6.1: Characteristics of Visionary Leadership

  

Visionary leaders help people understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. They develop visions for a better world. They think about ways to communicate those visions. A visionary leader thinks deeply about messaging. They spend time thinking about how to design events and communications in ways that will forward the groups mission. Visionary leaders talk about communication and they attend to the internal communications within an organization as well as with the outside world. 

Messaging is the story you tell to help others make sense of what you are doing. When we interpret a situation we always bring our past experience and our opinions to the situation. A good communicator thinks about ways to tell a story that resonates with the values of their audience. Two concepts that are useful for thinking about messaging are framing and hegemony.

Jim A. Kuypers defines framing as "a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner. Frames operate in four key ways: they define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. Frames are often found within a narrative account of an issue or event, and are generally the central organizing idea."[50]

A famous example of this is the way those arguing for abortion rights frame abortion as about a pregnant person’s choice over what happens in their body. Whereas anti-abortion activists frame their movement as favoring the life of the unborn fetus. This has come to be boiled down to two ferry different frames: pro-choice or pro-life.  Each way of framing the issues tries to get you to see the issue in a way that encourages you to support their cause. They put a picture frame around the issue that makes it make sense from their point of view. 

Another helpful concept for messaging is hegemony. The philosopher Antonio Gramsci argued that oppressive social forces can use violence to coerce people into doing what they want. But a much more effective way to maintain power is to convince people that the current social order is good for them. Systems of domination rely on a combination of force and consent. He called the way ideas help to anchor a system of domination “hegemony.” And he argued that movements against oppression need to work to create “counter-hegemonies.” That means, ways of understanding the world that show the ways mainstream views prop up oppression. 

An important part of a social movement involves working to challenge dominant hegemonic ideas and developing counter-hegemonic cultures. The expression decolonize your mind is based on this idea. Our minds have been colonized by ways of thinking that prop up social systems that are not good for us. Social movements can present alternative ways of understanding the world and they can criticize dominant ways of seeing the world. This visionary work can help people to see the pathways toward a better future.

Visionary leaders are cultural workers who help us to inspire others to imagine a better world, to imagine pathways to getting there and to see what is wrong with the current social order. A good vision is not just a far-off utopia. Instead, it calls us from where we are to do real practical things to take steps toward a better society. 

  

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Reading Response Questions:

Please reflect on this reading by writing a short response to these questions. Your answer can include personal experience, and the writing does not need to be formal or polished. You are welcome to write as little as a sentence and as much as a paragraph. Think of it like journaling. 

1. Explain the concept of framing in your own words and give an example of two different ways to frame the same thing.
2. Explain the concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony in your own words and give an example of a mainstream idea that supports domination. Also give an example of a counter-hegemonic idea. 
3. For an organization you are working with, or interested in, look at their communications and evaluate how well they do at messaging and framing. What do you find effective and what do you find less effective?
4. What are your strengths as a visionary leader?
5. What are ways you would like to develop as a visionary leader?