Visionary leadership is hardly a new concept. Examples include names like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and many others. The main qualities that make a leader a visionary, despite their expertise in their field, are strive for innovation and trust in their teams.
In the modern business world, there are many struggles of the current environment that seem to put a halt to creativity and innovative vision. With all the uncertainty on a global scope, leaders tend to focus on operations and sustaining their organizations. As a result, they pay less attention on aspirations to expand and experiment.
In this article, we will explain what visionary leadership is and why it is important. After that, we will walk you through 3 ways to use it to motivate your team to strive for innovation and creativity in business.
What Is Visionary Leadership And Why Is It So Important
Visionary leadership is characterized by individuals who see the potential for how the world should exist. Once they spot it, they take the steps to get there. It’s a common misconception that you need to be a leader in order to become a visionary. Actually, you can become one by coming up with new ideas and implementing them.
Also, visionary leaders are not afraid to take calculated risks. After all, change could be daunting, but they tend to focus on solutions rather than problems. Also, it is fundamental to surround yourself with a team you trust and believe in. Keep in mind that mistakes are an essential part of the learning process. However, they can lead to creative ideas you overlooked before. By encouraging an out-of-the-box mindset in your company, your employees can create more innovative work processes. Therefore, you will push overall productivity and growth to a whole new level.
Another side of visionary leadership is the combination of self-awareness and personal responsibility. Effective business owners are more adaptive and resilient. Also, they are open to feedback from others to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and strategize. Leaders who are self-aware use this to make better choices. They know how their own behavior and relationships affect others. Consequently, they get an edge in competitive environments where they have to discuss different business options and negotiate.
3 Ways To Use Visionary Leadership To Motivate Your Team
In order to motivate your team to follow your vision, you need to be convincing and inspire them. Here are 3 actionable ways to use visionary leadership to boost your team’s performance and proactiveness:
Build A Vision Statement
Your organization needs to have a clear vision so your team can prepare for the future and ensure they work towards the common goals. Thus, a vision statement will be helpful as it will lay out the achievements you strive for as a business in a simple, concise way. If you want to inspire your team, lead with a shared vision.
A company’s vision statement summarizes your team’s purpose and helps leaders work in the same direction. It could be as short as one or two sentences but it ensures everyone is working towards something bigger than themselves. Also, a vision statement would give your employees a clear direction. This way they would know how different roles collaborate and contribute to the business as a whole.
It’s important to note that you don’t have to be the CEO/ business owner in order to be a visionary leader and push team motivation high. You may be a team lead at any level or an enthusiastic executive in order to refine the vision statement. What matters is to translate it to the colleagues you usually work together with in a way they appropriate it in their projects and tasks.
Create A Strong Company Culture
Strong company culture is the backbone of successful companies. To use visionary leadership successfully, you need to preach values that people aspire to. Companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have strong cultures. They help them to continue with their vision for what they believe in even when it gets difficult or challenging at times.
These brands invest time into building a cohesive team. If everyone is on board working towards one goal – spreading good vibes through creativity, then you have a powerful vision and a robust team that strongly identifies with it. Make sure you use a good business process management tool to lead your team effectively and make communication between employees easy. This way, the bonds within the organization stay strong at all times. Also, employee satisfaction rates will remain high and motivation and creativity will lead the way forward.
In 2022, visionary leadership also includes resilience to unprecedented circumstances and stress. Thus, a strong company culture would be equipped to meet the challenges of remote work transformation and promote positive recognition of employees. In fact, employees who feel recognized at work are 44% less likely to suffer from burnout. After all, if you have engraved giving props and acknowledging each other’s work into the core values of your business, then you have a powerful vision for the future.
Don’t Ignore Individual Goals
Getting your team powered up by the common company vision is great. However, make sure you don’t overlook the patterns that would lead your employees to these big picture goals. In a company, the vision statement should be tied to achievable personal goals so that each team member is motivated.
Therefore, it is important to build a vision that your employees can easily translate into actions in their daily work routine. So, make sure it is relevant to the company’s workforce. An organization’s vision is its guiding light. It should be clear and concise, but also broad enough to encompass all employees in the company. As a result, they can buy into it as well.
Mind you, being specific doesn’t always help if there isn’t an active communication campaign behind those words! Implement visionary leadership from the very start of your employees’ journey. Use our BPM onboarding features to make it simple to understand all business processes within the team, means of communication, project management template structuring etc.
Wrapping Up
Visionary leadership can be a powerful way to boost motivation and productivity in your team, but it’s important to set up the groundwork first. Make sure you have a clear vision statement, company culture that supports risk-taking and experimentation, and individual goals aligned with your business values. Once you have these basics in place, SaaSBPM can help you manage your team’s workload. As a result, they’d be able to focus on achieving the targets that will help your business reach new horizons.