Leadership, Challenge, and Perspective: How to Generate Leadership Strength Using Stimulating and Enticing Goals

Let’s recap: Once leaders are able to perceive and represent a situation as imperfect—or critical—they have reached the point at which every leadership process begins. Only circumstances that are perceived as imperfect require leadership. The next step is to provide an answer to the crisis, a promise, a hope of salvation, an improvement, or—in other words—a goal. Perceiving and declaring a crisis alone are not sufficient to bind followers to you in the long term. Leadership strength is only unleashed once you can clearly illustrate to others what the future potentially holds and what the goal of the efforts and exertions associated with attaining it will be. In this chapter we look at our leadership sculpture from yet another perspective. Having focused on charismatic leadership relationships, practical leadership strategies, and crisis as the starting situation for leadership, we now turn our attention to how leaders can unleash and intensify leadership strength using goals.