Blog Posts

By Dr. Scott.

As this series on visionary leadership and visionary leadership best practices has taken shape, I have slowly come to realize that two key topics are needed to complete the series: maintaining a long-term vision and seeing out the vision (and what comes next!). 

Over the past weeks and throughout this series, we have explored visionary leadership from many different angles and approaches.  Achieving a long range, goal-oriented vision takes all of the various skills we’ve discussed, but it also takes time, sometimes years to succeed.  Visionary leaders and organizations face the recurring challenge of maintaining motivation and continuing to work toward the vision.

This week, then, we explore strategies and best practices for maintaining a vision long term.  Last week, we examined techniques for Building Visionary Cultures necessary to achieve long term visions in which we discussed some best practices for building, nurturing, and cultivating visionary cultures.  Those concepts are important here as well and readers are encouraged to review Building Visionary Cultures as well to provide greater context for our discussions below.

This particular series on visionary leadership is part of the Madison School of Professional Development Wednesday Leadership Blog and also includes the 6 Characteristics of Visionary Leaders, Strategic Innovation and Inspirational Communication, Visionary Leadership and the Situation, and Visionary Leadership and Personality Types.

Build a Visionary Culture

Last week, in Building Visionary Cultures, we did a much deeper dive into the ways visionary leaders and organizations build, nurture, and cultivate visionary cultures.  A visionary culture is of course necessary first step toward successfully maintaining a vision long term.

In visionary cultures, all stakeholders are motivated to see out the vision.  This buy-in is a powerful tool that benefits all levels of the organization.  Collectively, members of a visionary culture perform at higher levels, have greater levels of satisfaction, have lower levels of turnover intentions, and feel a greater sense of purpose and ownership.  Again, these are powerful tools that drive innovation and that are often keys to vision achievement and business success.

Exemplify the Vision

To build a visionary culture and to maintain the culture and the vision long term, leaders need to, as the idiom goes, “walk the walk” and “talk the talk.”   In other words, leaders must exemplify the vision in their actions, in the promises they keep, and in their leadership. 

Visionary leaders are the heart and the foundation of visionary cultures.  Leaders must therefore exemplify the vision through self-monitoring  to maintain a positive attitude and their focus on long term goals.  A leader’s optimism and confidence should be apparent and contagious.  By daily expressing a belief in the team, their accomplishments, and the progress that is being made toward the vision, leaders, both individually or collectively as a team, maximize team member buy-in, help sustain the visionary culture, and ensure continued progress toward vision achievement. 

Get Situational

Attaining a long-term vision will include both minor and major setbacks.  Visionary leaders will need to navigate these uncertainties using all of the leadership tools in their tool belts.  Things like situational leadership, innovation, and risk taking will all come into play. 

However, one of the key ways that visionary leaders navigate uncertainty is through clear, consistent, and transparent communication.  Involving team members and encouraging feedback, discussion, and consensus strengthens morale, invigorates individual and team buy-in, and helps visionary leaders and their teams stay the course and achieve success.

Beyond this, visionary leaders will sometimes need to adjust their leadership style to overcome setbacks, especially setbacks that threaten team cohesiveness or organizational culture.  Even visionary leaders need to sometimes make use of Situational Leadership styles to manage their people, build stronger relationships with stakeholders, and drive projects forward.  For a deeper dive into ways that visionary leaders can more effectively apply Situational Leadership Style, see my earlier blog in this same series: Visionary Leadership and the Situation.

Sustain the Culture First

Except for in rare instances, visionary leaders typically cannot realize their vision on their own.  Visionary leaders need teams and entire organizations to make their dreams reality.  Therefore, sustaining the visionary culture must be a, if not the, top priority.  When leaders focus on sustaining the culture first, many other elements of business fall into place, such as improved customer service, product and service innovation, reduced turnover and happier employees, etc.

One of the key ways to sustain a culture, and especially a visionary culture, is to implement  a clear system of recognition and rewards.  Visionary leaders must always seek to recognize individual contributions during meetings and in other interactions.  Beyond these somewhat informal, but never-the-less instrumental recognitions, an overarching system of rewards should also be put in place.  These can be financial incentives such as bonuses and raises or an increase in PTO.  Or incentives can be merit based, such as small, even humorous awards to build team comradery or much bigger and more official awards, such as performance awards or team member of the year awards.  An additional way to increase team morale is to have team members nominate or vote for award recipients.

Final Thoughts

Visions are of course a view of a future state.  Defining the desired change and mapping out the steps needed to realize the vision is the easy part.  If the second part was as easy, everyone would be a successful visionary, innovator, and entrepreneur.  Instead, true visionaries are the ones who actually see out the plan and achieve the vision.  This takes time and dedication.  It also takes hard work and a team with a shared vision.  To reach the goal, visionary leaders must maintain morale and the visionary culture needed to be successful.  Building a visionary culture, exemplifying the vision, and sustaining the culture are tools that visionary leaders can apply to realize their vision.

Dr. Scott Eidson is the Executive Vice President of the Madison School of Professional Development and holds doctoral degrees in both history and business.  When not thinking about leadership, he’s usually thinking about surfing or old Volkswagens.