Four Tips for Working with a Visionary Leader
Visionaries can communicate their great ideas and get people excited about them. While demonstrating exceptional resilience and adaptability as market needs change, new ideas seem to magically strike! It is exciting to work for a visionary as they can bring out the best in those around them by encouraging creativity and abstract thinking. And they have a knack for inspiring others to action.
But, at some point, these unique and special abilities can start holding companies back and, even, push loyal employees away. An excellent example of a visionary leader, or perhaps a caricature, is Elon Musk. As one of his former employees said about Tesla, "it was incredible," and "I’d never work there again." [i]
I am not going to speculate as to what it’s like to work for Mr. Musk. I can share, however, what I have heard from clients are the downsides from those who work for visionaries. Scope creep and turn-on-a-dime redirection, as the leader hops from idea to idea, is a common theme. They also talk about how visionaries get bored with the details and ignore the steps it takes to bring their ideas to fruition. Some around them start to feel defeated and exhausted.
Working with a visionary doesn't have to be a Jekyll and Hyde experience. If you’re someone who craves routine and order, and the constant barrage of ideas gives you a headache, you can still have a fantastic experience with a few simple tricks.
How to Work with a Visionary
1. Share their passion, enthusiasm, and drive
First and foremost, you have to want to be on this wild ride. The energy pushed out by your visionary leader will either drain you or invigorate you. For it to do the latter, you have to believe in the vision and be committed to delivering on it by providing the structure that is missing, which brings me to tips two and three.
2. Get clear on the criteria for moving forward
As discussed earlier, visionaries are the idea people, or more pointedly, they are often the LOTS of ideas people. While each one of their ideas could be a breakthrough innovation, rapidly moving from one idea to the next is not always practical or profitable. It’s important to have clear criteria on when to move forward with an idea and when to ignore it. To do so, you need to define how to prioritize the work, and then stick to it!
At Vecteris, we use a simple prioritization tool with clients that measures new product ideas in four areas:
- Volume: how many customers can we gain/retain with this new idea?
- Price: what kind of price point or price improvement can we expect?
- Confidence: How confident are we that we can get this done and to market successfully?
- Effort: How much energy or resources will this take to be successful?
With a simple calculation, we prioritize the ideas and have buy-in on what is most important. And we don't waver from the results. We trust the process to keep us focused on what's best for our business, so we don't get side-tracked, bogged down, or de-energized.
3. Give actionable plans with specific steps, job responsibilities, and deliverables
People with big vision often see the goal, but the steps to get there are glazed over. They can get bored with or lost in the process. The end goal won't matter, though, if no one takes the project to completion.
Our leadership team has built an action planning process upon which we can all rely. [ii] During our weekly executive team meeting we:
- review our quarterly "rocks"—the mini-goals that allow us to achieve our annual priorities; and,
- check-in on weekly to-dos (our goal is 80 to 90% of our to-dos completed each week).
We do this quickly, using the standard green, yellow, red designation. Any problems get moved to the “issue solving” section of our agenda so we can brainstorm and decide upon a solution.
Throughout the week, our CEO and any other team members add new ideas, suggestions, or problems to our weekly executive team meeting agenda. At that meeting, we take the time to discuss, prioritize, and plan as needed.
This approach has brought about a couple of great results: first, our broader team doesn't get distracted by un-vetted ideas or frustrated by continually changing plans. Second, the executive team has the accountability needed to make sure we get the most important projects done without distraction.
Last but, definitely, not least is not so much a trick or strategy as it's a reminder:
4. Be comfortable being honest
In any healthy relationship, be it personal or professional, honesty is vital. Your organization should have a culture of psychological safety so that you feel comfortable being honest, saying no, and questioning an idea without confrontation. According to Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School researcher and award-winning author, psychological safety “is the belief that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.” [iii]
We’ve worked hard as an executive team to build this safety with each other and with our team. We know each other, and each of our team members well. Some relationships started before Vecteris, but many did not. But we've purposefully built trust that is rooted in understanding.
Without this strength of relationship and psychological safety, we'd become, or we'd surround ourselves with, ‘yes, men' and ‘yes, women' who wouldn't be capable of helping us reach our goals.
Working with a visionary can either be the most rewarding or most damaging experience (or both, as that Tesla employee found). If you are working for one now, try these tips to make the most of the experience.
If you would like a copy of our prioritization tool and/or the executive meeting agenda we to keep us on track just send me an email at nicole.merrill@vecteris.com. Happy to share!
[i] https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2018/0423/956476-the-utter-hell-of-working-for-a-visionary/
[ii] https://www.eosworldwide.com
[iii] https://www.strategy-business.com/article/How-Fearless-Organizations-Succeed?gko=63131