Do you have the skill of future-thinking?

I believe there are two key roles of leaders, wouldn’t you agree? The first is to peer deep into the future to find an opportunity, a place to lead your team. The second is to call back to those following you to say “come this way”. Afterall, leadership implies followership.

My biggest beef is people who call themselves leaders when no one is or wants to follow them. But that aside. Let's talk about your first role, that duty and ability to envision the future.

How does one do that? I believe there are four key principles that you can apply to sharpen the skill of future-thinking. And yes, I believe it’s a skill or at least a practice. Your ability to sharpen your focus on the future stems from the ability to clearly see and move away from hindrances and toward opportunity in either the current moment or the future. You might want to draw that out as a two by two matrix to follow me.

The first motivator as a leader is to move your team away from the negative, to protect your team and strive to move them to a better or safer place. In the current moment this presents itself as danger. What is that problem that threatens your team’s quality, productivity or results? This is the easiest to see, but can be a challenge to see the future for the danger posed does not give you a solution or a sense of direction, but it does cause you to act quickly. This puts the leader on their heels, reacting and making quick decisions with incomplete information. It’s not ideal but it happens, often. You’re best to get wise advice and perspective and make the best decision you can.

Staying with the negative, the second motivator is less urgent, it’s a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo. I believe this is natural and healthy. Infact, all real leaders I work with have an inner ache for something better, a better way that brings better results. This leads to long-term thinking. There is time to examine what isn’t working and why and fashion a plan to take the team to a better place, free of the restrictions and barriers that exist today. Becoming complacent and accepting the status quo will threaten your team’s energy, creativity and ultimately their engagement. The status quo is an insidious enemy. Remember the only constant is change, so don’t be lulled by the sirens of comfort to think that everything is and will always be okay. Develop your healthy sense of dissatisfaction for the status quo.

Now we turn our attention to the positive, to seeking out new opportunities. Hear the voice in your mind of James T. Kirk that he spoke to you as a kid every Saturday morning in your flannel pajamas, eating your cheerios in front of the TV: “These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!” Kirk and his crew had their fill of danger on every episode but their quest was not safety but discovery. A great leader has the same perspective. Your job is to seek opportunity and lead your team on the adventure to subdue it.

The first form of this is in the immediate. By some act of fate perhaps, lady luck drops the chance of a lifetime in your lap. This is a quick win. This could be an acquisition, a supply-chain deal or a client in dire need. Whatever it is, your job is to recognize it and act. Don’t dilly-dally. He who hesitates is lost. That’s an easy one,

The fourth practice is the hardest. Finding new, undiscovered opportunities. I call this the game-changer. This practice is not pushing you from behind as the first two I described nor does it come to you, unbenounced. No, you must seek this to find it, you must search in the dark. This is the long-term opportunity. This is where the real reward is, because if you can find it you can be the first to capitalize on it. The reward could be a financial windfall or market leadership but it will also be the best opportunity for building engagement and excitement on your team.

To find this you must step back to move forward. By that I mean you must find a quiet space, settle yourself and rethink the world around you. Think as if you were flying high above the earth, what do you see? What are the trends and patterns happening? Why is the current level of activity happening now? What are the problems that current practices aren’t fixing? What could be possible if we did something, offered something or built something that didn’t exist today? Take a step back and look at the macro trends, the sweeping direction happening in your industry. Knowing the trajectory of how your industry has been changing may give you clues to the direction it is moving.

Learn to recognize both trajectory and momentum.

That skill will not be honed in a 30 minute block in your calendar. Opportunity will not reveal it’s wares on a whim. You must cultivate your relationship with opportunity, nurture it through time and practice. But it will reveal its secrets when you least expect it.

Learn the discipline of thinking. Stop running and reacting, so you can quiet your spirit and focus on what might be possible in the future.

Now, find a sheet of paper and draw that two by two matrix with the current and the future juxtaposed to the hindrances and the opportunity and begin to tease out four possibilities to get you and your team moving.

With a little time and thought you will have achieved the first practice of leadership and can begin the second. With a voice of enthusiasm and anticipation you can call back to your team “come this way”.

Think about it.