But our research finds that the positive impact of visionary leadership breaks down when middle managers aren’t aligned with top management’s strategic vision. This can cause strategic change efforts to slow down or even fail.

When we think of visionary leaders, our first blush response is to think of CEOs. Widely celebrated people like Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Oprah Winfrey come to mind. But visionary leadership is not just important for senior managers; it also matters for middle and lower level managers, who play a key role in carrying out strategic change. Their ability to inspire their own teams and create strategic alignment — a shared understanding of and commitment to the company’s strategy — within them is a core element in successful strategy execution.

This is why company leadership frameworks typically list visionary leadership as a key leadership competency for managers. For example, Google’s data-driven Project Oxygen identified visionary leadership as one of the eight traits of stellar middle managers.

However, this emphasis on visionary leadership relies on an untenable assumption: that managers outside the C-suite are always aligned with company strategy. What if they are not?

We studied visionary leadership and strategic alignment in two service organizations in Western Europe (one in the energy industry and another in the transportation industry). Both companies were going through similar processes of strategic change, and creating strategic alignment throughout the organization was a high priority goal in both companies. We surveyed 136 managers and their teams to assess visionary leadership (rated by team members), strategic alignment in the team (determined by computing the agreement between team member rankings of strategic priorities), and the strategic alignment of the managers with top management (determined by computing the agreement between the manager’s ranking of strategic priorities and the CEO’s ranking of strategic priorities). We also interviewed several of the managers and their employees to get a deeper understanding of the relationships found in the survey research.

Our findings unambiguously support the conclusion that visionary leadership is a double-edged sword. When middle managers were aligned with top management’s strategic vision, things played out as the widespread view of visionary leadership would suggest: the more these managers engaged in visionary leadership (by communicating their vision for the future and articulating where they wanted their team to be in five years,) the greater the shared understanding of strategy in their team, and the more the team was committed to strategy execution.

For managers that were misaligned with the company strategy, however, the dark side of visionary leadership became evident. The more these misaligned managers displayed visionary leadership, the less strategic alignment and commitment were observed among their teams.

Our interview findings extended these results. Employees of misaligned visionary managers indicated that their managers created confusion and uncertainty about what the company strategy entailed. This disengaged their teams from the company strategy. As one employee from a team with a misaligned visionary manager explained: “Well, we talk a lot about strategy with our manager. But I don’t see a clear company strategy. I rather choose to focus on my daily tasks and leave it [strategy] for what it is.” 

Whereas visionary leadership thus was a positive force when managers were aligned with the company strategy, it became a negative force standing in the way of strategic alignment when the manager’s vision diverged from the company’s.

The importance of these findings lies in the fact that they caution against what is common practice in many companies. Many companies invest heavily in leadership development. Almost invariably, visionary leadership is seen as a crucial leadership competency in such efforts.

At the same time, companies tend to invest markedly less in creating strategic alignment among their managers. Rather, managers are charged with aligning the organization around the strategy as if their own alignment with the strategy is a given by virtue of their position. Research on strategy execution has documented, however, that there are a range of reasons for why managers may not be aligned with company strategy (e.g., they’re too focused on the interests of their own business unit and can’t see the bigger picture). Managers’ strategic alignment cannot be assumed as a given.

How do you ensure that managers are aligned on your company’s strategy? Our experience working with companies around strategic alignment suggests it starts with creating strategic alignment among middle managers before strategy execution efforts begin. This should not be one-time communication but a dialogue; people will only take ownership of strategic change if they are consistently persuaded by its value. Our research suggests that such efforts are well-advised to ensure that companies benefit from developing their managers’ visionary leadership rather than suffer its dark side.
https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-visionary-leadership-fails

The result? Gallup estimates the cost of poor management and lost productivity from employees in the U.S. who are not engaged or actively disengaged to be between $960 billion and $1.2 trillion per year. Wow! What steps do leaders need to take to motivate their employees?

The workplace is evolving and shifting. As leaders, we need to realize that the wants and needs of our employees are changing. We saw this when we learned how to create a culture where Millennials and members of Generation Z can thrive.

The key to inspiring maximum performance from your team is not scoring them and offering standardized feedback based on their score. Instead, use a process that creates intrinsic motivation and benefits both the team member and the company.

Empowerment and motivation happen when people solve their own problems, and create their own aspirations and expectations. That’s why the outcome frame tool is a powerful first step. It helps our team find out what they really want and how they know when they’ve got it. It generates clarity and insights. Helping our people focus on the outcome they want to create, not the problems in the way, activates their reward (pleasure) network. Once our team knows what they really want, it’s time to create an action plan to motivate team performance.

To see each of these factors discussed in detail, please see the infographic below and my previous blog Why Performance Management Is Dead And Performance Motivation Is Here To Stay. (insert performance motivation vs performance management infographic here)

When you implement the above action plan, your team will begin to shift. They will be motivated to do outstanding work because they know their role is part of something bigger. They will realize they are valued and that achieving their goals is essential to the success of their organization. More importantly, they will begin to trust their leaders.

Trust creates reliable environments. Enriched environments are more reliable. Reliable and enriched environments equal ROI. A more enriched, interactive tribal environment is good for the brain and good for the business. The result? Team members making more connections, solving problems faster, figuring things out faster and innovating better.