What makes a visionary leader

The flair and charisma so often associated with the visionary leadership style must be balanced by discipline, focus and a specific course of action. A visionary leader ensures the vision becomes reality by stating clear goals, outlining a strategic plan for achieving those goals and equipping and empowering each member to take action on the plan at the organizational, team and individual levels.

For individuals, working under a visionary leader who encourages innovation and unites the organization towards one goal can be energizing, with studies indicating that visionary leadership style can lead to greater employee engagement, more productive teams and improved outcomes. A visionary leadership style can inspire a team to boldly strive for and achieve new heights and unite an organization to take one giant leap forward.

Leading with vision in your role and in your career can inspire you to aim for the moon—and beyond. Fill out the form to get program details and access to valuable resources. Fill out the form below to get started and take the next step toward your educational goals. I understand calls and texts may be directed to the number I provide using automatic dialing technology.

I understand that this consent is not required to purchase goods or services. Laissez-Fair leaders need commitment from their team to achieve results when there is little pressure to achieve in the short term. Coaching leaders need the ability to ask deep, critical questions to get their team thinking at different levels and develop their skillsets.

So, what are the skillsets that a quality visionary leader will require? Strategic thinking is a pre-requisite when visioning for the future. This style of thinking allows you to identify the current challenges your team and business are facing, what the meaning of those challenges are and the best ways to deal effectively with the situations now and in the future.

It may seem obvious, but the vision that a visionary leader communicates has to be inspiring, engaging and motivational. EQ can make or break a leader. They need to be self-aware, understanding what their emotions are telling them and building their natural positive state, and also self-reliant and self-driven. Those personal traits are then complemented by their ability to understand and influence the emotional states of others, getting them to buy into the visions and missions that will drive the company forward.

Having a clear understanding of the effect the vision and mission will have on other people allows the visionary leader to build awareness and compassion as they push towards the goals. We often hear leaders talk about co-operating with their teams to get results. Collaboration goes that one step further, where you link the skillsets of people you work with, with the goals and objectives that will encourage growth and development.

Collaboration means synergising the relationships you have and creating opportunities for others to show their best work and attitude. There is little chance for a visionary leader to get results on their own. They need the support, engagement, drive and motivation of other stakeholders to achieve what they know they can envision. By encouraging and engaging others, it makes the vision more attainable and gains commitment from the team.

Visionary leaders know that the top of the mountain is the objective and they are fully committed and focused on that. But they also know that any mountain that can be climbed involves a journey that can be hazardous and so needs resilience.

Concentrating on what needs to be done to get to the final goal means they are realistic on the tasks and projects that can be carried out, gaining and building commitment from others on the journey to the end goal. Although leaders know and follow guidelines on what has worked before, visionary leaders use that term deliberately to develop the mindset of innovation and creative thinking.

Although a vision can be ethereal and hard to picture at times, the essence of a mission that inspires people can determine a greater commitment from everyone involved. These eight components compliment each other to form a strong alliance and assist the visionary leader on their journey to achievement and success. There are many reasons. Seldom do we go through crises like the recent pandemic and come out unscathed. Visionary leaders can give people confidence where there is little, freedom to express themselves where there may be fear, and a mission to aspire to where there may have been confusion and chaos.

Whatever environment society and business find themselves in, a visionary leader gives the people hope and inspiration that the future will be just as good as or better than before. When crises hit, the subliminal reaction is to hunker down, deal with present conditions and focus on survival. What visionary leaders can do is look beyond the current dilemmas and, using far-sightedness and imagery, determine what the medium and long-term focus should be on.

They can foresee what the end goal should be and the journey it will mean for them and their team. By having this vision, it clears the fog and allows others to see the end goal with clarity and certainty.

Trust is always the result of previous actions, and if a leader has shown vision in the past, they incite their teams to build trust in them again for future situations. The community impact vision eventually adopted by the national board was the culmination of experiments with more human service visions and strategies in different mid-size cities across the country.

Your organization may not be ready for—or even sympathetic to—bottom-up vision development. When Dominic Barton visited a wide range of more junior partners around the world as new Managing Director of McKinsey in , he realized that the vision for a new McKinsey would be found not in the corporate office but rather in knitting together the most successful experiments from a mosaic of entrepreneurial innovators who were already transforming how the firm served its clients.

Many of those partners who contributed their thinking to that effort went on to become more senior leaders in subsequent years. Every situation will be different, but here are a few tips to improve your chances to get involved and do some vision development. Because developing vision for an organization sets the stage for strategy and higher performance, it will always be seen as an essential capability for top leaders.

Learning by doing is a gift for anyone on the organizational chart with the courage to dream and speak up. Strategic Thinker Visions have to be planned for and thought about strategically. Good visionary leaders will prepare for what they want the organization to look like and create strategies for how they can move towards it. Again, they might not have all the technical details, but they can see and plan for the big picture.

Intelligent Risk Takers Moving toward a new goal or addressing a vision is a risk. There is no guarantee that strategies will work, but visionaries are comfortable with the uncertainty and take as many measures possible to ensure the plan is successful.

Skilled Communicators Effective visionary leaders have the ability to cause others to see where they are going and agree to the move toward the new vision. They will likely use their charisma to cause others to understand the larger picture. Expert Organizers Unlike transformational and charismatic leaders , there is an emphasis on visionary leaders creating the team around them. They will be a part of the process to put together departments, functions, and operations that help them reach the new vision.

Intensely Focused and Enthusiastic In the pursuit to improve performance and spur change, visionary leaders are intensely focused. Their eyes are set toward the goal, and they will do all in their power to create a pathway to accomplishing it.

Visionary leaders have the self-control and self-discipline to effect position change and inspire those who report to them. It is hard to follow a leader that does not exhibit the traits they want to see in others, and good visionary leaders understand this. One of the most important characteristics a visionary leader can display is enthusiasm for the vision. Their passion and zeal should reach others and inspire them to feel the same.