Not that long ago I wrote that leadership vision is paramount to an organization’s success. It is a testimony to core values, and sets the tone for direction and company operations. Truly successful visionary leadership transforms lofty ideas into reality.
In my work, I have seen visionary leaders successfully:
- Dream optimistically, encouraging and supporting their people’s inventive activities.
- Develop great brainstorming skills that overcome challenges most leaders would deem infeasible.
- Turn negatives into positives. More is always accomplished with a can-do approach, which lifts morale and feeds the visionary culture.
- Give people the benefit of the doubt, looking toward a positive outcome.
- Sought after to create solutions, bringing notoriety and opportunity to their organization.
As Dr. Beatrice Chestnut describes in The 9 Types of Leadership: Mastering the Art of People in the 21st Century Workplace (Post Hill Press, 2017), visionary leaders are always working on “the next big thing”. They want their organization to be a leader in its field, setting the pace for others to try and catch.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
But sometimes, visionary leaders see so many opportunities that they end up chasing their own tails. Their idealism, creativity and focus on the future draws them away from important tasks. Visionary leaders:
- Have too many ideas going at one time to properly prioritize, manage or execute.
- Brush off negative concerns from their staff, avoid problematic issues and overlook warning signs or mistakes.
- Find ways around roadblocks that impede their visionary process, often breaking the rules. Employees may then feel resentful and frustrated.
- Lose interest in non-creative tasks and duties. They ignore everyday responsibilities when their ideas seem more compelling.
- Prioritize activities based on what’s most fun for them.
- Have blind spots that lead them away from the actions required to understand and address serious issues.
- Are so unfocused that they fail to grasp current trends or the business climate, thereby hurting the company.
- Have vague conceptual ideas that management cannot understand or appreciate.
- Aren’t detail oriented and have difficulty performing accurate work, meeting commitments or completing assignments.
- Think and speak so rapidly, caught up in their own little world, that they stop listening to others.
- Have such a strong emotional need to dream that they take their company in the wrong direction. They unconsciously feed their personal needs more than those of the company.
- Seek quick wins and disassociate from anyone who slows their creative process (with facts).
- Fail to address problems they deem insignificant.
As you can see, strong visionary tendencies can render leaders inefficient and cause pain to those around them. While companies certainly need visionary thinkers, everyone must maintain the proper balance. The best leaders successfully juggle the present and future, focusing on the organization’s urgent needs and prioritizing them over tempting pie-in-the-sky ideas.
What do you think? Do you recognize successful visionary leadership in your organization? I’d love to hear from you. You can call me at 561-582-6060, let’s talk. And as always, I can be reached here, or on LinkedIn.
