Making Dreams Matter
Dreams smolder and die unless others own them.
Passion isn’t meaningful until it ignites others.
Igniting passion isn’t pumping up. Pumping up:
- Is fun at events but manipulative as long-term strategy.
- Places unnecessary burden on leaders and managers.
- Never lasts.
- Drains and exhausts. Pumping up pours energy from you to others.
Ignition:
Healthy people all dream the same dream;
they long to matter.
Igniting passion is always about their dream not yours. Leaders are matches. Fire and heat come from others.
Flames ignite the moment others see themselves in your dream. Help them find a place and watch the magic.
They own it when they’re in it.
Release:
Pumping up is pushing. Igniting passion is releasing. Once their fire starts, step back. Don’t control it; focus and fuel it.
- Avoid limiting. Let your dream grow beyond you.
- Don’t correct. See where they go.
- Keep talking big picture and results. Passion and expertise from others fill in details.
Warning:
Details kill baby dreams. Let them grow legs before detailing them to death. Talk “what” when dreams are young. Talk “how” when they can walk.
The right people:
Dream killers are everywhere. Success depends on talking to people who share your values. Casually bring up your idea and watch for the sparkle. If you don’t see it, move on. They may ignite later.
Pulling not pushing:
Passionate people pull you; you don’t push them. There’s nothing better than watching a collection of small fires become one giant blaze.
Surprise:
Keep your dream in the back, like a back-seat drive. Keep their dream in the front. Everyone wants to matter. Give them a way.
Has someone ignited your passion? What did they do?
Have you ignited fires? What did you do?
Dear Dan,
People from different walks of life have ignited my passion. They initiated a spark in me. I could internally connect myself and could see my hidden potential. I have ignited fire. This fire keeps on increasing and it becomes torch for others. Others means those connected with me get inspired and start searching fire in them.
I appreciate your idea of talking about dreams. We should talk about others dream And I think talking itself create initiation and spark. Dream is just a dream unless it is acted upon. I do believe that dream exists for the brave and courageous people. Such people make them dream real and actually live their dream. But those who only see dreams and do not make effort to materialize, keep on dreaming. So, dream provide direction and determination provide strength to make it true.
Thanks for your insights and challenge Ajay.
There’s a short phrase that ignites my imagination and captures an important idea… “I…could see my hidden potential.”
The people who influence me the most have seen something in me that I didn’t dare see in myself… Seeing something in someone else is one of the most important and powerful things leaders do.
“Details kill baby dreams.”
Funny how I have no problem focusing on the dream, not the details, when it’s my dream and yet tend to focus on the details, the how, why, where and when, when it’s someone else’s dream.
Thanks for the reminder that my desire to help focus the dream and make it a reality may in fact kill it. Very helpful, especially with two strong, independent children.
I confess to the same tendency. I think most people how things to death… I hear you on the children… we raised three strong ones ourselves. Best wishes.
Laurie, I too have done this. I believe that as leaders, we want so badly to see those around us succeed that we try use our experience to save them from failure. When you have the privilege to mentor someone, remembering that failure is a part of the success process can be a hard pill to swallow. A very successful mentor of mine helped me out with these words, “don’t worry about a problem that you don’t have.”
Dan,
I love all your posts, but this is one of your best in my humble opinion.
My favorite is “avoid limits.” Sometimes people on your team will have talents of which you are unaware. Let me give you an example. I’m a career teacher, but I also love to write and speak. When I started to submit articles to national teacher magazines it made one of my school administrators very nervous. He told me I had to get all my articles approved by the school district’s PR department before I submitted them. The national magazines liked my writing and ideas so they would sometimes call me with a last minute idea. I didn’t have time for preapproval. I finally just started ignoring the preapproval step. The result? The district received quite a bit of positive exposure as a result of my writing. The articles always included a blurb about where I worked, the books I had authored etc. Paranoia can block unexpected opportunties.
This district also had a rule that a teacher could only attend one national teacher conference because of getting time off school and such. Once you went to one, you weren’t apt to be allowed to go for about 10 years. But I like to speak at conferences. Once I got lucky and the national conference came to my own city. I put in two speech proposals and spoke on Saturday and Sunday. My whole speaking career grew from that one weekend. Soon the national organization was calling the district and asking for me to speak.
The reputation of your business may grow in unanticipated ways if you will avoid limits.
Dauna
What a great story Dauna…thank you for the encouragement. They say its better to apologize than ask permission.
Your ‘pull, don’t push’ resonated here Dan. If you are pushing, it probably is your dream or a variation of your dream superimposed on theirs. Respect their dream and have them draw you along with them.
One of the most powerful igniters is belief. Believing in someone, in their dream, in their capacity to grow and verbalizing it–can fan those flames.
One step that leaders can take to help keep the dreams alive is to remove or minimize potential barriers, even mundane ones that you know will crop up. Ex: If the dreamer has a training or conference to attend that also adds value to the organization, ensure that the paperwork gets through the circuit and/or find the funding.
Once again you are practical and elegant.
You remind me that organizations often sap the life out of people…paperwork etc. It’s necessary but a leader or manager who smooths the way makes a huge difference for people.
Very good topic put into a few words; from my experience though and being a passionate communicator and leader, I find it very hard at times to ignite people as many of them don’t see the big picutre. Many of them are too concentrated on the day-to-day activities so that it becomes hard to even see small dreams take off. More visionaries are needed, courageous people who stand up and do things differently! Jenny
Thanks for bringing up one of the great challenges of leadership…Leaders who lift others succeed…its so easy to push them down. It’s as simple as neglect. Cheers.
Completely agree! Thanks for your reply!
you may find that as their dreams takes the front seat, they’ll return the favor and help makes yours a reality, too
Hopefully the dreams align… 🙂
Dan, I could speak on the subject of dreams for hours, as I’m sure you could too. I believe society no longer conditions people to dream; in a culture where a “don’t get your hopes up” mentality is the mainstay, people are literally conditioned to believe that they’re not allowed to be the exception. So many individuals have no idea that they were made for greatness because from birth, nobody has told them; they have no idea that you are in life as a result of how you think. Coming across a blog like this gives me hope that there are more leaders in this fight than I suspected.