The Window

The Thing People Aren’t Seeing

Let's talk about something you deal with as a leader that you’re not saying out loud, even if you don't think you're a leader yet.

You get a vision. You can see exactly where this is going. You can see the outcome so clearly it feels real before it's even happened. And then you turn around to share it with your team, your family, your business partner, your best friend, and they look at you like you have 6 heads and you asked them to pet one!

No excitement. No urgency. Sometimes outright resistance.

And here's what happens next, if you're honest. You get frustrated. Maybe even a little offended. You start wondering why they don't see what's so obvious to you. Why aren't they jumping on this? Why are they dragging their feet, or worse, actively pushing back?

I really need you to hear what I am saying. That reaction they're having isn't stupidity or malice. It's ignorance. And I need to define that word before you react to it, because it doesn't mean what you've been taught it means.

Ignorance simply means lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about a specific subject. That's it. It's not an insult. It's not a character flaw. It's a fact about where a person is standing, not who they are.

The View From Your Window

Here's the picture I want you to see. Imagine a building with three floors. You're standing at a window on the second floor. From where you're standing, you can see the whole layout of the street, the traffic pattern, the building going up two blocks down, all of it. It's clear to you. It makes sense to you.

Now someone on the first floor looks out their window. They see the sidewalk. They see feet walking by. That's it. That's all their window shows them.

And someone on the third floor looks out theirs. They see rooftops. They see the horizon. A completely different picture than yours.

None of these people are wrong. None of them are foolish. They may not be in the wrong place. They are simply not standing where you're standing. They cannot see what you see, because they don't have your vantage point. They were never given your window.

This is exactly what happens with vision.

When you were given a vision for your business, your family, your calling, that vision came with a specific vantage point. You are the one positioned to see it. Not because you're better than anyone else in the room. Not because you're smarter. You are simply the one standing at that particular window, at this particular moment, for this particular purpose.

So when the people around you don't share your excitement, when they question it, when they hesitate to follow, understand what's actually happening. They're not necessarily not rejecting you. They're not doubting your ability. They genuinely cannot see what you see, because they were never standing where you’re standing.

You cannot be angry at someone for not seeing through a window they were never given.

When the Team Doesn't See What You See

Think about the business owner who wants to take the company fully remote, cut the office lease, and reinvest that money into the team. On paper, to the leader, this is obvious. Less overhead. Happier employees. More money for salaries and growth. The vision is crystal clear from where they're standing.

But the team doesn't see it that way. Some are scared. What if this fails and there's no office to come back to. What if working from home means they get forgotten, passed over, disconnected from the culture they've built relationships in. What if this is really about cutting costs and calling it innovation.

The business owner gets frustrated. Why can't they see this is good for them? Why is everyone acting like this is a threat instead of an opportunity?

Here's what this entrepreneur wasn’t thinking about. The team was never standing at that window. They don't see the financial breakdown. They don't see the five year plan. They don't see the research on remote productivity this business leader spent months reading. All they see is change, and change without a window to look through feels like danger, not opportunity.

So the owner has two options. Get offended and force it through, resenting the team for not being grateful. Or slow down enough to build windows for people to look through. Share the numbers. Share the plan. Answer the fears directly instead of dismissing them as resistance.

The leader who chose the second option didn't get everyone on board overnight. But six months later, after showing the team the actual data, after checking in personally with the people most afraid, after proving through consistency that this wasn't abandonment, the same employees who fought the hardest became the loudest advocates for the new way of working.

The vision didn't change. What changed is that people were finally given enough of a window to see part of what the business owner had been seeing the entire time.

Your Vision Doesn't Need a Vote

This changes how you lead. Instead of demanding people catch up to your excitement, your job becomes helping them see what you see, as much as that's possible from where they stand. Some of them will never fully see it, and that's not failure on their part or yours. Some visions are only meant to be fully seen by the person who received them.

Stop expecting agreement to prove your vision is real. Stop measuring the validity of what you see by how many people get excited about it. Your vision doesn't need consensus to be true.

Don't expect others to get your vision. It wasn't given to them. It was given to you.

Fátima Bey
International Speaker, Author & Founder of MindShift Universe

A MindShift Universe production

© 2026 Fatima Bey. All rights reserved.