[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
If you want to be a strong, effective leader, you have to have clarity of vision, and you have to have clarity of focus. Vision is far out focuses today, what am I doing each and every day to make that vision real? Hello, my friend, and welcome to this second installment of our multi-part series on one-on-one on these Friday episodes on Vision. We're talking about mastering your vision, which is an essential aspect of leadership. Leadership and vision go hand in hand. Leaders with vision can get so much further than leaders without vision. Why? Because vision implies an optimistic future state, someplace to go that is better than here.
[00:00:56]
And of course, that's what leadership is. Leadership takes you places. And so, think of your leadership as just that you're a leader on a ship, and there's a destination, and that destination is a place that you desire to reach and take others who share that purpose alongside of you. So you share, you communicate, you invest in getting there.
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And so we're walking through each week one different aspect of that last week. If you haven't heard that episode, go back. It was all about how you get to determine who is involved in creating this masterpiece of an irresistible offer of a life as you aim for greatness in serving others. So that's the goal.
[00:01:47]
That's the high call is when you wake up in the morning and you say, this is an irresistible day. This is an irresistible life. When I wake up in the morning or whatever time I wake up, I wanna wake up and say, man, I am ready to seize the day. There is so much for me to be excited about the unlimited possibilities, and it can drive you, it can motivate you, it can sustain you.
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And so where does that go? Well, today we're gonna talk about one extremely important aspect of that in terms of great leaders, leaders who have amazing vision. And in fact, I got my old tool book out here. This is my magnum opus. This is my dissertation that I have. If you're watching this on YouTube or social media, you'll see.
[00:02:39]
It's almost 500 pages, and it's all about vision. In fact, I wrote my dissertation on visionary leadership, how it forms and how it becomes actualized in entrepreneurial context. So I studied three entrepreneurs, Milton Hershey, Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs, from the life to death from the beginning to the end.
[00:03:00]
And it was pretty arduous. It was almost like archeology page by page, looking at interviews and writings and memoirs and everything that I could uncover about their vision formation and vision execution, and looking for patterns between these three historical figures in terms of how their vision developed, and guess what?
[00:03:23]
I found patterns. And so as I unpack those and distill those, I was able to put them into my dissertation. Now I get to share them with you, and in so doing, I wanna share one essential aspect of vision that if you haven't honed this in, it's time to do this today. I'm gonna walk through it. I'm gonna show you how.
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I'm gonna give you some examples. Because exceptional leaders, exceptional leaders, are based on outcomes. They think of where they want to go. As Stephen Covey once said, they begin with the end in mind. Because your desired end state, wherever it is that you want to land, that's where you must start. Now that can change.
[00:04:06]
Of course there are caveats, and there are twists and turns up the in the road, and that's fine. But you have to know where it is that I want to be. Because then your steps are ordered in that direction. Now I actually go even further than, you know, some people say, well, you know, in five-year plan, a 10 year plan, that's all great.
[00:04:29]
We do that in business a lot. When I do a lot of business consulting. We look out 10 years, and as Jim Collins called it, you know, look at your BHAG, which is your big, hairy, audacious goal. That's fine. Then you walk it backwards. But for you, I don't even start with business. When I'm coaching, and I'm in my coaching programs, teaching my leadership elite groups, I don't start with, Hey, where are we looking at 10 years from business?
[00:04:51]
Or where are we looking at five years with some kind of KPIs and things like that. Key performance indicators. I go all the way out, and it's not about business. It's about you. I go all the way out to the very end, the pinnacle of life. What does that mean? It means your life tribute. I, you know, some people call it your eulogy, say write your eulogy.
[00:05:14]
You write your life tribute out. I help my students extract it from their minds what that tribute looks like on paper to start with their journey. And so it's a pretty heavy start, isn't it? Think, okay, well I'm dead, and how do I want to be remembered? Because if we can start our path with how we want to be remembered, then that will guide and order our steps as we make decisions in the present today.
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Because that's our direction, that's our trajectory. If I don't have that clearly defined, if I don't have clarity and definition in that, then it's been said that you're like a ship without a rudder. You just go wherever. But if you have the clarity of purpose and direction and who you are to become, then that's power friend.
[00:06:18]
That is power. So you start there. You start with the memory of you and all of the aspects of you that are so incredibly important that are galvanized in the hearts and minds of those you've had an opportunity to touch, and that then becomes your blueprint for decision-making today. So I'll give you an example.
[00:06:45]
When I went through my vision process, I go through all these different areas of my vision process. I go through my wants, my needs, aspects of my spiritual life that are essential to my vision, my family, my friendships. What gratifies me personally, how I consider my life is in terms of charity, my health needs, what kind of hobbies, all these aspects, my travel things that I don't want to have to regret, my business life.
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But the most important starting place, the most important starting place is my life tribute or my eulogy. So I'm gonna read mine to you, and so I'm gonna show you that this tribute, how this tribute identifies my decisions in life. So here it goes. My own eulogy, this is what I wrote. Nate Salah lived to love. He believed that there were only two points of time that were guaranteed this very moment and all eternity, and he cherished each present moment as just that, a gift.
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He shined the love of Christ in the deepest recesses of darkness to illuminate hopefulness in a world of hopelessness. And then, for my son, my dad taught me to live. To love heartily and to fight fiercely for what I believed. But most of all, he listened to me and reminded me that we are all precious in the sight of God.
[00:08:22]
He helped me to see that loving forgiveness is the great antidote to suffering, first and foremost, accepting of forgiveness so that we have it to give away. He showed me that anything is possible. And then showed me a path to plant seeds and nourish them to grow healthy and strong. He told me that every fall we rise from is a good fall, and that lesson has stayed with me through trials and triumphs.
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He will be sorely missed. But I know that this is not a time to be sad, rather to rejoice in a life well lived. An example for me and all who knew him as friend. And from my wife. My husband found beauty in the most unexpected places and lived to share that beauty with me and everyone he met. He was not only a faithful provider, but a faithful man that honored me with his eyes as well as his heart.
[00:09:29]
He would say that we would grow old together, that we would hold hands as we walked into Eternity. Well, my love. Here we are, and I am so very thankful that God brought us together when you put those fresh moves on me in that nightclub all those years ago. Well, I am so thankful for you allowing me to share that with you and listening to my tribute, my eulogy, and that's straight from the heart, as you can probably tell.
[00:09:59]
Interestingly, there's nothing in there about business. There's nothing in there about making money. There's nothing in there about wealth and prosperity. It's about the lives that I've gotten to touch, and that's my own personal tribute. It's gonna look totally different for you, but what that does is that vision of the future, that orders and guides my steps.
[00:10:25]
It helps me to be clear and focused for what my vision is, and vision and focus are the two most active attributes in all of leadership theory. So if you study leadership theory, you'll find that those two pieces show up again and again and again. If you want to be a strong, effective leader, you have to have clarity of vision, and you have to have clarity of focus.
[00:10:53]
Vision is far out focuses today. What am I doing each and every day to make that vision real? So for you, for you, it's the same question. What would I write as my own tribute? How I want to be remembered? If you were to take some time this week and write it out, and not from the perspective of how, because we spend a lot of time talking ourselves out of what's possible.
[00:11:21]
By simply trying to put the engineering hat on, don't put the engineering hat on. Put the imagineering hat on, the imagination hat on. I tell my students the no-limit hat. The hat that has no boundaries, the hat that has no self-limiting beliefs, the hat that says anything is possible, totally optimistics because by definition, leadership and vision should be optmistic.
[00:11:50]
It should be a brighter future state. And as you begin to develop this and put this on paper, you extract it from your mind. You can do it alone. You can do it in the company of other coaches. Sometimes you could be sitting in your chair looking at your family members and just imagining that day when you won't be here anymore and how you would want them to have remembered you.
[00:12:16]
This recently happened, recently my father-in-law passed away, and I was speaking at his funeral, preparing a eulogy alongside of my brother-in-law, and it was very difficult to say, but I spoke the words that I believed he lived. And he sought to live because he had a very powerful vision for his life to impact people everywhere he went.
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He was an impactful man who wanted to not get beyond trivial and really get to the depth and the heart of humanity and relationships. And in that way, he was able to mentor me. And so as he did that on that day when he was no longer with us, he fulfilled his vision. And that's such a hallmark, my friend, that I want for myself and that I want for you.
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So you say, wow, it sounds kind of morbid to write my eulogy. Call it your life tribute. But once you begin to put it on paper, you etch it. And of course it can mold and materialize or might be different parts that come up. But begin to consider that in your daily walk. Read it, get to know it. Allow it to organize and orchestrate your decision.
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And that my friend is one step closer to mastering your vision because you'll see it far out there at the very end of the journey, and the decisions that you make day in and day out will become that much easier to make because they will or will not lead you in that direction. It's strong, it's powerful.
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And it's going to be a game changer in your life if it hasn't already. Now, and if you've already done this, you say, Nate, I've done that. That's awesome. Well, lemme just affirm you in that. Let me just take a moment and just encourage you to keep pressing on. And if you're in a position to where you're unsure about it, and you don't know where to start, it's a place that many people are.
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The best place to start is just in a moment of meditation, a moment of prayer. Get away from all the noise in the minutia. Sit down in a quiet room and just think about that day when people will be gathered around. What is it? What is it that you want people to have said about you? And that will be the guiding hand that will help you to pen or type that tribute of your life and let it simmer.
[00:14:53]
Let it soak, set it down. Come back and revisit it in a few days and then watch it begin to blossom into a beautiful, beautiful tribute that you can be proud of and honor as you move through this idea of mastering your vision, but you gotta start there from the begining with the end in mind and on the next episode, we're gonna start working on how we make that vision real.
[00:15:27]
Well, my friend, I am so thrilled that you joined me on this episode of A Call to Leadership, and before you go to the next episode, especially if you're binge-listening, take a moment. I would love to get your honest review right here on your screen. Your feedback is so important. It helps the podcast, it encourages me, and it helps me.
[00:15:49]
It helps me to give you more and more and more value. So I can't wait to read your review. I can't wait to be with you on the next episode. I'm Dr. Nate Salah. This is A Call to Leadership.
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