Secrets of Visionary Leadership

From Manager to Visionary: Secrets of Visionary Leadership

The ability of managers and executives to lead has a direct effect on employee performance, productivity, motivation, and ultimately the company’s profitability. Effective leadership is crucial in any organization to help employees tap into their potential, improve performance, meet challenges and actualize the company’s objectives.

A leader is someone who holds a position of leadership – an executive, manager, CEO or business owner. According to one dictionary, a leader is “one who is in charge or in command of others.” In many organizations the perception of a leader fits this definition, but in an increasingly complex business world and an economy facing incessant change, a leader must be much more than merely the “guy in charge.” To make the company’s vision a reality and navigate today’s turbulent economic waters, our current model of leadership must evolve.

To actualize its vision, a company requires Visionary Leadership.

What is Visionary Leadership? A visionary leader is much more than just a manager, CEO or business owner. A visionary leader is one who motivates and inspires, one who brings out the best in his or her people and one who guides the organization to greatness. Companies whose leaders fail to do this can’t hope to survive in today’s economy. Are your leaders up to par?

What is it that makes a visionary leader?

When asked this question, most will describe the qualities that make a great leader; his or her behaviours, actions and the results he or she is able to produce. But these are not the things that make a great leader. Rather, these are evidence of a great leader.

The performance and results of a great leader are the expression of something much deeper. What really makes a great leader is not what they do, it’s what is going on behind the scenes that enables them to do what they do. Behaviour does not merely result from external circumstances – different people will respond to the same circumstances in different ways. Behaviour is the manifestation of what is behind the scenes in the mind, the cognitive processes that underlie all actions – our values, beliefs, drives, intentions, attitudes and perceptions. Visionary leadership is the manifestation of the values, beliefs and thinking styles of a true leader.

A leader that stands out from the rest will have particular beliefs, perceptions and mental maps that translate into actions and results. To be a great leader, first and foremost you must have the mind of a great leader.

Acquiring skills and knowledge and learning to mimic the right behaviours is not what makes the difference. A manager or CEO cannot produce the behaviours and results of a visionary leader if he is held back by limiting beliefs, detrimental perceptions or non-supportive attitudes. Without the mind of a visionary leader a manager or CEO will fail to produce the impressive results that make us wonder, “How does she do that?” 

I have an acquaintance who teaches leadership and works with some important groups in Montreal. We recently spoke of leadership and he spoke of what leaders do, their actions and behaviours, with no concept of what is going on behind the scenes. His idea of training new leaders is to get them all together and to tell them what leaders do so they can all learn to do it. But how often does it happen that we know just what to do but we don’t or can’t do it?

Up until recently, coaching and mentoring in organizations has been “performance-based.” This means that a coach or mentor was someone who had “been there, done that” and who could show others how to do it. The results with this approach have often mediocre. According to this approach, to be visionary leaders, all we need is to tell our managers and executive what to do, hoping they will be able to do it. But with this approach leaders leave coaching and training sessions and do things exactly as they had done before.  It is all too easy to fall back into habitual patterns and automatic behaviours. Why? Behaviour results from our mental programming. Unless we change our mental programming, we will continue to produce the same behaviours and obtain the same results. If we want to produce superior behaviours and achieve superior results, we need superior mental programming.

The secret to creating visionary leaders is not to tell people what great leaders do hoping they will be able to do the same. Visionary leadership results naturally from the inner workings of the mind -drives, intentions, values and beliefs- not from being told what to do. Yet this is precisely the model of leadership being used in most businesses.

To transform a manager, executive or CEO into a visionary leader, he or she must be guided in transforming limiting beliefs and perceptions into ones that enable him to produce extraordinary results. Reality is a question of perception, and a great leader has perceptions that enable him to create a reality characterized by greatness. A visionary leader has beliefs and convictions that enable him or her to tap into his or her own potential and awaken the potential of his or her followers. A visionary leader acts based on values and intentions that are aligned with desired outcomes and that lead to impressive results. 

A visionary leader is born when his or her values, drives and intentions

are optimized and aligned with desired results.

How can the employees of a company perform at their best and commit to a company’s vision without leaders who inspire and awaken? For a company to achieve greatness, the company’s leaders must achieve greatness first. Transforming a company occurs from the top down.

Yet transforming the inner workings of individuals seems like a lofty task. We all know that changing human behaviour is one of the most difficult challenges faced in an organization. How can we transform the mind of an executive, manager or CEO into that of a visionary leader? How can a leader rid him or herself of limiting beliefs and perceptions and align thinking, emotion and expression to produce desired behaviours and results effortlessly?

The answer? Just as there have been revolutionary advances in medicine and technology over the last several decades, impressive developments have also taken place in the field of psychology, developments that have led to a whole new approach to leadership. Cutting-edge leadership methods are now being used around the world in business and government. One such model is currently being used with the Belgian government, for example. But here at home, we are content to tell people what to do and wonder why visionary leaders who achieve greatness are so rare.