How Visionary Leaders Guide Their Organizations Through Change
As the pandemic transforms into a new normal, organizations will rely on visionary leaders who are skillful at navigating change.
What is Visionary Leadership?
Visionary leaders’ essential capability is being able to connect to their own north-star vision (a general direction or calling, if you will) and simultaneously being able to engage the larger organization in a change journey to find out what it will take to develop and manifest a shared organizational vision.
Because all change processes go through an “in-between” or liminal stage, often feeling like a crucible, visionary leaders’ early grasp of what is possible helps create a container for everyone else to contribute and join them in the visioning process. The key is to hold both their own vision as well as accept emerging ideas long enough that a synthesis emerges that is energizing to all.
Success Models in Practice
The Grove has a history of supporting visionary leaders in both shaping and realizing their visions. We looked back at some we have worked with to harvest learning.
Erik Rolland, who we have written about before, emerges as a classic example of a visionary leader. He has just accepted the presidency […]
Uluru at Dusk, Central Desert, Australia 
In metallurgy, crucibles are used to melt metals and combine elements under strong heat. Alchemists used crucibles in an attempt to turn base metals into gold, and they explored how their own magical interactions might cause a transformation to occur. So the crucible has become a metaphor for human containers (or processes) that can handle a great amount of tension – generative and challenging – for a shift or for something new to occur. The container needs to be strong, and at times also malleable and flexible, depending on […]
Statues at the Louvre 
Gisela Wendling, Ph.D., joined The Grove in June 2014 as a new senior consultant and Director of Global Learning. She brings to The Grove a fine-tuned mindset and deep experience in organization change. Gisela describes transformative change as a process occurring over time, with distinct phases and a momentum that, if guided well, can overcome obstacles and resistance.
Change is an increasingly pervasive phenomenon. In this global world we cross increasingly more boundaries, cultures and belief system. We have expanded our sense of freedom and exponentially increased the range of choices we have. At the same time many of us have become disconnected from a sense of belonging to place, community, and the organizations we work for. The complexity and ambiguity created by these conditions are obscuring the path and patterns of change contributing to increasingly more change processes being interrupted, neglected and even abandoned.