Vision doesn’t just leak, it is squeezed

One of the first leadership principles shared with me when I was given a leadership role was that “Vision leaks, so you have to keep communicating it.” Yes, that is true, and like some have said, you want to have it leaking because it is flowing out into others on the team from their peers.

I think we are looking at this with the wrong metaphor. People aren’t buckets with a hole that lets the vision leak out. No, the bucket is your team, your department, or your company. Yes, there is a hole in it, and yes, you do need to keep communicating vision.

In that bucket though, are sponges. Those sponges are the individuals on the team. And the villain in the metaphor isn’t just that sponges full of vision will eventually dry out, it is that even if the bucket is full of vision, some of the sponges can’t retain any of it. Why? They are being squeezed.

When a sponge is squeezed, it doesn’t have the capacity to retain liquid. I’m sure that the inventor of sponges knows the science behind it, but I’m going to assume that we’ve all seen how a sponge works at some point but the tighter the grip, the less the sponge can hold.

A fellow leader shared their frustration that they were sure they had communicated the new vision they were bringing to their team, and they even verified it by going into their minutes of the previous meeting to make sure. Yet, when they shared it again, it was like they were saying it for the first time.

It was then that the sponge metaphor came to mind to me because they were relatively new leaders and knowing their team, it wasn’t because they weren’t sharing the vision enough, it was because their people were being squeezed. Some of their team was tired, some didn't like change, and others were struggling with health concerns. Each of these fingers were squeezing them to the point that their capacity to hear a new vision was almost non-existent. Even being unsure of their new leadership brings another finger to the grip because they aren't ready to trust.

It is also a reality that the pressure on the sponge will cause it to release fluid it was holding in the first place. Someone that had the capacity to soak up a vision to the point it was dripping on the rest of the team, all of a sudden, isn’t on board, or is confused as to where things are headed. Their vision had been squeezed by some bad news at home, an ailing parent, or even a teething baby keeping them from sleeping.

What about the brand new teammate, they seem to just soak it up. That’s true, they often do. At the risk of taking the analogy too far however, a sponge just dropped into a bucket of liquid, doesn’t just soak it up, it floats on top. Until the squeeze happens, they don’t truly retain much, and will need a continual pouring of vision to keep from drying up.

So, what can we as leaders do about it? Sharing the vision regularly is a critical part of having our teams on board and engaged with it, so we need to continue doing that.

However, we need healthy teams. Teams that have gone through the pressure of the squeeze of external forces and have had their trust banks filled, their ailments healed, and their fears of change replaced with hope. As the grip is slowly released, a sponge liquid will have every air pocket filled. Just as a team member healing surrounded by vision will soak it up and start to drip the extra vision on others.

Step one: Continually pour vision into the bucket (team.)

Step two: Look at the each individual’s capacity and determine if there are pressures that can be relieved to enable their capacity to retain vision and engage in it to grow.

Step three: Repeat.