everyone feels ownership AND to ensure no ideas or options are lost or unavailable to you or the team.
  4. Direct communication that invites candid conversation AND, as a leader, being ready, willing and able to reflect back to the group your vision as well as what you are hearing and seeing from the team.

When you have done all of these things–AND don’t forget the message about leading from the heart–you’re ready to move toward action.

Action starts with developing alignment.  Alignment between people, ideas, vision and approach ensures everyone is pulling in the same direction as you execute on the plan.

“Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.” ~ Vaclav Havel

In the podcast I outline how we moved a very diverse group into alignment as we prepared to take meaningful action.  We moved from conflict to conversation to action by….

  1. Adopting a Relationship-Focus. The workplace tends to be more results focused and yet interestingly more gets done well when leaders are relationship-focused.
  2. Requiring both Candor & Patience. We didn’t rush even with the pressure to resolve the problems all around us. We required each person, no matter their role in the company, education or age, to speak up. Often in an effort to just get things done people are marginalized or silenced.  When the leader values all voices and perspectives, those voices will be heard, and real growth and change become possible.
  3. We took the time to co-create our process, the final recommendations and the presentation to secure the funding to make our recommendations a reality. No matter their positional power, role or volume of their voice, everyone in this group was heard.  We made a choice to value inclusion. As the old adage says, people rarely destroy what they have had a hand in creating.  Our model for identifying, developing and articulating our recommendations was fully endorsed and owned by every member of the group which was VERY clear during the presentation.
  4. Clear definitions of success for each party represented rather than forcing the team to narrow it to just one definition.  Because we had a definition for each of the stakeholders, it became real and inclusive, allowing each member of the team to feel a personal stake in the outcome.  By hearing, understanding and aligning all the different definitions represented in our group, we built a plan that could translate to committed implementation.

People rarely destroy what they have had a hand in creating.

So you are now stepping up the stairs.  You are building lasting growth and change through alignment.

Now you want to employ solid goal setting and implementation strategies.  If you aren’t familiar with good goal setting principles you will want to research those.  There are many theories and models for goal setting.  Many still use the SMART approach, or variations, developed by Locke in the 60’s to develop and assess their goals.   If you aren’t familiar here’s a break down of the acronym: (and a link to a helpful visual image)

  1. Specific
  2. Measurable
  3. Attainable
  4. Realistic
  5. Timely

Did you know only 63% of individual and teams achieve the goals they set out for themselves.  Why is that?  I have some insights about it and we’ll explore NEXT TIME.

Hey before I let you go…. a big shout-out to Rob and Greg for my new theme music–I am so thrilled.  you have to check out my podcast Episode 18 to hear it. I have been dancing around listening to it all week and it never fails to  lift my spirits.  I would love to hear what you think.  You’ll hear more of it in the coming episodes….they have given me a lot to work with.

Join my mailing list.  Each month members on my mailing list will receive tips and tricks related to my podcast.

Have kickass conversations this week—focus on developing alignment.  You will be amazed what you can accomplish when you make alignment a priority.

Share your experiences here for others to also learn what they may do to make a difference in their conversations.  You can make your life and the lives of others better one conversation at a time.