Leadership is about the capacity for getting others to follow & collaborate, and people will only follow & collaborate when the there is a simple vision. Complex and disorganised strategies are the enemy!
Perhaps one of the most iconic & powerful visions was when John F. Kennedy SIMPLY said, “We choose to go to the moon …”.
Simple visions target the prefrontal cortex – The Executive Brain – it is in this part of the brain where the world of possibility and hope lies, and also higher trust levels!
And when a leader’s team gets inevitably stuck in the execution of the vision, great leaders bring their people back into the simplicity of the vision, to re-inspire them, to re-ignite their hope, and to re-energise them to dare.
The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu captured this ancient & powerful concept of SIMPLICLITY when he said:
“Leaders who impose elaborate strategies on people cause social reactions that undermine the structure of the organisation because clever strategies strike a resonant chord in people and trigger their own cunning responses. If leaders, instead, guide the organisation with simplicity and directness, the inherent cleverness of the people will be disarmed.”
For more on this, I invite you to go to the source and review the work of David J. Lieberman, Ph.D.