Leadership is a lifelong journey with various phases that move along two axes: visualization and actualization.
Visualization involves figuring out what treasure you seek—your BHAG—and charting the path to that goal. This requires developing the first two Cs of leadership: capability and culture. Actualization, or putting your vision into action to achieve your goal, involves developing the next two Cs of leadership: communication and connection.
If you want to know where you are on your leadership journey, think of your progress in these two areas. You can find a free Leadership Capital Assessment here that will show you where you are on your journey. If you have not made much progress on either visualization or actualization, then you’re an undiscovered leader.
Are You an Undiscovered Leader?
Undiscovered leaders are aspiring leaders who are just getting started on discovering their leadership potential. They may not even be sure if they are leaders yet—they may be just finishing college or in the very first years of their careers.
I recently spoke with a young man who falls into this category. He is currently a college student, and he has been reading my book The Treasure You Seek and working through the leadership capital framework discussed there. He’s just getting started on visualizing his BHAG and isn’t quite sure what his mission is yet or what path he wants to take to get there.
The good news is that he’s early on in his journey and has time to figure these things out. Coming right out of college is a time to explore different opportunities, possibilities, and ways of leveraging your skills and pursuing your goals.
So, while undiscovered leaders may have the most work to do, they’re arguably in the best position—they have time and opportunity before them to develop their skills and leadership capital. They don’t have to commit to a long-term career from the outset. They can try something, and if it doesn’t work out, they can adjust and pivot.
The Leadership Journey Starts With Visualization
The first step for the undiscovered leader is to develop yourself along the axis of visualization. Visualization does not just require wishing for some state of affairs but rather means coming to an understanding of the best version of ourselves, setting a high bar for ourselves, and developing a goal based on that understanding. This is internal work—not a matter of measuring yourself against others.
This internal work requires coming to terms with the first two Cs of leadership: capability and culture—in other words, getting to know your superpower and developing confidence in your cultural background as an asset. If you’re struggling with those two things, then you will also struggle to dream big, to envision your BHAG. Dreaming big has to start with some level of inner strength rooted in knowledge of your superpower and confidence in yourself as a cultural asset.
Testing Your Superpower
One of the first visualization tasks is to make a hypothesis about what your superpower is and start testing that hypothesis in various contexts. The young man I spoke with recently thought his superpower must be something in the area of communications, as he had been asked to take leadership roles involving communications in some of the organizations he’s in. His next step is to figure out how to translate that into a career and how to move toward that career with whatever job he takes after graduating.
Importantly, the course he charts will be determined largely by what his BHAG or his North Star is. In his case, he wants to have a positive impact on underrepresented communities. What opportunities can he find to test his superpower in a way that will lead him in this direction?
Before an undiscovered leader can work on actualizing their vision, they need to do the internal work of figuring out just what that vision is, what their superpower and cultural background are, and how they can leverage these to accomplish their goal.
Even if they don’t have tangible accomplishments along the way to their BHAG just yet, this internal work builds confidence in themselves as leaders and carries them to the next phase of the leadership journey—where they’ll start to leverage communication and connection.