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The Declaration of Independence

One of the most important things that you and I can do as a leader is to create a vision. This is enormously powerful in terms of setting the direction that we should go. This applies by the way, in an organization, a country, a team, within our families and our own lives.

This is Steve Shellenberger with this message today and I’d like to share an experience that I had.

Well, I was given the privilege and honor to be a Memorial Day keynote speaker. As I prepared these thoughts, I reflected, I’d just gone 10 days before and had the chance to be at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Independence Hall is where the Declaration of Independence was drafted by members of the 13 colonies and then later, about 11 years later after the Revolutionary War was concluded, they came back together and formed the Constitution of the United States.

It’s really important to think about the vision that they set as they got together initially and concluded, by the way, in July 4, 1776. But just think about how they started this, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights and among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And then, they iterated in the Declaration of Independence all of the violations of this and then they ended by saying this in the Declaration, “And we support this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence and we do mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.”

Wow, what a vision that was. And this represented the spirit of the colonies and gave them the power to represent and articulate what they felt so important that allowed them to move forward and create a new nation. Well, having the new nation then they needed to come back once again, or what do highly successful leaders do? They set the direction of vision. And so here’s how the Preamble of the Constitution goes as they came back to this very historic Hall again, Independence Hall in Philadelphia. And it says, “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, do establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, do provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, do hereby ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Wow, just think, now this’s been almost 250 years and it continues to provide the structure and inspiration for the direction of our country here in the United States. It’s also been an inspiration for countless other countries and millions of people throughout all the world. So this is a great example of one of the things that we do as leaders as we set the vision. It’s enormously powerful, just want to leave that with you today.

This is Steve Shellenberger, reminding you by the way, about additional resources such as the “5 Minute Leadership Makeover” and you can find that in the 5minuteleadershipmakeover.com, great resources. Have a good day.

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