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I’ve been trying to move up to the next level and want to be considered a candidate for senior leadership roles. I think I’m well liked, and I understand the company and our business deeply and care about the future of the organization. But recently I received feedback that I’m “not enough of a visionary leader.” What am I missing?
In most cases, leaders who receive this feedback do have a vision. When someone has decades of industry experience and extensive organizational knowledge, the problem is rarely a lack of strategic thinking. Rather, it is typically a lack of visible strategic signaling. You may be thinking like a visionary, but you are not showing it.
Boards and promotion committees are not mind readers. They might not have worked closely enough with you to understand the way you think, and they can’t evaluate your future potential based on what’s in your head. They can only evaluate you based on what you consistently project in meetings, interviews, and conversations.
Many high performers excel at answering interviewers’ questions with precision. They skillfully showcase their operational competence and deep knowledge — often the strengths on which they’ve built their success and that have won them promotions. But being seen as a visionary requires demonstrating a different set of strengths. Your priority in these interactions should be to show that you have a hypothesis about the future of your industry and your company’s place within that future, and that you are actively digging into data and trends to test that hypothesis.
A straightforward question often contains much that is unsaid, and your response can be framed to include strategic insights. A board member who asks about market share in the Midwest is also implicitly asking, “Why does this region matter? How does it fit into our long-term strategy? Who are our competitors, and what can we do to win?”
A visionary response might be something like this: “I think you’re asking because the Midwest has become a growth engine for us, especially in Kansas and Missouri. Our market share is currently 20%, but what is more important is that our top competitors are currently at 28% and 31%. They’re winning through faster distribution and their e-commerce presence. If we want to close that gap, we’ll need to rethink our channel strategy over the next two years.”
In the example above, you’re still answering the question but also showing the thinking behind it, and that there are larger questions you’d like to move the discussion toward. And you don’t need to have ready answers for those larger questions: At senior levels, reflection and synthesis matter more than responding with the speed and precision that got you where you are. Visionary leaders are comfortable sitting in ambiguity and looking for ways to test their hypotheses.
Your hypotheses may continually evolve to match the pace of change in the operating environment. Your task is to make your future-oriented thinking visible to any board or committee. Help them choose you by articulating your evolving hypotheses clearly, connecting the present to the future, and inviting them into your sensemaking process. You become known as a visionary for consistently demonstrating that you are interpreting the future with humility and rigor. Do that well, and people will see you as visionary.