Sharing the Vision of Leadership Within in a Deaf Organization

Recent working conditions have kept many people working from home.  A lot of people suddenly realized that they could satisfy all their work requirements without needing to commute.  Many businesses realized that they could meet their company’s goals without needing to rent large office spaces. But it wasn’t all positive.

 

One of the major concerns that developed was how to encourage collaborative communication between team members.  In a shared environment, there are physical spaces where people gather such as lunchrooms, meeting rooms and the proverbial water cooler (more likely, now, a coffee machine) where people can connect with each other both as co-workers and as human beings with lives outside of the workspace.  These physical spaces provide a sense of public sharing because they do not belong to an individual employee, like an office or cubicle would.

 

Some recommendations include having managers provide a daily scheduled check-in.  Either one-to-one with each employee or as a group meeting.  The recommendation of making use of video conferencing also allows people to express and perceive each other’s subtle visual cues (nodding heads, raised eyebrows) that provide spontaneous and instant feedback to the topics being discussed (Larson, et. al., 2020).

 

Skip Prichard (2017) provides a list of six things that are key components for a compelling vision:

• 1)     It must imagine the invisible
• 2)    It must be verified and vetted to ensure it is the right vision for the organization
• 3)    It must have more than one path or option for success
• 4)    It must require changes that have been thought through and planned for
• 5)    It must be thoroughly communicated
• 6)    It must be explored within the receiving audience to a sense of full understanding

 

While management focuses on the day-to-day accomplishments of work duties, leadership focuses on the possibilities for a better world, a better product, or a better work environment.  Leadership focuses on vision for seeing things that are not yet there, while management focuses on getting the current job done.  If management can use regular video conferencing to encourage a sense of team membership and opportunities for collaborative communication, can leadership be expressed and instilled through the same means?

 

Steve Jobs would annually inspire the Apple employees and, by extension, the world of Apple enthusiasts with his messages at the Worldwide Developers Conference (Cross, 2022). While there might have been an extra jolt of electricity for people sharing the auditorium with him, Jobs was able to share and spread his vision for Apple through simultaneous broadcast (webcast) of his message and then posting the video for the rest of the world to see on their own schedule.  Jobs showed that the vision of leadership can be shared remotely.

 

Let’s now transpose these ideas to a Deaf business.  For members of the Deaf community, visual communication is key.  One other essential element is Consensus building.  While there are leaders and visionaries within the Deaf community, there is also a certain caution within Deaf culture of exploring an idea from all sides and seeing more than one leader express their support for the concept.  A classic example comes from the early days of the original Deaf President Now protests at Gallaudet University in 1988.  More than a thousand members of the Gallaudet. Deaf community had gathered on campus to see a live announcement from the Gallaudet Board of Trustees.  Two Deaf and one non-Deaf finalists led the crowd to have high expectations that the Board would, for the first time, select a Deaf person to lead the Deaf college.

 

The venue – Gallaudet’s Field House – was closed, lights off and doors locked.  Outside the building were people handing out papers to the throngs gathered outside.  They were a press release announcing the Board of Trustees’ choice of Elisabeth Zinser as the seventh president of the University (she was the only non-Deaf finalist).  The crowd was stunned.  No member of the Board was present to review the decision process or answer any questions.  In this way, the Board had “phoned it in” by having a remote announcement to a gathered crowd.

 

This is not the Deaf Way.  At first there was no on-site leadership, but there were recognized leaders among the Deaf community present.  Within two hours, the leaders were addressing an attentive crowd gathered outside the front entrance of Gallaudet – in the middle of the street – as they reviewed the information in the press release and what the options of response were.  The methods of Ghandi and Martin Luther King were well studied and known among the leaders.  Some had been involved in Disability Rights protests in the 1970s where one tactic had been for wheelchair users to block the paths of busses that were not equipped to allow access through public transportation.  The images of “lie-ins” where paraplegic and quadriplegic citizens occupied government offices to bring about policy changes that would accommodate their needs and give them access to the same benefits as able-bodied citizens (Gannon, 1989).

 

Each leader always emphasized that whatever action took place, it must be peaceful and non-destructive.  After some amount of discussion, someone mentioned that the Board was still in town, still had business scheduled and they were all located at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown, Washington, DC.  Another person suggested that a sit-in in front of a closed University was not going to get the attention of the public so it would be better if the crowd moved, now, and marched on the hotel.

 

The crowd remained seated.  Once another five or six leaders concurred in the mechanisms of how the next official act of protest would take place (the first was the sit-in in the middle of the street) then the crowd was finally convinced of the shared vision of its leadership and was willing to move (physically – by several miles) to a new venue where the process began anew.  Rather than storming the hotel and taking over the lobby, the crowd gathered outside where a well-lit marquee provided a stage space for the next round of discussions and planning for the actions to be taken next.  Once those were enacted, the remaining crowds (it was now after midnight) met again on Gallaudet’s campus for further discussion, debate, and decisions (Christiansen & Barnartt, 1995).

 

 

The point is that for a shared vision to take root within the Deaf community, it must be presented and discussed by multiple leaders so that it becomes consensus within the community.  Only then will a vision inspire people to the action needed to convert the vision into action. The most efficient ways that this takes place remotely is through video posts on Facebook and the use of the Daily Moth, a Deaf/ASL-based daily news site that posts a summary of headlines/news using American Sign Language and open captions. https://www.dailymoth.com/blog

 

Regardless of whether the spreading of a leader’s vision is through a live and interactive discussion or remotely through video posts, the path to community acceptance of the vision is to ensure a consensus among the recognized supporting leaders so that a unified message is revealed to the Deaf community from several recognized leaders.  Allowing for discussion and input in the development of the vision is essential before consolidating on a single and final version of the vision.  Only through a team collaboration with Deaf participation and Deaf “buy-in” will a leader’s vision for the future be adopted and activated within the Deaf community or a Deaf workforce.  That’s how it should work within the Deaf community.  Non-deaf communities might benefit from the same approach.

 

References

Christiansen, J. B., & Barnartt, S. N. (2003). Deaf president now!: The 1988 Revolution at Gallaudet University. Gallaudet University Press.

Cross, J. (2022, April 5). Apple event calendar: The next event is WWDC from June 6-10. Macworld. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://www.macworld.com/article/230957/apples-event-calendar-when-is-the-next-apple-event.html

Gannon, J. R., Louie, C., & Beatty, J. (1989). The week world heard gallaudet. Gallaudet University Press.

Hare, K. (2021, December 7). How do viewers feel about broadcasters working from home? they don't hate it, a study finds. Poynter. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2021/how-do-viewers-feel-about-broadcasters-working-from-home-they-dont-hate-it-a-study-finds/

Heathfield, S. M. (2020, October 4). You can't be a real leader who people want to follow without vision. The Balance Careers. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://www.thebalancecareers.com/leadership-vision-1918616

Larson, B. Z., Vroman, S. R., & Makarius, E. E. (2021, September 2). A guide to managing your (newly) remote workers. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2020/03/a-guide-to-managing-your-newly-remote-workers

Prichard, S. (2017, July 26). How leaders create a compelling vision to engage & inspire. Skip Prichard | Leadership Insights. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://www.skipprichard.com/how-leaders-create-a-compelling-vision-to-engage-inspire/

Shelton, S. (2017, July 25). How executive leaders create a clear shared vision. Executive Leadership Consulting. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://executiveleader.com/executive-leaders-create-clear-shared-vision/

Tuck, K. (2021, July 3). 11 leadership lessons we can learn from Tim Cook. Strategic Leadership. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://strategicleaders.com/11-leadership-lessons-from-tim-cook/

Valentine, A. (2020, August 14). As journalists work from home, their newsrooms are shutting down. WAMU. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from https://wamu.org/story/20/08/13/as-journalists-work-from-home-their-newsrooms-are-shutting-down/