Visionary Leadership
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
~ Warren G. Bennis
Business practices are centuries old – when there were small businesses with local customer groups and there was not much socio-economic pressure. With rapid industrialization in developing and developed countries, business over the years has become large/larger in size and complex in nature and character.
A modern business enterprise is multi-product and multi-location (and multi-national) and serving to a wide variety of customers across the globe. Businesses and the business environment have been changing at a fast speed – both the changes and the speed of change being very important. As such, the impact of the socio-economic state and structure of the region (and the rest of the world) has become critical in business.
Objectives of A Modern Visionary Organization
- Serving customers more effectively and efficiently as compared to the competition (customer-centric approach).
- Keeping products and services appropriate to changing times and conforming to customers’ needs and wants.
- Running a business with a sense of earnestness and competition.
- Keeping the organization worthy to work for and to be associated with. Making your enterprise a great place to work.
- Earning profits and generating wealth through value addition and surplus generation.
- Adhering to ethical business practices, good corporate governance, and Corporate Social Responsibility norms.
- Earning respect from the people and the community
The above contextual shift in the management of businesses has necessitated the requirement of a newer breed of business managers and organizational leaders who can think globally and compete strategically. Such organizational leaders and executives with their proven competence can certainly drive performance across domains, industries, and borders.
A modern business leader or corporate manager as described above must carry a compelling vision of the future of the organization and must be able to inspire, motivate, and engage others to join him in holding this vision together. Such a visionary leader will be able to energise other members of his team in sharing the vision and working in collaboration with all others to turn that vision into reality.
Great Leaders must have two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate that vision clearly.
~Simon Sinek
A Visionary Manager as profiled above will further be able to formulate powerful strategies to outshine in today’s dynamic and volatile markets, respond appropriately to changing socio-economic trends and disruptive innovation practices prevalent in the industry, manage and coordinate various distributed assets, processes, partners, and collaborators, and most importantly manage all strategic alliances, outsourcing contracts, forward and backward integrative linkages with third parties.
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.
~Jack Welch
Important attributes & traits of visionary leaders:
- They exhibit a balanced expression of spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical dimensions. They solve day to day problems with a broader vision of the organization always at top of their mind.
- They have a demonstrated ability to lead the team; make the best use of team synergy and cohesiveness.
- They are effective communicators and possess the art of listening. Good senior executives generally listen much more than what they speak.
- They possess excellent conceptual, human, negotiation, and persuasion skills.
- They demonstrate their knowledge and experience during business interactions and meetings.
- They possess the ability to organize themselves, the department, and the enterprise.
- They practice effective time management and are clear about the urgent–important syndrome. They are punctual and love others being punctual.
- They are confident in their ability, experience, and decisions. They always care for their priorities and never procrastinate.
- They create an atmosphere of reliability and trust.
- They are masters in effective delegation.
- They love and respect their subordinates and team members.
- They possess the necessary self-confidence meaning that nothing comes as a surprise to them.
- They make valuable decisions and can substantiate how they were made that way.
- They possess excellent core values and a clear vision.
- They engage in empowering relationships.
- They practice creativity and innovation.
- Their perspective is broad, and they possess the ability to deal with a global network of human beings – in other words dealing with a multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional and cross-cultural workforce with a diversity of thoughts.
- They demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency in their action, brevity in expression, curtsey in behaviour, firmness in decisions, and tact in handling delicate and sensitive situations.
“Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.”
~Brian Tracy.
