Your Vision: What to do when your team doesn’t get it.
Why even the best teams can miss the point—and how to turn confusion into clarity.
What happens when your brilliant vision is something only you can see?
The most powerful brands are often born from a leader's unique and compelling Vision—a spark of insight that illuminates the path forward.
But what happens when that brilliant clarity is something only you can see?
How do you translate your deeply personal Vision into a shared understanding that ignites action across your organization?
The challenge for any CEO, Founder, or Entrepreneur isn't just having the big ideas, it's making them resonate with your team, your peers, and your entire company. Everyone needs to understand the Vision to bring it to life.
You can share articles, send emails, and have endless one on one’s. You host team video calls and annual meetings, and STILL feel like no one else really, truly “gets it.” Why?
How to onboard your team to your intuitive vision.
Because all the experiences, A-HA moments, right turns, and wrong turns that led you to your big idea are yours… and yours alone.
Your Vision is an intuitive, learned, internal framework that’s been developed through experience.
Which is why a Vision can be so hard to explain and even harder to understand.
“Your Vision is an intuitive, learned, internal framework that’s been developed through experience.”
A Visionary whose team doesn’t “get it” is in for a frustrating ride as people spin their wheels. Teams will struggle to innovate, important projects may never make it off the ground, new initiatives fall flat, time is wasted on work that doesn’t make sense.
All of this happens not because of the quality of the work or the quality of the team, but because of the team’s quality of understanding.
Quality of understanding signals the depth, accuracy, and strength of an individual's grasp of an idea, and it can be low or high.
A high quality of understanding goes beyond familiarity or the ability to recall facts. It’s a genuine and meaningful internalization of knowledge that enables insightful application and critical thinking.
When CEOs, Founders & Entrepreneurs increase their team’s quality of understanding, they increase the team’s capability to bring the Vision to life because teams understand it deeply.
I have a mentor who used to say, “There are three ways to learn about something: You can hear about it, you can read about it, or you can experience it. And the three are not the same.”
So, you can ask your team to read about your Vision for the brand by sending articles and emails. You can ask your team to listen to you talk about it in meetings.
But the challenging truth is that people can read and listen, and still never really “get it.” Reading about and hearing about a vision aren’t enough. A vision is too complex and too intangible.
If you want your team to see the Vision, feel it, and know it as deeply as you do, then you need to give your team opportunities to experience it. They need to live it so they can learn it …just like you did.
3 Ways to invite your team into the experience of your vision…
1 Tell stories with emotion:
Vision, at its heart, is a story about the future. Leaders can help their team experience it by switching out of directive mode and into story telling.
Describe your Vision in action by sharing stories of early successes, A-HA moments, customer wins (even small ones), or moments where the core principles of the Vision were exemplified.
Make these stories personal and emotionally engaging—share the heartbreak and the triumphs. Stories trigger emotions and empathy that allows your team to see things, and more importantly, feel things from your point of view.
2 Use Vision as a problem-solving tool:
Learning happens through doing and reflecting. Leaders can help their team experience the Vision by using it as a problem-solving tool.
In the problem-solving process, ask questions that require teams to apply the Vision using critical thinking skills:
If we use this problem as an opportunity to live out our Vision, what does success look like?
How would it feel if the solution conflicted with our Vision?
Where is our Vision missing from this equation?
The purpose of Vision-driven problem solving is to teach teams how to think like their leader. By putting the team in the driver’s seat, they get to imagine solutions through your eyes, and you get to give them coaching to shape their understanding.
3 Recognize it when you see it in others: Keep your eyes peeled for sparks of your Vision reflected in your team's actions and ideas.
When you see a colleague take initiative in a way that aligns with the future you're painting, or when they articulate a solution that echoes the core tenets of your Vision, acknowledge it publicly and specifically.
Highlighting these moments not only reinforces the desired behaviors but also demonstrates to the entire team that the Vision is not just an abstract concept, but a tangible force already at play within the organization.
Recognizing and celebrating these ‘Vision in action' moments can be incredibly powerful in fostering collective understanding and commitment because everyone pauses to reflect on the lived experience of the Vision.
Now you know:
Your Vision is an intuitive, learned, internal framework that’s been developed through experience.
When CEOs, Founders & Entrepreneurs increase their team’s quality of understanding, they increase the team’s capability to bring the Vision to life because teams understand it deeply.
There are 3 ways to invite your team into the experience of your vision: tell stories with emotion, use vision as a problem solving tool, recognize it when you see it in others.
