The dreams your incredible employees have may not always align with your grand vision

7 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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A short leadership monologue (YouTube talk) by Bill Gallagher that opens with an anecdote about his assistant Patty offering a personal incentive tied to company revenue. The speaker realizes employees hold personal dreams (e.g., buying a house, learning Spanish, learning guitar) distinct from the leader’s corporate vision; he argues leaders should support those individual goals so employees will, in turn, prioritize the company vision.

Chapters

And my assistant Patty, amazing. She came to me and said, mike, if we achieve $10 million in revenue, you get the bigger house, you get the brand new car. But why should we care about this? It was the first time I had a realization that my colleagues, my employees, have visions and dreams of their own. And the vision for a business is not the vision for the entirety of the team. And that was what I construed to be the same. When we set a vision for the company, it's what the leader wants. It's their own selfish interest, and it's wonderful, but it's ours. We have to understand what our team members want. Someone wants to learn Spanish. Someone wants to buy a house. Someone wants to learn to play guitar. And once they start achieving their collective dreams, and I, as a leader, am supporting them in blocking and tackling or just keeping that dream in front of them, as I prioritize their vision, they prioritize the vision of the company.