When Vision Isn’t Enough — Empowering Others to Own the Future

Leadership Lessons from the Telescope | Rob Douglas

For many years, I thought leadership was about the vision—the clarity of what could be, the ability to see ahead, the drive to pull others forward. Fresh out of school, I arrived at the Space Telescope Science Institute at a time when the Hubble Space Telescope was a late-night punchline. Its primary mirror was flawed, and the telescope couldn’t see.

Yet when I joined the team, I met leaders who weren’t discouraged. They had a plan, a servicing mission, and an unshakeable belief that Hubble’s best days were ahead. My friends joked that I’d been hired to fix the telescope myself. Hardly. I was just starting out, but I was swept into the mission and the vision of what Hubble could become.

And in December 1993, NASA astronauts carried out one of the most daring spacewalks ever attempted. They brought Hubble into focus—literally and figuratively.

From that success, we launched a major effort to improve Hubble’s observing efficiency. It wasn’t just a technical project; it was a collaborative reimagining of how scientists around the world could participate as co-creators. Again, I found myself carried by the strength of a shared mission.

So when it became my turn—when I stepped into leadership and began shaping software development for the James Webb Space Telescope—I thought I knew what to do. I had a strong vision. A compelling direction. A belief in where things should go.

But something was different this time.

The work felt harder. Getting people aligned took more effort. The enthusiasm I had once felt so naturally was harder to spark in others.

What had changed?

Part 2 of this series ended with a lesson in service—that leadership isn’t about control but connection. But now I began to learn the next lesson:  Even connection isn’t enough if people don’t feel ownership.

From Vision to Shared Vision

In 2019, I was invited into the first cohort of the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Leadership Development Program (LDP). The program introduced a number of leadership tools—from coaching models to whole-brain analysis—but the framework that resonated most deeply with me came from The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner.

One of its five core practices is “Inspire a Shared Vision.”

I remember reading that phrase and feeling a sting of recognition. For years I had focused on developing a vision—my vision. I believed leadership meant seeing farther and persuading others to follow. It took me far too long to realize that the essential word in there wasn’t “vision”.

It was “shared.”

Great leaders don’t just explain their vision—they co-create it. They invite others to shape the future with them. And that insight arrived at the perfect moment: 2020. The year we were scattered to home offices. The year leadership became less about rallying a room and more about distributing ownership.

Shared vision wasn’t a leadership practice anymore.

It was a survival strategy.

No one could carry the load alone.

Learning to Let Go

My real preparation for that lesson had begun years earlier. In 2014, when I took on leadership of the Proposal Planning System team for the James Webb Space Telescope, the sheer scale of the work forced me to change.

JWST was too complex, too interconnected, and too important for any one person—least of all me—to hold every detail. At first, I tried. I wanted to understand everything. Shape everything. Ensure everything aligned with the vision in my head.

But complexity is a wonderful teacher. It demanded that I trust others.

It forced me to distinguish between:

What I needed to decide

and

What I needed to co-create.

Slowly, I learned to loosen my grip. My job wasn’t to architect every detail; it was to create the space where others could do their best thinking.

And now, as exploration begins on the Habitable Worlds Observatory, that lesson holds more meaning than ever. The future is wide open—not for me to define, but for us to imagine together.

The Work of Trust

Empowerment is a beautiful idea.  It is also incredibly difficult to practice.

It means resisting the urge to jump in. It means speaking last. It means trusting the process and trusting people. I’ve long argued that trust is the currency of business.

Service earns trust, but empowerment multiplies it.

One practice that helps me—when I remember to use it—is to speak last in meetings. Simon Sinek popularized this idea: leaders who speak first unintentionally frame the conversation. Leaders who speak last make room for honesty, creativity, and ownership.

When I manage to do this well, something wonderful happens. I hear someone else describe the very idea I had been holding back—and I feel joy.  Not disappointment.  Joy.  Because it means the vision no longer belongs to me.  It belongs to us.

Sometimes I catch myself starting to answer too quickly. I pause. Breathe. And ask instead:

“What do you think?”

It is not abdication.

It is leadership at its most expansive—making room for the best ideas to rise and ensuring the people behind them feel seen.

Owning the Future Together

Looking back, I see my leadership journey unfolding in three movements:

1.     Leading through expertise

2.     Leading through service

3.     Leading through empowerment

This progression is what ultimately led me to the concept of VisionCasting™: the idea that leadership means drawing together the ideas, hopes, experiences, and creativity of many people into a shared picture of the future.

It’s like casting a net into the sea of collective imagination and pulling up something no one could have created alone.

Empowering people to own the future is slower at first.  But it is stronger in the end.

This is the lesson I carry with me into my work at STScI, into my mentoring, and into the leadership development I do through Citadel Professional Solutions.

Because leadership isn’t a single moment of clarity.

It is a lifetime of learning to let go, until “my vision” becomes “our vision.”

References

·       Goleman, D. (2000). Leadership That Gets Results. Harvard Business Review, 78(2), 78–90.

·       Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2017). The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations (6th ed.). Wiley.

·       Sinek, S. (2014). Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. Penguin.

Blog Summary

This post explores how empowering others transforms leadership from direction to collaboration. Vision grows stronger when shared—and ownership turns followers into partners.

SEO Keywords: empowerment, shared vision, leadership development, team collaboration, trust, flexibility, Simon Sinek, The Leadership Challenge, James Webb Space Telescope, Habitable Worlds Observatory, VisionCasting, Citadel Professional Solutions

Next in the Series: “Hope and Fairness — The Twin Virtues of Sustainable Leadership.”