On Friday, May 6, for the third year in a row I attended "Leadercast", a one-day intensive leadership forum consisting of a series of excellent speakers with exceptionally great ideas.
Each year Leadercast has a theme - this year: "Architects of Tomorrow". It makes sense - probably the most important responsibility of a leader and the our most exciting opportunity is leading into the future. We are the architects of our future and need to decide and articulate that future.
Anyone building anything worthwhile for tomorrow needs to be able to describe that future in a clear way and even more important - a compelling way - in order for the team to be able to follow with passionate commitment to that future.
I am grateful to already have an effective method to position our clients for that leadership in their own families. It's already built into our approach. Our initial client interview includes a process that allows a creation of a vision designed by the client. It's their vision - we just have an effective method way to document it.
In fact, this is the first part of the discovery meeting in which we document our clients' values and specific financial goals into writing. In the context of our Discovery meeting, values are the "ideals" that are more important than money. The idea is that if you get your money working for you - you have a real written plan that is being implemented - it removes at least some of the worry and allows you to move beyond money and focus on the much more important areas of your life. Those are usually health-related - not just physical health but spiritual health and relationship health.
One of my favorite parts of the meeting is when each financial goal is created. After the goal has been named, a date attached and a dollar amount, I ask the couple or individual, "Imagine you're there, it's [date of goal] and you have done the work and planning to achieve [name of goal], what are you thinking and feeling now that you're there?"
It's fun, fascinating and an honor to witness individuals dream about a future moment of achievement in their lives!
It's also fun at the end of the meeting. I hear comments like, "Why have we never done this before?" or "I wish we had done that years ago!" or "Wow, that was very cool!" or "I really enjoyed that."
I think we all have to admit that we need this kind of inspiring visioning to increase the chances of success of any long term endeavor.