How To Ask Questions That Fill In The Details of Your Vision
I love that God made us able to see in 3-D. Imagine how difficult life would be if we saw everything the way we do in a one-dimensional drawing or picture!
That’s what I want to discuss today, as we unpack more of what we’re learning. Our mastermind groups are studying a book by Michael Hyatt called “The Vision Driven Leader.” This book is loaded with everything you need to paint a clear picture of how you want your life and business to look in three to five years’ time. As a business coach, I can’t think of a more important core practice for entrepreneurs than crafting vision.
The timing to study this book is perfect, because in our online mastermind groups, we’re also doing an exercise called “Come As You Will Be In 2023.” This is a long-range effort to get our members to envision their lives three years from now. I’ll say this much: I have never seen such a spirited response from our members about anything we’ve ever done! These men and women are on fire!
But let’s also be honest: there are always obstacles, hangups, mental blocks and personality-clashes with what we’re trying to do. I thought it would be good to cover a few of them in these, especially if any of them apply to you. We’ve got members who are my age or older getting excited about this, but because they’ve never done it, it’s virgin territory.
So there’s always a learning curve, and even on my team in our mastermind business, we’re learning as we go. It’s an exciting time to be part of a group of like-minded entrepreneurs, walking through this exercise together.
If you’d like to be part of this shared, authentic and transparent mission, I encourage you to head over to apply to join one of our mastermind groups online for men or women.
Why You Can’t See Trees For The Forest
Michael encourages us to break down our vision into four categories - team, products, sales & marketing, and impact. In the interview he gave a few weeks ago, he reminded us that if we have any kind of big financial goal for the growth of our business, it will most likely come to pass through the hard work and shared commitment of our teams. Some of our members wrote in to say they struggled with this area.
Now, there are simple ways to cast vision for your team - everybody’s happy, doing well, working hard and finding satisfaction in their work. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing things like the DISC assessment, it’s that the people on your team might “hear” something very different from what you intend when you share that with them.
For instance, if you say, “Everybody’s happy and doing well,” you might have a team member who wonders how her employer will behave if she announces she’s pregnant and will have to take maternity leave. If you haven’t been clear about how your benefits package looks, you leave the answer to that question blank. If it’s blank, somebody is going to fill it in … and it’ll probably be your team member’s imagination.
I was so relieved to learn there are questions you can ask yourself, as you paint the picture, that address those areas. There’s a framework to make this connect with your team members, so that they’re neither confused nor disappointed by the direction you want to go. I want you to be able to walk through an entire process of creating a vision, and overcome areas where you don’t instinctively know what questions to ask, to lead to the right answers.
We are in full-throttle mode for the next three years with “Come As You Will Be In 2023” in our business masterminds for men and women. Click here if you’d like to apply to join us.
How To Ask Questions That Fill In The Details Of Your Vision
When I provide business coaching services for select clients, one thing they get used to very quickly is that I’m a bulldog with questions. I pepper them, demanding to know a clean and simple answer for everything. My friend Bret Barnhart could tell you all about this, as one of my original coaching clients.
But it’s not enough to ask questions like “How’s the weather?” or “Whatcha been up to lately?” It’s knowing the right questions to ask that gets people’s wheels turning. So as you think about those categories Michael Hyatt mentioned - team, product, sales & marketing and impact - you’re going to need to know the right questions to ask.
Here are some of the questions Michael provided, that really greased the skids for some of our members as their visions evolved.
- How does your organization cultivate a winning culture?
- What makes people beg to join your company?
- What do you do to attract top talent?
- How do your customers feel when they use your products?
- How do you choose what to create and offer?
- What does your production-creation process look like?
- How much does it cost you to acquire new customers?
- How do you see your sales, marketing and customer experience teams operating?
- What financial thresholds excite you as a leader?
- What’s your rate of employee satisfaction/turnover?
- What are you, the leader, free to do with your time and role?
Do you see how much clearer you could get, from this sample list of questions? Do you understand how much more inspiring and compelling of a leader you could be, if you could share your answers with your team and other stakeholders?
I’ve never been so fired up for the members of Iron Sharpens Iron as I am today, and I want the same for you. If you want to see how far down the rabbit hole this goes, I encourage you to click here and apply to join one of our mastermind groups.
