An important aspect of a leader’s job is to enlist.

It’s not enough to travel a path toward the future alone. That’s not really leading. It may be exploring (and there’s nothing wrong with exploring), but leadership influences others to head the same direction. Together.

There are a couple of ways to do this.

You can use promises of money, benefits, promotions, vacations, and pink Cadillacs to motivate. That’s one way. And it works on some people for a while. MLM’s and corporate ladders are similar in this respect.

But that sort of influence gets wearisome over time. And it stops working.

Or, enlist to a vision.

Great leadership enlists to a vision that’s bigger than pink Cadillac promises. Real vision benefits more people than me. Vision isn’t about you reaching your dreams. Vision is about how the people around you can reach their dreams of making a difference in the world.

Vision answers these questions,

“Why does this matter?”
“How do we make a difference?”
“What is possible?”

When we ask and answer these kinds of questions, we touch on issues of culture that much larger than we thought.

What we’re doing matters.

Together we are making a difference.

The possibilities are even greater than previously imagined.

We influence people around us more than we know with this sort of thinking. They begin down the path. We explore together.

We enlist, while not necessarily being first in line.