Understanding and Investing in Your Futuristic Talent

On this Theme Thursday Season 4 webcast, Jim Collison, Gallup's Director of Talent Sourcing, and Maika Leibbrandt, Senior Workplace Consultant, talk about Futuristic.

Futuristic can be described by every step taken today gets you closer to the very clear future you live in. Futuristic is making sense of what is through a lens of what will be. Futuristic is not just creativity. It's not just "what if" but it's "when." Individuals with high Futuristic are energized and energizing to others by what can be. Other themes will influence the exact picture of the future, but it's always with an element of improvement. It's improvement for a better team, a better product, a better life, a better world.

When Futuristic is at its best, it's pulling people out of frustration with the now by painting a picture of where we are headed. The value of Futuristic is being energized by possibility, and tackling projects for what they build toward. It's also the ability to minimize emotional weight. It minimizes the weight of ambiguity, chaos, scarcity, and anger by changing the focus.

Do more by looking for opportunities to make the future even more clear for yourself and for others. That might mean talking, researching, reading, or brainstorming with others about what your team, project, or community will be. Find ways to connect today to tomorrow. Get in touch with what is occupying your colleagues. How does their current concerns and excitement translate into the future you see? Do more by talking about what excites you. Your energy for the future is needed and will help unplug people who are stuck. Inspire people who don't know they need a nudge.

Ask for goals that you know will matter in the future. Ask yourself how far into the future you are most comfortable, then make sure your current expectations lead you and others there. This might mean less of asking for goals and more offering. Make sure what you're doing both matters to the future and is set and owned by you. Within your team, look for opportunities to set the team direction or project goals. Talk about what your clients will be needing in the future, or what your kids will be doing 5-10 years down the road.

Worry less about not being great at practicality. Futuristic casts the fishing hook into the future, but it doesn't necessarily follow the line back to find and sort out every step it takes to get back to the pole. You might find you are bored by talking about backward-looking goals, like finishing something you no longer find important. Let that go and admit it doesn't inspire you if it's becoming a weakness. Worry less about others trusting the future as clearly as you do.

Expect bigger thinking than others. They may feel like they are stretching the expectations you have of them, and they have of you and others. Expect a legacy-building mindset. They may want to work from the curiosity about what a difference their current life will have in building a future life for themselves and others.

Recognize times those with Futuristic might have seemed totally crazy and when their out of the box expectations lead your team to something better. Recognize those time when they were just the nudge you needed. Don't just celebrate their work but also the courage it took for them to share their ideas. We need to build stronger hard-wiring lines into the future, and they have a direct connection. Any time those visions and expectations make it back to earth, it's something to cherish and to ask for more of.

Stretch by helping them translate the future back into the present. This might translate in a few ways:

• Give them more opportunities to talk about the future.
• Ask for their input on where we could be going and how it could be even better.
• Help them understand the best ways to communicate what they see. Build their vocabulary, their understanding of systems, infrastructure and process. Offer advice on interpersonal communication so they know where to nudge and how to make their inspiration land well.

If Futuristic is one of your Dominant Themes, invest in it this week through the following challenge items:

• Mastery Mindset: What will you need to be more skilled or informed about in your best future? Listen to a podcast, take a class, or read a book that gets you closer to mastery of this.
• Flex your Future-casting: Journal the future you see for 1 year, 5 years, or 10 years from now.
  • The more detail the better. This will help you practice describing the future to others as vividly as it is for you.
• Identify a change in your organization right now. Talk with someone about how this change resonates in the future.

If Futuristic is not one of your Dominant Themes, invest in it this week through the following challenge items:

• When was the last time you were certain about a goal or plan? What led to that certainty?
• Play "vision catcher" for a future-looking partner. Be the first to endorse a visionary idea.