Visioning: A Core Leadership Competency

Consider:

Visioning is a core competency for any leader seeking to land well and lead effectively in a new high-stakes role.

Since September 2025, I’ve been publishing the Land and Lead Podcast twice per month, speaking with leaders navigating new, high-stakes roles. One priority of these conversations has been surfacing strategies that other leaders could use as they land in their new positions and prepare to lead.

After eleven conversations, a shared approach has emerged; something I am calling visioning.

A company’s vision is commonly seen as a two-dimensional statement, something that passively hangs on walls or gets inserted into a presentation. However, what became clear across my conversations with these leaders is that, while a vision may be a stabilizing force, visioning is the active agent of transformation.

Visions capture an aspirational destination. Visioning, by contrast, is how leaders engage people in shaping that destination, connect the destination to the work, and sustain momentum through turbulence by keeping the destination in view.

Across six conversations, this strategy came into focus.

Step 1: Engage People to Shape the Destination

Ben Banks and Yariv Hasar described vision creation as an act of sensemaking; resisting the urge to declare a destination before understanding the organization they were inheriting.

Ben shared how he developed the organization’s heading through early stakeholder engagement:

“Within the first six weeks, I took my executive team off site and the purpose of that was to establish our navigational heading. Now, in that first six weeks, what I'm doing is I'm meeting with as many employees as I can to understand what we do well. And what are we doing that maybe we don't do so well?”

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Similarly, Yariv focused on clarifying what attributes of the organization should be protected, as well as what dynamics should be considered for a change:

“If you don't know where you're heading, any way will lead you there. So, you need to make sure that you know where you are heading and to spend some time with your peers, with your bosses, colleagues, board even, and of what good looks like? Where are the things that you would like to change and where are the things that you would like to maintain.” (See the clip)

In both cases, visioning was an act of slowing down to understand and engage before committing to a path forward.

As noted earlier, visions tend to stabilize once set. While strategies and tactics can shift, a clear direction provides continuity.

As Ben Banks explained:

“The navigational heading from my perspective shouldn't change. I mean, that's your ultimate purpose and vision. It's also the way that we talk about it and describe it is broad enough that you can change your strategies in order to achieve it. You might even change the markets that you're playing in. You might change your approach to a market in order to hit that navigation” (See the clip).

The innovation these leaders surfaced is that, while a vision may not change once set, visioning is an active process and as we will see next, it can serve as a rationale for change.

Step 2: Connect the Destination to the Work

Rima Alameddine and Liz Harr described how visioning shifts from creation to socialization; embedding the destination into decisions, explanations, and every day-direction setting.

Rima emphasized clarity and explanation:

“First of all is clarity; clarity in the vision, clarity in communicating this vision and understanding where you want to go…Everyone is clear, okay, why we want to go there? why we're doing this significant change transition? Is it because we are the most expert in this space, in this industry? Is it because we have the right capabilities? Is it because it's a…fast growing market? Is it because we can differentiate ourselves and be unique and really win because it's our right, and our willingness? So having the clarity of communication, vision, understand the why behind the what.”

Watch my conversation with Rima here.

Liz described how she and her colleagues embedded mission - a companion concept to vision - into decision-making:

“When a team knows the mission they can move mountains…One of the very first things we did was communicate our mission, who is Hinge? why do we exist? what are we known for? and what is the value that we deliver? Just rethinking that and communicating it and then injecting it into everything we do is really important because that means the teams understand every other decision we make” (Watch the clip).

Here, visioning meant connecting the destination to present-day choices; clarifying the “why behind the what.”

By keeping the destination front and center, these leaders gave people a reason to move, align, and act. Next, we see how visioning continues to matter during execution.

Step 3: Sustain Momentum Through Turbulence by Keeping the Destination in View

Greg Conner and John Harrison highlighted when vision proves its value most: during setbacks and ambiguity.

Greg described using vision to maintain altitude and perspective:

“But at the end of the day, as a leader, you can't get stuck in the setbacks. You have to be able to rise above those, keep the airplane at 40,000 feet and make sure that everybody understands that we're gonna get to the destination. We're gonna get there, we're gonna be successful, we are successful. And trying to keep people's heads up and not getting caught in those individual setbacks, because they're minor in the big scheme of things” (See the clip).

John emphasized how confidence built from past navigation supports focus through uncertain moments:

“We may not necessarily know the way through…the situation that we're in, but we've had so many situations historically or in the past where we have successfully navigated our way through. So, while I may not know the way at this moment, I have confidence in ourselves and our team in our ability to find the way. And that changes your perspective dramatically…there's kind of nothing that can really sort of put you off. Then it's like, all right, let's stay focused. Let's stay focused on what we know we're strong at. Let's stay focused on the end goal. And let's just work our way through it and we can get through it.”

Watch the conversation here!

Here, visioning functions as a recalibration tool; helping leaders lift people out of short-term thinking and reorient them toward the destination.

Visioning as a Core Leadership Competency

Across these conversations, visioning emerged as an ongoing leadership activity. While a vision is a longer-term orientation that stabilizes over time, visioning remains active. Because the destination does not change often, leaders can use it to engage people in shaping the organization, help them see the way forward, and provide stability during inherently unstable periods.

Based on these conversations, I observe visioning to be a core competency for any leader seeking to land well and lead effectively in a new high-stakes role.

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