7 must-have qualities for a great visionary
Continuing where we left off in the previous article (CVO), here are a few things you ought to do if you want to become a great visionary leader…!
Taking off from the previous article “Transitioning into a CVO from a PM (Product Manager)!” that quoted 5 important qualities a product manager ought to possess / work on & polish so as to becoming great at envisioning stuff, developing ideas & turning them into great innovations.
And the first one listed there is the VISIONARY MINDSET which is the stub of this article.
Big picture thinking / visionary thinking could be the terms often associated with your job role as soon as you step into product management and that could stay on with you right up to the CXO levels, albeit with varied percentages. There are some really great world-renowned visionaries who have left their legacy behind for the ages to admire &they tend to carry a few qualities that sets them apart from the rest.
Look at some amazing product lectures that have been delivered around the world over the last decade & you’d notice how they stress on the fact that “a product manager ought to possess a magical way of putting things into perspective & it isn’t enough to just be good at envisioning stuff but one also needs to be right about it more often than not”.
But what is it that largely makes them right?
One of the key aspects to being a great visionary is being able to see deep into the future & analyze the risk & have a clear measure of the impact. And of course, being able to articulate it clearly to various team members, EXECs, leaders alike, does go without saying.
There’s so much confusion when it comes to the terms Visionary & Leader owing to how they also carry a close-knit relationship. It’s important one understands the difference well to begin with.
Leading / Leadership when could simply mean garnering the support of all members, motivating them, fostering an environment that everyone could thrive in & building a culture around it.
For ex: a delivery manager / project manager does lead their teams towards important deliverables, timelines & they do that by establishing clarity over that minimal chunk of work to be finished over a given period of time, ensuring that the same gets propagated to all the concerned team(s) & member(s), adhering to some tried & tested methodologies if they have to.
And then they are constantly motivating their teams to keep their morale up, not to give in to the pressure, not to get into working in silos but to rather collaborate well as a team & to see that they are giving their best (sometimes even punching above their weight), finishing up all their tasks assigned within stipulated timelines by taking the necessary amount of ownership & standing up / being totally accountable for their quantum of work.
Visionary leader is often known to carry a perspective that is bent towards innovation usually from a futuristic perspective that they believe in so strongly & then may work their way through influencing other EXECs, leaders, stakeholders towards believing in it.
For ex: a visionary leader would often be the one who has supreme clarity on what the goals are, whether that would suffice to put the org. in-line with the mission. They would also be pioneers in breaking a high-level goal into short-term & long-term goals.
They would also be able to envision possibilities some of which may require them to consistently challenge the status quo, empower teams & stakeholders by creating a sense of purpose, encourage creativity & innovation across teams within the organization. That done they would use up their position to continuously motivate & guide teams towards those goals.
So, are there any qualities that could be associated with these visionary leaders so as to set them apart / make them great?
7 Qualities of a Great Visionary Leader
Lets’ go over each of them in detail...
1) Emotionally Intelligent
Leaders no doubt, ought to score high on emotional intelligence (EI) given the constant need to connect with people around & to do it at a human & psychological level could demand a lot at times.
The need to build EI could multiply manifold if one is to play a visionary. Visionaries are often the ones who have a higher degree of clarity & would also be the right ones to tackle any question directed towards strategy. But, the one thing that’s common across visionaries world over, is how they may be pressed for time given those multiple engagements across touchpoints & all that in parallel if one’s operating as an external consultant. But that’s only fair given their role, which is also why they ought to possess a mastery of the 5 principles, viz:
self-awareness
self-regulation
motivation
empathy &
social awareness
2) Focused
Visionaries often operate high-up & are managing-down. It is quite natural that one’s more often than not dealing with an exodus of information from many touchpoints, which could also be the reason for a shaky focus if not the total lack of it.
As one may already be sold over the mission & has partaken interest in drafting the vision, one ought to know how to stay aligned to it at all times. The alignment ought to lead to some razor-sharp focus & also ought to convert into a passion of some sort. And focus comes with all of these:
disparate & divergent experience
strong business acumen
being well-informed
ruthless at prioritization
trusted by handing them the autonomy
3) Innovative
The degree of innovation which could also be defined as the ability to disrupt the market with an entirely fresh idea is often known to define the proportionality of success an org. would be able to witness. Spearheading all innovation / being craftily innovative ought to be one of the primary functions that a visionary ought to play.
As the name says it, a visionary could be thought of someone who to possess a natural ability (may not be entirely wrong to call it a flair) to employ a sense of futuristic, innovative thinking so as to be able to generate ideas that go beyond the conventional scope / the ordinary / the way of the world at that given period in time. To qualify as innovative, one ought tick off these checkboxes:
futuristic
tech-savvy
disruptive
mesmerizing
continuous value addition
4) Creative
There’s a subtle difference between being innovative and creative. When innovation focuses on the ability to be futuristic, think of a new dimension, coin something entirely novel, creativity has more to do with the way things get done / are represented. Not every innovation in the world could be clubbed under the “creative” label & not everything creative could be termed “innovative”.
Remember the whole point of innovation is to be able to add continuous value. But at the same time, one also ought to possess the ability to use up all resources available & come up with unique / impressive ways to solve problems. To qualify as creative, it is mandatory for an idea to be:
original
solve problems
artistic
minimalistic
surprising / mesmerizing
5) Risk-taker
If one’s thinking about generating futuristic ideas & looking to disrupt a certain market space or the way certain user groups are functioning over their regular workflow, one’s already breaking the “mundane” cycle (aka “herd mentality”), which is not possible without taking enough risks.
For someone wearing the “innovator” hat, one ought to acknowledge the importance of taking risks, but one ought to know how to deep-dive, getting to the bottom of situations, scoping all the necessary variables that happen to contribute to those risks, factoring it all in & tackling it with a sense of purpose. Beware, calculative risk-taking & blind-risk-taking are 2 sides of a coin & to pull that off sucessfully one ought to be:
thoroughly analytical
a lateral thinker
an impeccable problem solver
an eternal optimistic
extermely confident
6) Resilient
What’s true of every risk taker is how they are mature enough to understand that the odd failure could be unavoidable & is a part & parcel of life. When it would be entirely spurious to say that they aren’t at all affected by it, they may have their own coping mechanisms to clean up the mess & get onto the next endeavour sans allowing any of those highs / lows affect them.
A visionary ought to possess the resilience to manage all that stress stemming out of those situations & also possesses the capability to bounce back from abysmal lows if need be. Resilience is surely a factor of:
thriving in ambiguity
stress management
adaptability
taking challenges head-on
composure when the chips are down
7) Articulate
What’s the use of a saying that someone is a visionary & can generate absolutely mind-blowing ideas but can’t communicate them well to the groups of people who are perhaps the top-brass decision makers? That would be a futile waste, would it not?
A visionary ought to be a master at putting things into perspective & articulating it to get the message across to the stakeholders in a concise manner. One may have to use up all their experience gained over the years towards covering the nuances over a given subject / domain per se, which is why visionaries so often than not are the senior most people in the team. And to be able to articulate well would mean:
unparalleled knowledge of the domain
thorough understanding of the audience
top-notch enunciation
exhaustively experienced
empathy-first mindset
An Interesting TAKE-HOME EXERCISE:
So, the next time you meet a visionary leader F2F & happen to be fortunate enough to get some time off with them, make sure you ask them for the qualities one ought to possess to become a “great visionary” & how they ought to keep building / strengthening those skills once they happen to acquire them!