Deepak Chopra offers a prescription for developing the kind of insight that produces a powerful vision. He said:
If I was a leader I would look and listen using the instruments of the flesh. I would be an unbiased observer. I would feel, I would think and analyze with my mind, and I would be with my soul. And only then I would create a vision.
None of the leaders discussed in this chapter—not Monsignor Fushek,-John Dryden, Bill Strickland, nor Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi—began their leadership efforts by creating a vision. They began by doing what Chopra advises as precursors to creating a vision; listening, observing, feeling, thinking, and analyzing, being with the soul. It is these activities, the insights they produce, and the compulsion to act on those insights, that form the nucleus of leadership. One need not have a well-articulated vision in order to lead.
Those who would lead too often sabotage themselves by retreating into intellect at the expense of intuition and insight. They retreat into what Joseph Chilton Pearce calls, ‘‘An intellect compulsively trying to compensate by engineering our environment and each other.’’ They create vision without insight. The visions they produce are typically formulaic and uninspiring. As the Vision explains, a vision that does not begin with, and is not based on, a compelling insight, no matter how well-articulated the vision is, will not likely attract high levels of commitment from others. Given a choice between the two, a compelling insight beats a well-articulated vision, hands down. A compelling insight permits us to inspire the future as it comes into view.