Do your employees need to know how you pulled the rabbit out of the hat?

A magician practices his craft for years and when he is ready he shows it to his patrons in hopes to mesmerize them with the art of pulling this cute little rabbit out of his hat and making it look easy. As leaders we are often engaged in difficult synthesis of complex situations trying to determine a direction and vision for a project, department, or the organization as a whole. We spend many hours asking questions broadly inside and outside the organization to help create perspective and to begin to align the many different world views that typically exist in and around any organization among its stakeholders.

Unlike the magician the leader does not only have spectators, (they certainly have that, as well as pundents) they have followers who will need to pick up on the leaders vision and carry it through to fruition.

In my work as a coach I have an opportunity to gain great insight into the many things a leader is considering at any given time. Some of those ideas, stories, concepts, may last for many months or years before they feel they have, a well considered approach to whatever they are dealing with in their organization.

Many will craft along with some on their team a communication strategy laying out this chosen path. Some lay it out humbly while others sell the ideas, stories, concepts with great gravitas. Regardless the the way they do it the one common denominator that seems to catch them off guard frequently is how long it takes for them to get buy in to what they consider is a well considered plan.

That is until they remember how long it took them to rap their heads around the ideas, stories, or concept. There seems to be such a gap in translating how long it takes the thought, inspiration to be considerate to an idea and for it to gain weight in our own mind, and the time that you as a leader take to allow these thoughts of the mind to develop in your teams or organizations mind.
Questions you might ask your self are:

• How long have you been developing the mental model that you have been contemplating?


• How different is this idea from the current situation?


• How much resistance is the idea going to have in the minds of those that you will need to gain alignment within your organization that you are leading?


• What can you do to eliminate the barriers to their resistance without loosing ground on the idea, story, and concept?


• What will accelerate the acceptance of the idea, story, and concept?

If you agree that it is the leaders job to get your co-workers to do what you want them to do, and they have to want to do it, ethically. Then as a leader you will have to evaluate how to get them on board and bring reality of timing into the mix. If you don’t you may loose personal strength on your goals because you inaccurately evaluated the time that it would take to close the gap.