Let's move on to the first of the Visionary-specific tools in your Exceptional Visionary Leader toolkit.
And it's one I call the Pause, and it's just simply that - it's pausing. Think of it this way. You have to wait before evangelizing your most recent squirrel. Why?
Because people become so used to you having great idea after great idea, after great idea. They start to think, oh, well here's just the next one coming along. As I've said before, they'll get used to Monday morning, whenever you're back from being on vacation or having been to a conference, they're just going to learn to virtually put some earbuds in and just yada yada yada ya and let it go on until they hope it washes past them.
Whereas if you simply come and say, I think I've got something that's going to really help what we're doing. But I'm going to spend a little bit of time on it and we'll talk about it at our next one-on-one or our next weekly management meeting or whatever it may be. And you come with something that's more constructed, more thought through, you're going to see much, much higher levels of buy-in than it being just another big rock you drop in the pond.
Now, this is hard. This is a tough thing to do because of the passion that you have. This is a learned habit. When I'm coaching Visionary leaders, it's something we work on for six months or so, just building the muscle of executing the pause.
So it doesn't mean to be something that you're doing all the time, but I've already hinted. You said on Mondays, your weekend ideas may be great. Talk about them on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, when you come back from a vacation, when you come back from events.
Just take a little time. Don't come and throw a rock or even worse rocks into the first Monday morning meeting as soon as you're back all excited and energized. That may - that will scratch your Visionary itch. There's no doubt about it, but it won't help in getting the rest of the team on your side. And here's a couple of things to think about to really supercharge the pause.
One is, instead of just verbalizing - as visionaries, we verbalize a lot. We talk to think - write stuff down. It will force you to think things through and you'll see some of the more extreme likely aspects of what it is that you think you've seen when you write it down.
Take a little bit of time, get something to present to people, or even that's just going to be talking points. Now I'm not talking about going into full Processor 45-screen PowerPoint displays. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about disciplining yourself to pause a little, the more important the idea, the more important to pause, think it through, get a little structure under it.
Write instead of speaking, and then speak to groups rather than individuals. This is one of the weaknesses we have as visionaries. We tend to jump on - I'm exaggerating here, but the first person who's unfortunate enough to be in our line of eyesight and you know, we projectile vomit this fantastic new thing that is going to change the whole world.
And over time they get used to just nodding away. I'm waiting to see will this stick. Whereas if you wait and either call a meeting specifically after a little bit of a pause - only needs to be a couple of days - and sit with a group of people.
Produce the paper that got two paragraphs on it. Just highlight notes. There's much, much more implicit immediate buy-in. Now as visionaries, you're going to react. I understand it.
I get it. I coach this all the time and I see it, feel it, respond it, have to work with it, but that's just going to constrain me. That's not who I am. I'm there to be the catalyst. I'm there to be the change maker.
That's correct, and that's what I want you to do. But I want the arc, and this is where those of you who are following along in the visual learning stuff, will see me do this. If you're just listening to the audio, you won't see me do it. I want your arc to look like - not like this, not a catalyst arc with ever diminishing returns as people learn to sandbag what you're throwing at them, but rather an arc like this, a J curve.
Where you're making more impact and more impact and more impact as time goes along. And you know what, that comes over time from discipline, from you learning not to turn into a Processor, not to make this a whole exercise in ready, aim, ready, aim, ready, aim, fire. It just is an exercise in putting ready in somewhere, not just coming back on a Monday with aim, fire, aim, fire, instead coming back.
Take a little bit of time. Maybe it's a morning, maybe it's a day, maybe at the most, it's a week. And put a ready in there. Ready, aim, fire. And you know what?
One other thing that this will do, it will test your actual real commitment to this new idea that you have. Think about it being the same sort of synopses happen with late time impulse buying. Going on to Amazon, got to have this thing, just buy it. You wait till the next morning, maybe you didn't have to buy it. So the pause is a hugely important tool in the Exceptional Visionary Leaders toolkit, and it's even more powerful if you accompany it with blinkers.