Visionary Leadership

Visionary leadership is a leadership style that is responsible for setting the vision, hence the name. The visionary leader may not be the one who implements the vision, that may not be their strongest suit. A visionary leader is good at seeing the optimal future that a business or an organization may be able to attain, and then pass the baton to the practical or more action-oriented leaders or managers to fulfill the vision or to color it in.

Visionary leadership, Harvard Review has stated, sometimes fails because they are not the most practical at the applied science of how. They are more of your ‘what’ people, or idea guys, implementation takes a different discipline than visionary. Think of mission and vision statements, and then the details within a meeting of minutes. These are all going to be very different than one another.

Look at the vision as the goal, or the what. Then look at the mission as the how. Take for instance the mission and vision statement of GE: General Electric Company’s (GE) mission is to usher in the next industrial era and to “build, move, power, and cure the world.” Its vision is to focus on businesses that connect to its core competencies and is a market leader. Can you see how this reflects the concept shared above?

Many organizations and people confuse the two concepts and this is why we often have dreamers in management…