Mark Hannum

Highly effective leaders create inspirational goals that rally others to a better future. Craft your own inspiring vision for the future with this exercise.

How do you set and achieve great goals? Here is a simple framework to help you overcome common barriers to success.

As we progress and move up in our careers, our egos can get in the way of our own growth and evolution as leaders. These simple practices can help keep us in check.

Ultimately, it’s our ability to commit to a lifelong journey of becoming purposeful that allows us to effectively balance the day-to-day dilemmas—and unsolvable problems—that we’re faced with as leaders.

I’m really thrilled at how far Linkage has come. I have to admit that our appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday night was unequivocally a high point for me during my 20+ years here. For those of you who haven’t seen it, take a few minutes to watch the clip now.

Today, I’m excited to share a short, powerful exercise that I did in one of the first leadership development workshops that I ever attended, many moons ago. It has since stood out in my mind as a defining moment in my own journey of discovery, and here’s why: it helped me uncover my motivation for leading—and for doing what I do every day.

Vision is key to leadership, and vision starts by understanding context, your organization, and yourself. It’s important to understand who you are. Why do you want a leadership role? What about you is going to create that cascade of people doing the right things to achieve something bigger than themselves?

The essence of purposeful leadership is finding the “why” within yourself, and then enlarging your podium to include other leaders who have similar “whys”—or who are inspired enough to adapt your same “why.” The purposeful leader uses this collective energy to organize and energize efforts to achieve the “why.”