In Leading Change: An Action Plan from the World’s Foremost Expert on Business Leadership, John Kotter states that leaders must spend 70% of their time leading. The primary task is communicating the vision to stakeholders in as many ways and times as necessary. Leaders underestimate the frequency of communication needed to create a new culture.

What are the elements of an effective communication of your vision? Here’s insight from Carmine Gallo’s Talk Like Ted: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds:

1. Unleash the master within.
2. Master the art of storytelling.
3. Have a conversation.
4. Teach me something new.
5. Deliver jaw-dropping moments.
6. Lighten up.
7. Stick to the 18-minute rule.
8. Paint a mental picture with multi-sensory experiences.
9. Stay in your lane.

I highly recommend Gallo’s book as a primer for amplifying your capacity to communicate your vision. What if you do not like public speaking? Or what if articulating a vision is not what you want to do all the time? It’s important to understand your preferences now so you can identify the role that best suits your personality. To lead, one must have clarity about his or her role along with time dedicated to play it.

Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

The following content areas are important to Circles USA’s strategies for ending poverty.

• A Tipping Point

A tipping point, such as reducing poverty rates in the United States by 10% within 10 years, could drastically reduce the number of adults and children living in poverty. Gaining widespread commitment could be a game changer.

• Transformational Leadership

Leaders need a process for transformational change and a robust community of practice. They need more coaching that inspires and challenges them to function at even higher levels of performance. In order to remain urgent about transforming the community, they need enough direct contact with those they are ultimately helping through their leadership work. Leaders need to be reminded, and often need to be supported, to delegate management activities so that they can dedicate the required time necessary to truly lead.

• Shifting from Poverty Management to Poverty Reduction

Our current system results in the management of poverty rather than reducing poverty rates. We are accountable only to delivering units of service in an ecosystem of poverty management programs with silos in crisis intervention, stabilization, workforce readiness, job placement, and advancement.

A new and alternative poverty reduction system must more comprehensively support people through all five stages of self-sufficiency in order to drastically affect poverty rates.

• Cliff Effect Mitigation

To unleash the phantom workforce of those who could work but believe they can’t “afford” to, we must eliminate disincentives built into safety net programs such as childcare assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

• Community Allies
• Relevant Education
• Cross-Sector Partnerships for Job Creation
• Research, Data, and Accountability
• Increasing Poverty IQ

Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

. . . transformed people transform people.

— Richard Rohr

To be the change we want to see happen is the lynchpin of the Transformational Map. Dedication to personal growth fosters positive change in the world. How can I change my life so that it’s in alignment with my vision for the world? When we embrace transformation as our personal assignment, we inspire and equip others as well.

I met Diane Pike and Arleen Lorrance, directors of Teleos Institute (consciousnesswork.com), in 1979 at the impressionable age of 21, and they have been a major source of guidance and motivation for my personal growth and development ever since. Diane and Arleen met in 1971 and have been teaching their practical and profound principles through books, workshops, retreats, and speeches ever since.

Diane and Arleen’s Love Principles have been serving me for decades:

• Receive all people as beautiful exactly as they are.
• Be the change you want to see happen, instead of trying to change anyone else.
• Create your own reality consciously.
• Provide others with opportunities to give.
• Have no expectations but rather abundant expectancy.
• Problems are opportunities.
• Remember, choice is the life process.

Whether you ascribe to these or similar principles, Transformational Leaders must consciously shift from reaction to response, especially when confronted with the resistance to change that is inevitable.

A deep commitment to one’s convictions is essential: Why do I want to realize this particular change? What does it mean to me? What more do I need to change in myself to be consistent with my values? Such self-awareness will ground you when confronting opposition. To be the change, your personal goals and values must be in alignment with the goals and values of the change you are guiding as a transformational leader.

From the book: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Without vision, the matrix tells us that people feel confusion and a lack of motivation to change. Pain will push people so far, but then vision must pull them toward something attractive. Without vision, old habits persist, and situations will continue to deteriorate. Vision must provide a compelling case for change, a strong description of what could happen if, for example, we ended poverty. And it must provide two or three high-impact strategies that let people know that the vision can be achieved.

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Individual Change Precedes Social Change

Just as in the cycles of nature, you will move through each of the four seasons of the change process. The first task is to develop a clear understanding of your own vision and purpose.

When we wish to change something in the world, there is often something in our own lives that we want to explore, assess, and change as well.

For example, in my early job experience serving people struggling in poverty, I realized how often people seemed alone with their problems. So, I created support groups as a response to such isolation. Then I looked at my own life and asked, “Where do I feel too alone in my own problems? How can I give myself more support?”

It became apparent that before I could make any lasting social change, I had to commit to changing my own life. Circles USA was the result of an intense soul-searching process that I began in the mid-1990s. Circles is a process of surrounding yourself with people who will be Allies as you make an important change, such as moving out of poverty.

A fundamental assumption underlying our approach is that each of us is more powerful than we give ourselves credit for. One might think global questions are only for world leaders to answer, but it takes only one person to send a breakthrough idea around the world at lightning speed. When we listen to our hearts, make a commitment to action, form a circle of supportive Allies, learn whatever is necessary, and embed change into the culture, the world can be positively impacted.

From the book: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Leading societal change can be an overwhelming proposition. It’s like crossing the ocean for the first time. We all want navigational tools to know where we are and how to make course corrections to reach our destination.

The Transformational Map was developed by Circles USA (formerly known as Move the Mountain Leadership Center) during a 12-year period with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Transformational Map was tested with leaders of nonprofit organizations and community action agencies that have a federal mandate to end poverty. We provided leadership development training and coaching to help leaders shift the attention of their agencies from managing poverty with low-impact strategies to reducing poverty with high-impact strategies.

Drawn from this experience and beyond, this Transformational Leadership Program takes you through a straightforward process of ensuring that your time and talents are channeled into a purposeful direction.

All transformational efforts go through a cycle of four stages:

1. Articulating the vision,
2. Aligning with relevant Allies, including people and organizations,
3. Learning whatever is necessary in pursuit of the vision, and
4. Embedding the vision into the culture.

From the book: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

One person can make a difference, and everyone should try. — John F. Kennedy

I was in New York City a few years ago having a conversation with a former United Nations ambassador about my first book, Until It’s Gone, Ending Poverty in our Nation, in our Lifetime. He asked me several questions about my assumptions regarding the nature of poverty and about my work at Circles USA. After 30 minutes of dialogue, he revealed what was really behind his questioning when he said to me, “Jesus said the poor will always be with us. Is ending poverty going against the Bible?”

The former ambassador was not alone in asking this question. For many in the nation, the biblical proclamation that “the poor will always be with us” strongly suggests that no matter what we do, we will always have poverty. From this point of view, any attempt to eradicate poverty is a task that has no hope of success. Perhaps the best that we can hope for is to manage poverty or maybe save a few people. But can we believe in ending poverty? Yes, I believe we can do it, but only if we change our mind-set.

Through the Transformational Leadership Program, we will review assumptions about high-impact strategies that are worth investing time and resources in pursuing. High impact means the effort aims to change the mind-set that created the organization or system of organizations. The mind-set informs the goals that shape the programs of the organization. To create a system to end poverty requires that the system change its entire culture.

For example, when people don’t believe that the poverty rate can be reduced, let alone eliminated, they create a poverty management system. To change that system, we will have to apply resources toward affecting the deeper beliefs that shape the system’s culture. How can we can challenge such a dominating belief?

I took the former ambassador’s belief that “the poor will always be with us” to a theologian who works closely with a Circles USA chapter and discovered that the original teaching has been taken out of context. If one Googles “the poor will always be with us,” she or he will find evidence of this confusion with warnings not to use this statement to discourage social action. Additionally, many passages in the Bible suggest a much more active stance toward the poor.

While this example from Christianity is a useful teaching tool, Circles USA partners with a range of secular and religious organizations. Circles USA’s inclusive, nonpartisan community welcomes people from all faiths, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic classes. Understanding the beliefs of these diverse community stakeholders is key.

From the book: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.