How to Be (and Stay) a Visionary Leader

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Everyone is searching for an edge to differentiate themselves in today’s chaotic, AI-infused world. One quality that stands out, especially in leadership, is vision. Being a visionary is becoming increasingly crucial.

Along with being a mentor and exemplar, being a visionary is one of the three features of an inspired leader, says Adam Galinsky, professor and chair of the management division at Columbia Business School. “To be visionary,” he says, “you need to (a) craft a big picture, values-based, optimistic vision of the future, (b) simplify and visualize into its core, and (c) repeat it again and again.”

Having “surveyed thousands of people worldwide on what they want in their leaders," James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, professors of leadership at Santa Clara University, report that "they tell us that being forward-looking (visionary, foresighted, concerned about the future, having a sense of direction) is second only to honesty as their most admired leader quality.“ IMD Business School professor Michael D. Watkins joins the chorus: “visionary leaders provide inspiring aims that help organizations overcome self-interest and factionalism," he asserts.

Peter Drucker: Visionary

As visionaries go, it's hard to match Peter Drucker, the father of modern management. In his career of 70-plus years, Drucker, who died in 2005, was the first to see management as a discipline in its own right, and to refine the theme over many years in books, articles, teaching, consulting, and public speaking. He extended his insights into pioneering efforts in executive education at the Claremont Graduate University's Drucker School of Management and firmly believed that successful nonprofit organizations could provide valuable management lessons for businesses.

Visionary Prophets

Drucker kept his visionary outlook sharp over the decades in part by keeping company with other visionaries. In his 1978 memoir, Adventures of a Bystander, Drucker explained that “Bucky (Buckminster) Fuller and Marshall McLuhan had been friends of mine long before they became celebrities.”

Famous as the inventor of the geodesic dome, Fuller was, according to Wikipedia, an “American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist.” ”Fuller would have done extremely well today," says Alec Nevala-Lee, author of Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller. He was "the embodiment of the kind of charismatic visionary who repeatedly finds investors in Silicon Valley, and he would have benefited enormously from access to modern venture capital.”

McLuhan's insights. on media and cultural theory still guide us today. In classic books like Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964, he gave us the still-relevant idea that “the medium is the message” and ushered us into the “global village.” He foresaw that “If it works, it’s obsolete,” and "There is no 'ahead' in a world that is an echo chamber of instantaneous celebrity."

One of Drucker’s closest leadership colleagues was Frances Hesselbein, longtime CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, to which Drucker served as a pro bono consultant starting in the early 1980s. When she retired at 75 in 1990, she co-founded the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, now called the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum., and her leadership won her the 2004 Visionary Award from the American Society of Association Executives.

Visionary Lessons and Observations

From the cumulative work of such management prophets, it is possible to draw a number of important lessons important lessons on becoming and remaining a visionary, in leadership and in other pursuits.

• Associate with and learn from visionaries in a variety of fields.
• Study the lives of visionaries past and present.
• Stay aware of changes in the world, in your own field, and beyond.
• Be intentional about implementing your vision, even if it requires considerable time and effort.
• Speak and write in language that stands out for its simplicity and clarity (eg, ("global village").
• Don’t be afraid of going against received wisdom.
• Consider how your vision can be expressed in service to others.

It’s one thing to call yourself a visionary, another to actually be one. It should be regarded as a high honor, not granted or taken lightly.

Ideally your vision will have positive effects, including on many people you will never meet personally. The full expression of your vision may not happen in your own lifetime. Understand that it is other people (now and in the future) who ultimately decide whether or not you are a true visionary.