In my last post I talked about how important it is for a leader to both hold and communicate a vision to those around him. You can read that post here.

In this post I'll be writing about one of the ways in which a leader can lose this essential vision, even without realizing that it is being lost.

As leaders we badly run the risk of losing our vision if we get overly caught up in the details of the day to day operations of our Lodge or other organization. This is because in order to properly utilize vision, it must be held at the forefront of our minds. If however we are so focused on side issues and little details, those things move to the front of our minds, and vision gets lost somewhere in the back, with all the clutter.

At the Lodge level, if we are Worshipful Master, I suggest that we don't need to be intimately involved with our charity and scholarship funds, rather we can let 'Bob' know what our vision is for those funds, and trust him to take care of things. We don't need to plan our annual camping trip/retreat, rather we can let 'Alan' know what our vision is for that weekend and let him plan it.

These are just a couple quick examples, but the principal holds true across all activities of the Lodge.

We need to communicate our vision for the Lodge to our Brothers, and then step back and let them help us achieve that vision. If we can't step back and feel that we must control everything, well then we will lose that vision because we will become consumed by meaningless details.

We see this I think in Grand Lines as well. A new fellow gets elected and has a vision of where he would like to see our Fraternity go. Very quickly though that vision is consumed by meaningless details. He's spending countless hours a week on the highway, sitting in meetings discussing property the Grand Lodge owns, sitting in other meetings talking about the stock market. Still more meetings discussing charitable efforts. Eventually he becomes Grand Master and whatever vision for the future, whatever help he was going to provide our Fraternity is dead and buried, buried under a mountain of details because he never was able to trust his Brothers enough to let go. Or, he didn't feel that he could let go given the expectations of the Masons of his Jurisdiction.

To be successful leaders we must have a vision, we must be able to hold that vision first in our minds, and we must be able to communicate that vision. If we can't do all three of those things we will fail in our duty to lead. Therefore, we must guard against putting too much focus on those things that would tend to overwhelm our vision. If we can do this, we can have a great year in the East.

#Leadership #Lodge #Vision #GrandLine

-Cameron

Cameron M. Bailey Past Grand Master The MW Grand Lodge F&AM of Washington

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