Lead With Your Vision, See With Your Heart

Having a strong vision for your passion or goals can be a powerful leadership tool. Your vision inspires and motivates others and helps to accomplish great things. Likewise a brand vision paints a succinct and competitive picture of why the brand exists. It helps illustrate how they see the future as a result of their influence on it, helping them raise money, attract talent and kick-start momentum. Brands are like people, and without purpose they can drift aimlessly.

Len Forkas, athlete and founder of Hopecam shares how tunnel vision has helped him reach his goals and offers advice to use this focused vision to stay focused and achieve his mission.

When what lies in front of you is an uphill road, take a cue from ultra-endurance athlete Len Forkas. Len learned to filter out the negatives when his body is pushed to its absolute limits. In an interview with the Wisdom Capture team, he recalls a recent struggle: “I raced a bicycle 3,000 miles across the United States in 11 days. I went over 180,000 vertical feet in hill. Across the Rockies, across the Ozarks, and across the Appalachian Mountains.”

Len describes: “They were times when I was going up a hugely steep hill. Five miles going uphill, and there were times when I just didn’t look up. I just looked down, and I just kept pedaling the bicycle. And I realized that oftentimes there are moments when you have to filter out all the negatives, which was the fact that that hill seemed endless. You look down, and you stay focused, stay in the moment, and keep pushing pedals.”

When you stay focused and stay dedicated to your (tunnel) vision, a wonderful thing happens.
“Sure enough, eventually, my most favorite sign of all the street signs is a picture of a truck on a big black wedge of cheese, because that means my hill is done. I’ve got a downhill coming. I think the lesson taught in that is sometimes you have to just look down, hunker down, and just keep moving.”

If your vision isn’t clear, and if your team isn’t talking about the impact your brand is trying to make in the world, then it’s time to revisit it. The vision should be a clear statement that paints a picture of how you want to see the world changed based on your brand’s role in it. The vision should be big and bold. It should be a stretch, thought-provoking and inspiring. People need a paycheck and a career path, but they also want to be a part of something bigger––have a clear vision and you will bring clarity to your brand.

Read more from Wisdom Capture and explore their leadership videos.