Who is The Visionary Leader

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Podcast where power is refined, impact sharpens, and leaders move from success that performs to powerful legacy. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Hello. Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Elara Sage. And today I want to talk about who is the visionary leader. What are the characteristics, the qualities that make not just a visionary leader, but a great one? Our world right now needs visionary leaders. If you haven't noticed, we're going through a great time of change. And change is about death and rebirth. You know, if you consider the moment of your birth, you don't remember it. If you consider the moment that you came into being as a cell in the womb of your mother, you don't remember it. If you think about the moment you die, you don't know when that'll happen and you don't know what it'll look like. My point being death and birth, that transition, that threshold, that movement from one to the next, is the energy, the space of the unknown. And death always leads to birth, leads to death, leads to birth. It is the cyclical and ever evolving nature of creation. And we don't know what it looks like. So in a time where nations, cultures, worlds, the earth, the entire world is moving through death and rebirth. The leaders who rise are the ones who can lead when nobody can see. Where are we going? What's going to happen? And this is very valuable. So what is a visionary? Jonathan Swift, quote, vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others, unquote. Being a visionary is the ability to see what others cannot see. Now, you can be a visionary and not be a leader. You may even know an uncle or a neighbor or one of your friends who has really great ideas, comes up with visions, insights, imagination. That is extraordinary but never actually accomplishes any of them. That's a visionary, absolutely. But a visionary leader is someone that can then create a movement, create action both for themselves and for others. So the ability to not only see what is not even here, not even quote, unquote, reality, and simultaneously guide, lead other people to either take action on something that they can't see or to see it in some way or another. Maybe you've experienced that friend or that uncle or the neighbor who expressed their imagination, their idea of creating something so clearly that you could see it, you could see their vision. So there's a couple of qualities of a visionary leader outside of being a visionary, right? Outside of seeing something that others cannot see. The first quality. Is the ability to direct action towards what can't be seen without necessarily knowing the path. As I said, death and birth is unknown territory we don't know what's going to happen. And largely in any framework that you are creating a vision that does not currently exist, whether that is a small vision of a business that does not currently exist, or a very big vision of a national government or a new banking system, The vision is the end result, the thing that is possible to create, and then there's all the steps in between. The visionary leader doesn't know how to get there, doesn't have it all mapped out, because nobody's ever done it, nobody's ever walked that path. And while they might have some steps in a state of knowing, they might see some steps along the way, if it truly is a vision, a newness, a new direction, a new creation, something that nobody's ever done, there's going to be a lot of unknown along the way. So the visionary doesn't have a complete map, but they can give a direction. They can say, we're going this way, and can allow their team, the people that they lead, whoever that is, to creatively meet the moment, to creatively solve the puzzle. So it's this beautiful balance between seeing the vision, having an idea of the direction of the vision, yet creating the spaciousness, the availability for people to meet the moment and solve the problems that arise. Because that is where so much of creation exists. Creation is not about a starting point and an end point. Creation is about this moment, right here, right now, this moment, wherever this moment is in the journey. Because really, the journey doesn't stop. You know, recently I wrote a book and I published it. But the writing the book, the point that you finish writing the book, well, that's one ending, right? Then you have to edit the book and you get the book all edited, that's another ending. And then you have to proofread the book, and then you have to interior design the book. And then the book launches, it gets published, it's brought to the world, that's another ending. But then write again. What is there? A beginning? Writing the book, getting it published is just one part of now. You get to go talk about it and bring it to the world. So there's never truly an arrival we can have. It's like the stops along the way of the road trip, right? If you had one continuous road trip that never ended, but you had all these stops that you were going to go see this and you were going to spend time here, that's life. It's one continuous road trip that just has milestones and markers along the way. And the more that you understand this, the More relaxation comes into the act of creation. Because it's never about getting to the thing. It's about here. Now, what is this moment? And a visionary leader understands this. They can simultaneously hold the milestone of whatever that is and allow the journey of the road trip. Because we all know that road trips aren't really that enjoyable. When you just get in the car and you drive straight through and you don't ever stop and you get to the place and then you drive straight back, that's not fun, that's driving. That's not a road trip. A road trip is where you allow the entire experience to unfold naturally, organically. So a visionary has to be able to hold that direction, to hold the milestones and allow for the people, the teams, whoever they're leading, to creatively turn on the music, buy the snacks, make the stops that enrich the entire experience and the creation. So another characteristic of a visionary is of course imagination. As I said, the visionary can see. Imagination is the ability to experience, to see and very viscerally be in something that doesn't exist in this here and now, right? You can place yourself in another reality because if you believe that imaginary is imagination is not real, then you have some work to do. Imagination is really just tapping into different forms of reality. And being able to bring that forth in this reality, create it in this reality. So the imagination is the opportunity to see what others cannot see. To see what doesn't exist in this reality but is possible, or maybe not possible, to connect to what doesn't already exist here now. What a beautiful gift that is. Simultaneously again there is a straddle that the visionary leader must be able to hold here. Because imagination is beautiful, but without action it's nothing. It's a vision. That is all it is. Like I said, a reality somewhere else. But it's not this reality, so you're not living it. You know, one of like my. One of my favorite documentaries is the Fry Festival. I don't know if you've ever seen it, sorry, Fyre Festival F Y R E you know about a visionary leader who saw this really extraordinary festival and went to create it and failed miserably and costed a lot of people anguish and stress and a lot of discomfort. And if you haven't seen the documentary and visionary leadership is something that you are or something that you feel called towards, I recommend you go watch it because it's important to recognize in yourself where you aren't straddling both the moment you are in right now. What is quote unquote in your physical reality and what is the vision that you are holding? And those have to be held simultaneously. So in the Fire Festival, he holds the vision and he disregards what is actually present in the physical reality. And so he's delusional. That's what happens when a visionary leader can't hold both worlds. Because being in a vision is fun. It's imagination. Facing reality is uncomfortable, right? So it's really fun to be in the imagination and say it's going to happen and tell people, you know, to make it real. But if you're not facing what is really showing up and the discomfort of that, you're not creating it. You're just in the illusion of it. And that's what happened to him. And he ended up all these people arrived at an island expecting one thing that he had told them, and they experienced something, something very, very different. And he was insistent all the way up to the end. Now we can call him a scammer, a fraud, and he may well very well be that, or he may just be very, very delusional. Who knows? All of it is possible. I believe that a lot of these people who end up being frauds who are delusional, they believe very strongly in their vision. So to the point that they disassociate from the current reality, right? So a visionary leader needs to be able to straddle both of those. And if it goes the other way, right. If you get too caught in the current reality and, you know, too caught in the problems that are arising in the failures that are showing up, you cannot. You also cannot create the vision, right? Because you'll get lost in the failure and you might give up or you might not actually end up creating what you were seeing because you fell prey, so to speak, to the physical reality. I always say the great geniuses of the world fail over and over and over and again, right? Thomas Edison, I believe, you know, failed like a thousand times creating electricity. That's the story anyways. Thousand times. If he would have been only rooted in the physical reality and not holding that vision, right. He wouldn't have succeeded. You know, the great visionary leaders need to be slightly delusional. You need to believe so strongly in what you see, even when the physical reality is telling you, no, it's not possible. This isn't. This can't happen. Look, it's failing. Look, it's failing. Look, it's failing. Right? That's the power of a visionary leader. And the third aspect of a visionary leader is emotional intelligence. And I speak about this often, because it is very much where our future is going. The leadership becoming emotionally intelligent, the leadership becoming intuitive. And the reason a visionary leader has to, or is a true visionary leader simply is emotionally intelligent is because, for one, there is a pulse. There is a pulse to the people you are leading, an emotional pulse, a creative pulse. There is a pulse to life, to humanity. If you're not emotionally intelligent, you can't feel that pulse. You know, your people go cold and you're still talking to them like they're hot on your trail. Meanwhile, they've disconnected from you and they've started pulling away. Your team or the people that you're leading are confused, but you can't feel that. And so you're still communicating as if they understand and you're just creating more confusion. There is never just one consistent energy in humanity. We are very deeply emotional beings. Whether people express it externally or not, they are having emotional responses. And sure, if you are leading highly emotionally intelligent people, they will manage that largely on their own. But most people are not emotionally intelligent because we haven't been taught it. And most leaders need to hold the emotional intelligence and help the people that they're leading recognize that pulse, recognize the shifts in the room, recognize the shifts in the business, the movement, the creation, as well as the pulse of creation itself. You know, we've been taught that we're just produce, produce, produce, produce. But that is not reality. That is not what you see in nature. Nature does not just produce. Nature goes through cycle after cycle after cycle. Creative energy moves cyclically. And the minute a leader is disconnected from this, then they do not. They're not tapped into resource. Ultimately, it's about resource. Whether that resource is money, whether that resource is creativity, problem solving, communication, resource of people, resource of something tangible, items that are needed, all of that resource. Think of the rain and the sunshine. Those are resources of the planet to create life. The resource of oxygen, air, right? Those are all resources, and they're cyclical. One place goes into a drought, another place is flooding, and then vice versa. And the bigger cycles of, you know, the ice age and the. I don't know what they call the years of the heat, all cyclical. So a visionary leader has to understand and be able to feel. Not intellectually understand, but feel these pulses, feel these movements, feel these shifts in their team in the world, so that you can stay in coherence with resource, whatever, and all of the resources that you need to, to create what you're desiring. Because whatever the creation is, it requires resource. So the ability to hold direction without knowing how you're going to get there. Number one, have imagination and still stay grounded in the physical reality, too. And be emotionally intelligent, be intuitive to feel, sense, and follow the pulses and cycles of the various layers to your creation. Your people, you as the. The visionary leader. Your people, your business, the world, whatever it is. The other thing that's really important to understand with visionary leadership is it's very lonely. One of the downfalls of it, quote, unquote, I don't really know if I'd call it a downfall, but that's a word I think we can all understand is its loneliness. Because you're the only one that can see, and that's lonely. And a lot of visionary leaders feel not understood or misunderstood because of this. They feel a little bit of separation between them and the people that they lead. Not because they're higher than those people or those people are lower than, but simply because they're connected to the vision and what they're creating in a different way than the people that they're leading. So it's their responsibility to continue to communicate and express and try to help the people that they are leading see, feel, resonate with the vision as much as possible. As that will help close that gap. It helps the people that they're leading as well. So I want to read another quote about visionary leadership. This is a French name, so excuse my pronunciation. A quote by Anton de Sant Agus Pare. No, excuse me. Exupare. Antoine du Saint. Exupare. All right. If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. So that's what I was saying about being able to hold division and point a direction, but allowing the people that you are bringing on to your creation, their own imagination, their own delight at what you are creating. Because now you have a team of people, for one, who are passionate, passionate about what you're creating versus I'm a worker who's nailing this nail into this board. I am part of this creation. I am building this to explore the ocean, to commence a journey that no one has ever been on. Right? And that passion is what grants your team the connection in each and every single one of them, uniquely to creation. Because everybody is a genius in their own way. But if you just tell everybody to be a hammer to the nail, you aren't eliciting that genius. You aren't inviting them to think beyond hammering the nail into the wood. And then you really are the single mind. Controlling a team versus a hive. And I use the word hive because bees work together. Hive mentality, right, is where a community or a group of people who are working together, you want the hive mentality, you want them to be thinking themselves towards the same vision, Then you open the doors of the imagination, not just in your own mind, but in all of those that you lead. So do you see yourself as a visionary leader? You know, a visionary leader doesn't have to be somebody big, doesn't have to be the president or, you know, this big placement. A visionary leader can be a tiny group of people, of three people. It can be a visionary leader of anything. It's not what the vision is or what you're creating. If you recognize yourself as a visionary leader, then it's about understanding how to carry through with your vision. Trusting the vision, trusting that it matters. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Much love. [00:29:57] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Poweredge podcast with host Alora Sage. Connect with us on Instagram at the poweredge or on YouTube @alora sage.