Let's take a look at how Visionaries work.
How do they show up? What do they look like? How do you recognize them? Well, here's the first thing you should be very aware of: Visionaries talk to think.
Now, you are highly likely here because you are a Visionary. You took the quiz, your base Style is that of a Visionary, and you may not be just so aware of this because it just comes naturally to you. It really is - to take that old cliche - for you, it's like a fish being in water and asking what is water?
But for you, it's just natural to talk to think. You'll chat and talk and work things out, and sometimes Visionaries will start 180 degrees the opposite direction from what they actually think might be the case because they want to test what they think might be an answer. They want to test what they're going to do next. So they may often say something that's there to get others to push back. They're trying to work out a solution.
And the very first 'aha' I'd like you to take away from this particular lesson, if you are a Visionary, is that can be horrendously confusing for other people, particularly if you're in a position of authority. If someone is reporting to you and they show up when you're in talk to think mode, that can be really, really confusing. We're going to talk more about this a little later, so let me move on to the second way in which Visionaries show up.
They start with yes. Their tendency is to say, of course we can. Could we ship 500 tons of our product? Yes. Could we ship it by Thursday?
Of course. Can we ship it to Hawaii? Uh, yes. They have a tendency towards yes. Again, we're going to see the importance of that a little later on.
Now, I've already alluded to this third point, but I want to pull it out separately because it has big implications for how other people working with you Visionaries see and process what you're sharing with them. Visionaries have the ability to hold two entirely incompatible notions until the very last moment when a choice has to be made between them. In other words, the whole team could be talking about whether or not to build a new factory in location X, and if you have a Visionary boss, that can be holding yes and no - two incompatible answers to that question - firmly in their minds with no concern about holding each of them as firmly as the other, right up to the point at which a decision has to be made.
Now you add that to the talking to think, and you have a recipe for what might feel like a lot of confusion on the part of people listening to Visionaries. Here's someone who's talking to think about two incompatible things. How could that be? But as - again, very likely you're a Visionary - to you, this just comes naturally. This is just part of who you are.
And again, we've already talked a little bit about this fourth point, but I want to again pull it out and emphasize it. Visionaries tend to slide to positivity. That's their nature. They're prepared to take risks. We've seen that they're therefore going to interpret future circumstances, the way things will work out, the current situation more positively than negatively.
Visionaries tend not to be what my mother would've called a moaning mini. They tend not to be, to use a good Irish phrase, nippy. They don't moan a lot about things. In fact, they get irritated by people who moan a lot because Visionaries tend to see the positive side of most things.
Something to bear in mind about Visionaries is hyperlinking was invented by them and for them. Well, I made the by them thing up. I don't know whether or not the guy who invented hyperlinking, whose name I've forgotten but did know - Doug something, we'll check it later - was a Visionary or not, but certainly hyperlinking is absolutely the way in which Visionaries work.
They'll go not from A to B - they won't even start at B. You'll know this if you work with a Visionary or you are a Visionary. They'll start at Q, jump to Fred, back to green, over to Mars. They'll hyperlink, you know, not just within the topic under consideration, but to a totally different topic.
This makes meetings with Visionaries fun, confusing, bewildering, exciting, all sorts of things, as we're going to see. A little link to that is that Visionaries have a high shiny blue ball syndrome. They love, as we've already seen, starting things. Newness means a lot to Visionaries. That's why I think about that Pixar movie Up, if you remember it.
The little dog, Doug - that dug. The dog wants to be involved in everything but can't help himself. Every time he sees a squirrel, he's up a tree, and Visionaries have a high squirrel factor. They read a book - it's the most exciting thing in the world. We've got to - we've got to implement all of this.
They read another book - let's do this one. And don't forget, they could be in incompatible, as we've already seen. The last time you want to meet with a Visionary - you listening to this as a Visionary - the last time your folks want to bump into you is Monday morning when you've come back from a vacation or a conference that you've attended, 'cause you come back with your tablet, your yellow pad, your notion database filled with squirrels - tons of stuff that we absolutely must do.
That's the nature of the Visionary. And finally, Visionaries tend to have one of two work modes: hyperactive or idle. Now idle - I don't mean sitting around doing nothing and shirking - I mean idle, just letting the batteries recharge, letting things process, going into the equivalent of sleep mode for a while in order to come back hyperactively.
And again, you can see how for you as a Visionary, that's natural. You get passionate about the things that you do, you invest an awful lot into it, and then you need to go and blow off a couple of hours at pickleball - whatever it is that you do to blow off a little bit of steam - so that you can come back excited and hyperactive to the next thing. So all of these contribute to the picture of how most Visionary leaders work, how they show up.