Hey leaders, Mark Cole here. Welcome to the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Today we're talking about leader vision.

If that sounds like a superpower, well it is. It is a superpower. See, leaders have the ability to see the future.

What could be and what should be. You don't need a crystal ball or a fortune teller to show you the future because leaders are the people that form the future.

Today on the podcast, John Maxwell is going to share his take on what the Gallup Management Journal calls visioning.

Visioning is the leader's ability to look out across and beyond the organization to the future and usher in the people they lead.

You're going to learn what makes the foundation of a good leader, a good vision, and what fuels that vision. See, a leader makes a vision a success.

After John's lesson, I'll be joined by my co-host Chris Goady. We're going to dive deeper into John's lesson and share how we are using John's principles to see and sculpt our own future at the Maxwell Enterprise.

As always, we have a free bonus resource for you, which is the fill in the blank notes from John's lesson.

And you can find those by visiting Maxwell Podcasts.com forward slash leader vision. Click on the bonus resource button just below the show notes and you will be able to download those notes.

Now, without further ado, here is John Maxwell.

Successful leaders are able to look out across and beyond the organizations. They have a talent for scene and creating the future.

They use highly visual language that paints pictures of the future for those that they lead.

And as a result, they seem to attain bigger goals because they create a collective mindset that propels people to help them make their vision a reality.

So let's talk about vision.

Number one, the foundation of a vision is reality. Whenever I say that, that becomes a many times surprised to people.

Because you think of vision as what could be, what should be, what you hope to be. And then I come behind it and say the foundation of any vision is based upon reality.

Max DePree, one of the great executives, Max DePree said the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.

So what I'm saying to you is that you need to develop a reality statement before a vision statement. Why? Because if your vision is going to be launched, listen carefully. It has to be launched on solid ground.

Don't ever fool yourself and have an unrealistic foundation to build a vision on it. You'll find that vision will start to crumble very, very quickly. So you develop a reality statement. In other words, where am I? Who am I? What am I? What are we?

I'm going to develop that reality statement before you cast the vision. A lack of realism today cost credibility to Mara. That's a fact.

In fact, when I am listening to somebody casting vision and they're not realistic about where they are now. I have no trust in where they're going.

Yes, if you're not realistic about the facts today, how can you ever be assured of the hopes of tomorrow? In other words, when you start to form your vision, less hype and more honesty.

...