It’s not that leaders don’t have visionary moments or that visionaries don’t have moments where they are called on to be leaders. It’s that these are two very different roles with two very different consequences on daily life.
Peter Drucker used to state that he saw no difference between a manager and a leader. To be honest, I struggle to come up with a differentiating characteristic for those two roles. The only one I can come up with is that we call someone a leader when we are introducing them and we call them a manager when they are getting work done. Traditional leaders may spend a small amount of time setting their own direction and thinking about the future, but by and large, it isn’t a new skill set.
Being a visionary is.
Visionaries are the people out in the wilderness. They are the ones trying to discover and communicate the future that no one has seen yet – the same future they are captivated with. They find little support for their views, often struggle to find the words to articulate the direction they are heading and sometimes suffer through years of neglect before they get what they are due.
A visionary whose time has come to help move an organization is a leader. But the leader is welded to the organization. They drive the community forward by their sheer presence, all the while knowing that they have to have a steady pulse on where the community is at. The leader has to know what the vision is and know what steps happen next.
The visionary can live out in the wilderness and never be acknowledged – for years. The tough role in our daily life is to know when we are wearing each hat. Are we in a visionary moment where our job is to walk out to the edge and see what could be? Or is our job one of leadership where we have to take stock of where the community we serve is at and slowly build the road brick by brick?
I only mention this because separating the two roles helped me recognize why an early venture of mine failed – and why so many around me keep failing. Visionaries love the idea that they could build it and the people will follow. But that assumes that the visionary’s job is to just call the play. The leaders job is to make the transition. When you are leading and engaging in your community, know which role they are asking you to play. Be visionary when it helps. Weld yourself to the community when you need them to move.
Don’t ever for a moment believe the being visionary plays the role of a leader or that all leaders are visionary.