Have you ever known anyone who’s had a brush with death? People’s reactions vary, but most often they seem to walk away from the experience vowing to make every minute count. They realize there are no guarantees when it comes to the future, and that’s okay as long as they are taking advantage of the present. They greet each piece of the future they’re given with joy for the opportunity to experience it. They are excited on purpose. Leaders have a responsibility to show people how to view the future with excitement without having to cope with a near-death experience.

So, what does get you excited about the future? I remember sitting at the dinner table as a child with my brother, mom, and dad. Our family was, in so many ways, a TV family of the ‘60s. We had dinner together almost every night and talked about all sorts of things. Every time a conversation got mired in a problem, my dad would express his faith that “in the future, technology will fix that.”

Keep in mind that this was in 1964, before eight-tracks, cassettes, and CDs—before handheld calculators, dumb terminals, and laptops. The princess phone was the latest thing in telephone technology, and if you had a color TV, you were the envy of just about everyone else. It wasn’t that my dad was seeing new technology every day. He had just seen enough of the things that were on the drawing boards to marvel at what might happen next. His belief that technology could solve any problem may sound naive, but he was excited about the possibilities. He eagerly read the paper, watched the news, and talked to the people connected with emerging technologies so he could learn. He was energized when he thought about the future.

What does that for you? There are so many people who believe that excitement about the future is a sign of cerebral ineptitude while cynicism marks the intellectual. Oh, please. Cynicism is the mark of a person who spends their time ignoring all the reasons that the universe provides, on a daily basis, for hope and renewal. There are many positions to take between Pollyanna and Dilbert. Leaders need to find their position and talk about what fires them up when they think of tomorrow.

I’ve always understood the expression “Can’t see the forest for the trees.” It wasn’t till I moved to northern Wisconsin that I realized not everyone does understand it. It’s easy, in this land of wonderful woods, to miss the beautiful expanse as you focus on one scruffy pine—wondering why someone hasn’t pruned it. The same thing happens at work.

People get caught in the daily cycle of “Write the to-do list, work on the to-do list,” and get frustrated by how many things remain on the to-do list at the end of the day. It would be silly to expect that cycle to be anything but a permanent part of our work life. There will always be more tasks than there is time. There will always be interruptions that usually end up dumping more tasks on our desks. Fast isn’t fast enough. Remember when you could blame things on the post office? Overnight delivery services, fax machines, and e-mail technologies have changed forever what we mean when we say, “I’ll do it right away.” More than ever, we need someone to help us break the cycle of tasks and encourage us to see beyond the day-to-day. Leaders are those people.

Most employees don’t have the opportunity to attend trade association meetings or have access to and the time to read industry forecasts, but they need the information obtained by doing both. That’s where you come in. As a leader it is your job to understand the bigger picture. How does your organization fit into your industry? How do you rank against your competition? What changes are affecting the way you and your competition will do business in the future? You need to know these things in order to make wise decisions and chart a course into the future. The people at all levels of your organization need to know these things, too. They need to know so they have a better context for understanding management decisions. So they can help customers understand changes in policies and practices. So they can think about their own future. So they have hope.

People get so focused on the task in front of them (the next deadline, the next round of budget cuts) that they seldom lift their heads to look at the big picture. It is in the bigger picture that we can find the hope that will lift us out of daily despair. If you want to call yourself a leader, you should know about the bigger picture, so talk about it.

It’s the vision thing. In my favorite leadership book, The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, the authors remind leaders that it is their job to imagine things for their organizations that are beyond the ordinary. That’s why people ask this kind of question. It is their attempt to understand, clarify, and get excited about their future. If they can’t get an answer from their leaders, they feel lost, adrift, and frightened.

I’ve sat in more leadership team meetings than I care to remember during which the leaders asserted how impossible it was for them to answer this question. Their excuses were many. “The things that are happening are confidential.” “Once we get things turned around, we’ll have time for this philosophy stuff.” “The competition is killing us; we may not have a future.” “We don’t have a clue.” These are the responses of leaders who are using their titles under false pretenses. Even with the constraints of confidentiality, can’t you say something? How will you turn things around if you don’t know what direction you’re facing? Why shouldn’t we engage our entire team in dialogue to help us understand and beat the competition? How can you not have a clue? Leaders have to talk about the future. All the time. At every opportunity.

What happens during your leadership team meetings? Maybe it’s time for you to discuss this question together. Whether you’re the team leader or a member, bring it up for conversation. If you lead from the middle of the organization, gather your peers and talk. Too often, everyone assumes that these issues are the responsibility of the organization’s real leader. Nothing is further from the truth. Real leaders exist at all levels of the organization, and the visions they have need to be part of the ongoing dialogue about the future.

After you have become known as a leader who thinks, talks, and cares about the future, start turning this question back to the people who ask it of you. Help them understand that they help the organization and themselves when they share what they know from their unique perspective.

It will not undermine your credibility as a leader if you talk about your vision for the future based on what you know today and revise your view when circumstances change—as long as you include the changing circumstances along with your revised vision for the future. It will enhance your credibility as a leader if you identify the unshakable values that will guide your own and the organization’s behavior, no matter what the future brings. It will focus and uplift your organization if you talk about things beyond the ordinary each time this question is asked.

Remember the last time you took a new job with a new employer? The reasons that brought you to that decision were undoubtedly many and complex. Did anyone ever ask you why? Probably not. Why don’t you do something different and start asking new hires why they decided to join your company?

Asking this question will provide you with insights on several levels. You’ll learn about your organization’s reputation in the industry. You might gain insight into your organization’s relative position on salaries and benefits. You might learn something about your reputation as a leader. You’ll gain insight into your new hire’s decision making process. You can gauge their reaction when asked an unexpected question. Lots of good information, don’t you think?

This is a great place to reiterate the value of silence when asking a challenging question. Years ago, when I was in sales, I learned a valuable technique. It was presented as a sales technique, but I’ve learned that it works in many different situations for many different people including salespeople, customer service representatives, spouses, parents, and leaders, to name a few. It’s deceptively simple, as many effective techniques are, and it works like this. When you ask a question, shut up until the answerer answers.

Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? Try it, and you’ll discover how difficult it is to execute. Most of us are uncomfortable with silence, and so we jump in to fill it. This behavior has lots of consequences—different ones in different situations—but all of them serious. In the sales world, the commonly held wisdom says it this way: The first person who talks after the question loses. When a questioner fills the silence after their own question, they do lose, big-time.

This is a perfect question to use to practice and develop your comfort with silence. It’s the really at the end of the question that guarantees the need for the answerer to pause to consider their reply. The addition of that simple word pushes the answerer beyond the quick, glib response they might have had ready after considering how much truth you’re looking for.

So, ask this question and wait, comfortably, while maintaining eye contact, and then wait some more. You’ll continue to be surprised how critical silence is for getting good answers to questions, and this question will give you lots of opportunity to practice.