Five Traits That Prove You are a Visionary
When you start a business you tend to take on just about every role there is within the business. You develop the idea of the product or service you are offering, do business development and sales, create marketing materials, send invoices and do all the bookkeeping. We have all been there. In the early stages its necessary to wear every hat, but that isn’t sustainable while growing.
As the business grows, things have to change; they must change. Just like GCE Strategic Consulting, you have decided to implement EOS®, and you evaluated whether you fit the Visionary role or Integrator role. Most solo founders often consider themselves the Visionary of their business, because they came up with the idea for their business, so that must automatically qualify them for the Visionary role.
Unless you have the following traits, you may not be the Visionary you thought you were. You may very well need a visionary leader to drive your organization to the next phase of growth, and they might align better with the EOS role of the Visionary than you would.
Consider this list for a moment and be honest with yourself if you have these traits:
Emotional Intelligence – Are you aware of your emotions and aware of peoples feelings? Unless you have empathy and can relate to your team, you will never connect to your team's hearts, and your vision will never become a reality. You must have the ability to inspire your team members for them to realize their greatness.
Imaginative – Do you spend your life dreaming of how to change the world even if just a small portion of the world? Can you see beyond your world, and encourage others to dream? Are you constantly looking for ways to fix things, craft things, change things to be better? If you can’t answer yes to one of these questions, then its likely you aren’t a visionary.
Persistent – Visualizing the direction of the product and business is the easy part. If you run away from difficulties and setbacks when times are tough, then you may not be the right person for the right seat. Being a strong Visionary requires you to realize that achieving your vision may not be easy. You have to be willing to address the challenges in front of your team, identify opportunities to adjust and pivot so that the business can course correct. Visionaries are presented with challenges, yet they always find a way to persist.
Courageous – Visionaries encourage their teams to fail fast, fail small and often fail as long as they adapt and grow along the way. Visionaries are courageous and take calculated risks. If you are a true Visionary, you don’t fear the failure that may come with trying something new, but you do fear not taking the chance and regretting it.
Optimism – Have you ever been in a room with a bunch of people talking about a topic or idea that you were very passionate about and everyone knew how passionate you were? Visionaries are positive and hopeful people. They don’t take things personally and understand that everyone has good in them. They encourage others to have their vision and help others without expecting something in return. Visionaries are driven but may be less driven than say an integrator.
Visionaries aren’t just good at developing ideas; they must inspire great people to believe in their vision so that everyone marches to the same level of excitement. Great Visionaries work with others to flush out their vision and research their ideas, test their ideas, validate them to ensure they will be successful. You can’t just put your thoughts into a pretty powerpoint presentation, and that is your vision. You can’t just put ideas into the Vision Traction Organizer™ and then turn it over to your Integrator and team to execute. You must validate your ideas and vision, to constantly test it, to make sure that your team will be successful.
Consider this for a moment. Steve Jobs was one of the greatest visionaries of the last decade. He was a visionary that relied on finding the best people to help design the next generation of Apple products. Jobs knew he needed intelligent people on his team, some even smarter than he was in a lot of ways. If his vision would become a reality, it required him to bring in people that he could inspire and make them believe strongly in his vision.
Are you a true visionary? To learn more about how GCE Strategic Consulting has helped Visionaries like you build a strong leadership team, supercharge your usage of EOS and establish a strong Visionary/ Integrator relationship, visit us here.