Acronym

Interesting post that I am sure will get a lot of response. Looking forward to reading what others have to say.

My biggest challenge to Aaron's thoughts go directly to the third to last paragraph of the post. I totally disagree that leaders, or department heads as they are defined in the post, are "ultimately unable to see and influence the big picture for an entire organization."

If someone rises to the top rung of their functional area, they NEED to have a good handle on the bigger picture of the association. If they don't, they shouldn't be promoted to that level. That's also why I have a hard time with the delineation that was presented, as I think that a visionary is a type of leader, and although they oftentimes have a different way of thinking, their skill set is not necessarily better than that of someone leading a functional area.

Lastly, to Aaron's last question, as a young professional myself, I have a question for all of you more experienced professionals: is it even possible to become a visionary leader? I guess I tend to think it's hard to become a visionary if you're not wired that way, but perhaps I'm wrong?

Interesting post that I am sure will get a lot of response. Looking forward to reading what others have to say.

My biggest challenge to Aaron's thoughts go directly to the third to last paragraph of the post. I totally disagree that leaders, or department heads as they are defined in the post, are "ultimately unable to see and influence the big picture for an entire organization."

If someone rises to the top rung of their functional area, they NEED to have a good handle on the bigger picture of the association. If they don't, they shouldn't be promoted to that level. That's also why I have a hard time with the delineation that was presented, as I think that a visionary is a type of leader, and although they oftentimes have a different way of thinking, their skill set is not necessarily better than that of someone leading a functional area.

Lastly, to Aaron's last question, as a young professional myself, I have a question for all of you more experienced professionals: is it even possible to become a visionary leader? I guess I tend to think it's hard to become a visionary if you're not wired that way, but perhaps I'm wrong?

Hmmm. What you're calling visionary, I'd probably call leader (and maybe your leader--department head--I'd call senior manager?). But semantics aside, I agree that a critical individual leadership skill is understanding the whole system. I agree with Bruce, too, that you need that skill as a department head, though obviously some individual department heads can apply that skill cross functionally better than others. So for me the leader/visionary distinction isn't the issue. It's simply developing your own individual leadership capacity, which very much includes "vision" (being able to see the system and the interrelationships of its many parts).

How do you get there? First, know yourself. Take those self-assessments that you mention very seriously and work your whole career to get detailed feedback from colleagues about what impact you have on people. It's kind of related to Bruce's question. Yes, I think you can become a visionary leader, but doing that might involve working through your own personal style issues first. Bottom line: individuals with exceptional leadership capacity know themselves very well.

Second, understand systems. Learn about other departments. Seek out cross-functional teams. Request details in other areas. And study up on systems generally. It's not just the details of your system, it's also the dynamics that happen in every system.

Third, learn how to communicate at a very deep level. It's the glue that holds "leadership" together. Having a vision doesn't get you very far if nobody understands you or you can't engage the right stakeholders.

Let's not add a third leg to the leader-manager stool since that dichotomy alone produces passionate discussions.

Being visionary and/or having a vision is accessible to leaders, managers, and everyone in between. It's a quality and a capacity, some of which is probably innate or personality-based and some of which can probably be developed by using various tools and processes. A decent amount of research on the topic is out there.

When I think of the most visionary individuals I've hung around they were either incredibly deep specialists or very broad generalists. The deep specialists could envision powerful possibilities for a particular domain, and the broad generalists were incredibly adept and making unlikely connections and inspirations across disciplinary and functional lines to imagine new directions.

I agree, disagree, but we're probably on the same page for some of the story.

A leader can take an organization somewhere, but only with vision that is clearly communicated. Marcus Buckingham states (and this is taped to my wall), "A leader succeeds only when they find a way to make people excited and confident in what comes next."

So who defines "what comes next?"

The visionary?

Perhaps!

I see managers heading up agendas or departments executing the handed down objectives. A good manager (one who has leadership skills and vision), excels at this and probably graduates to a higher-level position.

So what about this visionary?

Is he sitting in the mountains, legs crossed, eyes shut in deep thought?

The visionary person might not be a leader... he might know where the organization needs to go, but no one will follow if he cannot lead.

So I see this as two positions, not three.

1. Managers... who carry out objectives

2. Leaders... inspire others to follow down a path that isn't always defined, but can confidently navigate it.

I see vision as an attribute that can be applied to either.

Okay folks, here's the thing about this discussion. It seems to be seeking to find definite boundaries so we can categorize people. The truth is that no one leader or manager or any person possesses all the key qualities that make for the 'best in class' at any level. Smart people use all the brains they have and all that they can borrow... and the best ones know when to do the borrowning in time to deliver resutls or avoid catastrophes.

As for leaders, the best ones know this: They know when not to lead. They are well aware of what their strong suit is (or are) and they have the wisdom to step aside and allow someone else to lead when an emerging need calls for someone else's strong suit. Not all situations call for vision to be at the forefront for the leader in charge to make a decision. There are many key qualities that a leader needs. The greatest trap that many executive leaders fall into is this: They believe they have to have all the answers when in fact this is wrong and causes much Pepto Bismol to be consumed at that level. Executives have to know HOW to get the answers. WHERE to go; WHO to tap. Great leaders are those who put the best and the brightest around them. Take the role of President of the USA. There is the President and there is the Presidency, the latter of which is what really is driving what comes out of the White House. It's a collective resource of minds, talents and the wisdom that our President has to have the will, courage and wisdom to tap into and apply at the right time. No President has all the answers and the smart ones will embrace that truth, get their ego out of the way and expertly utilize the resources around him...he may even tap those resources that have vision or a different one from himself.

Almost everyone possesses some level of visonary prowess. I will say that most all of the leaders I know and work with possess visionary skill. How far they go with it and how they apply it is a different story. To some it comes more naturally than others. The problem is we receive messaging from early ages, get pegged and we start to tell ourselves stories about what we are capable of or not. So, we begin to see ourselves as lacking when in fact if we worked on developing certain areas, we'd see some lift. Certain skills may never be our towering strength but we can surpise ourselves with what we are capable of developing in our brains.

Some people need to work on vision or they have vision in a very narrow area. People can learn to think in certain ways and shift they way they see things. My clients and I work on this. Our brains were built to create new neural highways. It's not as hard as we used to think it was. Leaders are not born, they can be made and we need to shift our paradigm about this. We can learn to be leaders. There are certain archetypes or models that we still cling to as to what a "leader" looks like, talks like and sounds like. In fact they come in all varieties and bring with them all sorts of talents but never are all of them present or present at the same skill level.

Let's open our minds to possibilities in people not their perceived limitations. There is much that goes into what makes people great at something and not so much at something else. More than can be discussed here. In my work as an executive leadership coach I can tell you that transformational shifts can and do occur when we begin to let go of limiting beliefs and reconnect the dots in our minds about what is possible in ourselves and others.