OM DENNE EPISODE
Everybody around you is locked into this month's numbers and this quarter's bonus. When you try to talk about the future, their eyes glaze over, because the next 90 days feel like all that matters. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. People move hardest toward a big future, and learning to lift someone into that frame is one of the most powerful things you'll ever do as a leader. I'll give you five moves I call lifting the horizon.
Episode Breakdown
[00:01:10] The Loan Officer Whose Dream Changed Everything
Years ago I met a young loan officer who, on paper, was grinding like everybody else, focused on the next deal and the next month. So I asked him a different kind of question. I didn't ask about his goal for the year, I asked about his dream over the next ten years, and it opened him up. His wife was a pharmaceutical sales rep making $180,000 a year, and his real dream was simple. He wanted to replace her income so she could stay home with their kids. The moment he said it out loud, his work stopped being about a monthly number. It was about a specific ten-year future that mattered more than any bonus, and it gave me something concrete I could come back to with him for years. Vague dreams expire and specific dreams compound.
[00:02:10] Move 1: Ask About Dreams Instead of Goals
A goal is short, measurable, and left brain, hit this number this year. A dream is a ten-year picture, and that's where the energy lives. The word vision in its original Hebrew was hazon, and it meant dream. Most leaders have taken their vision and shrunk it down to a goal. When you ask someone about their dream, you move the conversation from the calendar to the heart, and that's where people get moved. When I do this with a leader, I start with a single sheet of paper with the words my dream across the top. Every idea in that brain dump counts, because if you start disqualifying ideas too early, you kill the best ones before they ever surface.
[00:03:00] Move 2: Use a Ten-Year Window
At one, three, or five years out, people stay realistic and small. Push the horizon to ten years and something opens up, because ten years is far enough out that the logical brain stops arguing. One question I use all the time is the ten-year rearview. Imagine we're sitting together ten years from now, and it's been the best decade of your life, then tell me what changed in your business and what changed at home. You can watch it happen in someone's posture while they answer, because they start picturing it.
[00:03:30] Move 3: Get Specific
A vague future doesn't pull anybody anywhere. That young loan officer's dream worked because it was specific, replace a $180,000 income so his wife could be home. Push past the first surface answer with a simple question asked again and again, why is that important to you. When someone answers with something generic like impact, give them context, point to the producers they admire, and keep going until you reach the real dream underneath. Then capture it. Record your recruiting conversations so years from now you can say the dream back to someone in their own words. Most leaders can't remember what a recruit told them last quarter, and the leader who can repeat a dream back three years later is the one people follow.
[00:04:15] Move 4: Design From the End
Once you've got the ten-year picture, work backward to what has to be true in five years, then three, then one, then this quarter. I did this for 4C back in 2017. The ten-year dream was to impact 10,000 recruiting leaders in a single year, and I hadn't coached one person yet or launched a podcast. We backed it all the way into year one and set a goal to help 100 leaders. We helped 138. And I didn't have the whole map when I started. Back in 2017 I had no idea AI was coming, and the platform adjusted as the world changed. Vision gets clearer in the doing, so don't wait until you can see every step before you take the first one. I've landed in a different place on goals than most coaches, and I'm not a big believer in them by themselves anymore. I believe in projects, because ideation without activation is complete madness.
[00:05:25] Move 5: Anchor to the Why
The short game is loud and constant, so a long-term vision needs an anchor to survive it. Tie the ten-year dream to the deeper reason underneath it, the people it's for, and what it changes for them. I hold myself to this one every day. One of my daily affirmations is that the current version of Richard wouldn't even be hireable by the ten-year better version of Richard. Ten years from now, I want to look back at this version of me and not recognize him. Then keep bringing it up. My simplest one-on-one has three questions. Where are you with your dream, what are you doing to pursue it, and what's the one thing I can do as your leader to help you get there. Leaders overcomplicate one-on-ones with reports and metrics, and the dream is the agenda that builds loyalty.
[00:06:20] Why It Works
The future is bigger and brighter than the present, and human beings move toward what's bigger and brighter. When someone can see a future clearly, they start working to close the gap between where they are and where they could be. There's a catch, though. There's research on something called mental contrasting, and one finding surprised me. Building a dream board and staring at it can give your brain enough of a reward that you never act on it, and people who only visualize the dream are less likely to reach it. That's why moves four and five matter so much. The dream has to turn into a project with dates on it, or it stays a nice picture. Clarity speeds everything up. And most leaders have never done this for their own team. In more than 19,000 hours of coaching, I've met two leaders who could clearly articulate a team vision the first time I asked. When you lift a leader or a recruit into a ten-year frame, you stop competing on this month's offer and start connecting to the life they want.
[00:07:41] Your Small Win Tonight
Before you go to bed, write out your own ten-year dream, the professional side and the personal side, and push past the first answer until it gets specific. It's hard to pull anybody else into the long game when you haven't spent ten minutes there yourself, and most leaders haven't.
[00:08:00] Three Bigger Moves This Week
In your next one-on-one, ask someone the ten-year rearview question in place of their yearly goal, and keep asking why it matters until you reach the real dream, because that single conversation changes how a person sees their work. Take one team member's dream and design backward from it to this quarter with them, so the daily grind finally connects to something. Then start naming the bigger why out loud whenever you talk about short-term numbers, so your team stops living ninety days at a time.
Key Takeaways
People move hardest toward a big future. Lifting someone into that frame is one of the most powerful things you do as a leader.
Vague dreams expire and specific dreams compound. Get past the surface answer until the dream is concrete.
A goal is left brain and short. A dream is a ten-year picture, and that's where the energy lives.
Push the horizon to ten years and the logical brain stops arguing. One, three, and five years keep people small.
Design from the end, because a dream you only visualize can trick your brain into never acting. It has to become a project with dates.
In 19,000 hours of coaching, only two leaders could articulate a team vision the first time asked. Almost nobody has done this for their team.
Start with yourself. It's hard to pull anyone into the long game when you haven't spent ten minutes there yourself.
If you want help pulling your team and your recruits into the long game, reach out. Visit bookrichardnow.com and grab time on my calendar, and I'd be glad to think it through with you. And if you'd rather build this kind of thing in real time, I host a biweekly working lunch where we do exactly that together. The next one's Friday, October 9th at 12:00 PM Eastern. You can add it, plus all of our other 4C live events, straight to your calendar here: http://cal.ae/suuaiiw
