How Do You Envision and Enlist With Shared Vision?

Case Study: Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) Marketplace

The next step in supporting the “Biggest vaccination programme in the history of mankind”.

In their own words, the CEPI is an innovative global partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations. This coalition was founded in 2017 in the hopes of (a) accelerating the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases, and

(b) enabling equitable access to these vaccines for people during outbreaks.

To better support vaccine manufacturing in humanity’s race to immunise against Covid19, the new CEPI marketplace was created. This new initiative aims to achieve 3 main goals:

1. Link manufacturers and suppliers of vital materials to overcome bottlenecks and trade barriers in vaccine production. This comes as Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax), the global vaccine distribution programme, has fallen short of its targets.

2. Reduce the current inequitable rollout of vaccines between countries of varying degrees of development, with wealthy nations like the US receiving bulk of the limited vaccine shots available.

3. Produce the 11 billion doses needed globally.

This global collaborative effort embodies the importance of uniting a team with a shared purpose (to overcome the manufacturing shortages and inefficiency) and common ground (providing help to everyone in the fight to immunise against Covid19).

These two principles underpinning the collaboration can also be found in Kouzes and Posner’s renowned five practices of Exemplary Leadership as “Inspire a Shared Vision” and “Enable Others to Act”, which is part of the Leadership Challenge (TLC). Thus, the collaborative effort goes to show how productive teams can result from putting Exemplary Leadership into practice.  

Envisioning: Towards a Shared Purpose

Exemplary leaders inspire a shared vision by first thinking of a unique idea they want for their organisations. They imagine exciting and ennobling possibilities that can bring their organisations into unchartered destinations. In short, achieving greater things for their organisations and the community with their people. They articulate their vision with word-images and metaphors that “bring” their people to “places” they never been before, showing how the vision serves the common good of all in their organisations and the community at large. There is a great sense of nobility woven in the vision that makes it compelling and aspirational for all.

Enlisting: Getting the Team on Common Ground

With a compelling vision in place, exemplary leaders are mindful to enlist their constituents to be on board and embrace the vision. To do this, they make efforts to understand the aspirations of the constituents and spare no efforts to weave in the common central theme of their aspirations into the vision, to excite and enlist them.  When employees find common grounds between their aspirations and the organisation’s vision, they ‘buy-in’ to the vision as their own.

With a shared vision in place, exemplary leaders further engage their people to challenge the process on how things can be done towards achieving the vision while encouraging them and lifting their hearts to overcoming obstacles and celebrate success along the way.

Find out more about and the entirety of how the 5 Exemplary Leadership Practices work in tandem, by contacting us at connect@pace-od.com.

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