High performance teams are filled with visionary individuals. Notice I did NOT say that high performance teams are led by a visionary leader. They are led by both.
Normal individuals, teams, and leaders wait for the one in charge to craft the vision and then get busy doing what they’re told. This team underperforms and wears out quickly. Plus, nobody is that smart. Remember, nobody is as smart as everybody.
Do great individuals end up compromising their vision to create a “shared” vision with and for their team?
Nope.
Strong individuals experience vision collision as the individuals on a team “figure out” how to work together. Here’s what I mean. As you clarify your vision and begin to align it with the visions of others, there will be some natural collisions. There will be some overlap. Over time these will get sorted out as you and those around get additional “clarity” to who does what. Visions that collide usually are headed in the same direction, they just need to get focused a bit.
There will also be vision divisions on most high performance teams. This occurs when individuals get clarity of their collective visions and realize that they are headed in different directions. One wants to stay small while the other is bent on opening markets overseas. One wants to refine the product offering while another wants to diversify. These visions usually result in division. Usually someone leaves the team. This is rarely a bad thing. This is usually a natural thing.
Vision precision is the result of high performance individuals gaining clarity on where we’re going and who is doing what. This does NOT happen overnight. Vision precision takes time. Trust must be built before the big dreamers on your team feel it’s safe to come clean. Until deep trust exists most team members will simply marry their vision to the one held by the positional leader. Or, simply go through the motions.
A number of individuals with vision precision produces a team that is building alignment. This alignment produces a number of people that are more engaged in their work. This produces a team with more energy. This team begins to work together at unprecedented levels. Very cool.
Do NOT fear the collisions. Do NOT fear the divisions. Fall in love with gaining clarity. Fall in love with creating a team with alignment, engagement, and energy. Vision precision is the result. This team knows exactly where they are going, how they’re going to get there, who’s responsible for what, and how to keep score. Precision is where performance lives. Precision is the one you want.
This will require REAL, HARD, WORK. And, lots of deliberate practice.
Do you see it?
BUILT TO LEAD 
Chet:
Great insights.
I remember being in a training class where the exercise was a scenario in which a plane carrying ten people went down in the Mojave Desert due to engine failure. No crash, and no injuries, but they were stuck in a desert well away from civilization or a road. The mission was to pick from a list of about thirty items ten that were the most important to their survival and rescue.
The problem was tackled by teams of about 5 individuals. The first pass was for each individual to select, without discussion, the 10 items each thought was most important. Then the five individuals would come together and create a consensus of which 10 items were the most important.
An interesting and repeatable dynamic developed. If there was an actual expert on the team, chances are that the group decision would be worse than the expert’s. In most cases, the urge to compromise to a solution became more important than getting the right answer.
For that not to happen – for the best answer to be accepted by the group – someone who was trusted needed to champion the ideas of the expert. It might be the expert himself, but sometimes the champion needs to be someone else – maybe the group’s leader, or perhaps some trusted other with sufficient standing in the group.
Leadership is a tricky art – sometimes leaders have to be autocratic, and sometimes they need to completely surrender the decision to their team. Usually the right decision style is somewhere in the middle (re Vroom -Yetton-Jago).
You’re right – it all hinges on trust and respect.