Visionary Leadership

This was originally published on Petrilli’s Visionary Leadership blog and is reprinted with permission.

I continue to meet leaders that confuse the concept of having a vision with setting goals. Our conversations sound a bit like this: Lisa: “So tell me about your vision for the company.” Leader: “Well, we’re looking to get into the xyz market and want to be number one in the local market by next year.” Lisa: “Those are great goals to have, but that’s not a vision. A vision is three-dimensional and has aspects of all five senses to it. It is a picture that describes what your company looks like and feels like when you’ve ultimately fulfilled all your goals and brought the impact of them to life.” I love to use Martin Luther King, Jr. as an example of visionary leadership. He had an exquisitely clear vision and expressed it magnificently in his “I Have a Dream” speech. While his goals may have included various steps along the way to passing civil rights legislation, his vision was so much bigger than his goals. His vision described exactly what it looked like when the real impact of his goals were felt, including famously…

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

You can see in your mind what that looks like and feels like so vividly. It is so much grander than a goal…it was his vision of what the accomplishment of his goals would bring to life, and how they would change the country. Your vision doesn’t have to be about changing the country, but it does have to provide an exquisitely clear picture for your team members about what they are all working toward. “Getting into xyz market and “increasing market share” are admirable goals, but they don’t say anything about “why” you do what you do, or what you want the world of your company to look like when you have accomplished your goals. Creating that crystal clear view of what your “dream” is for your company, or for your team, is crucial to providing your team the ability to see how their individual goals make sense along the greater path. They see the larger picture and the shining “city upon a hill” that they are striving to get to. Speaking of the shining city of which both John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan spoke so eloquently, look how Reagan brings the rich hues of his vision to life in his January 11, 1989, farewell speech to the nation…

…I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still…

Remember: Goals will move you along the path to your vision, but without a vision your team won’t really know where they’re headed or what they can look forward to rejoicing in when they arrive. There’s nothing very inspiring about that.

Lisa Petrilli is chief marketing, strategy and operating officer of the To Be A Woman Global Empowerment Platform, an experienced corporate executive having run a $750 million business within a Fortune 1000 company, and named a Top 20 CMO by Forbes for social influence.