How to Work with a Visionary (whether you’re an Integrator or not)
A founder once told me, “No one will ever care about this business as much as I do.” They were absolutely right… and absolutely wrong at the same time.
A founder saying “No one will ever care about this business as much as I do” is like a parent saying “No one will ever love my baby as much as I do”. Sure, there’s something to be said about being the one to give life to something that originated directly from your own efforts, persistence, and passion. Yet, as a former baby myself, I can attest that there are many who have loved and cared for me throughout my lifetime who are not my parents - people who have been deeply invested in my well-being and success, even if simply for a chapter of my lived experience.
The point I’m trying to make is that founders who embody the Visionary persona (sees the future, has countless ideas, drives the culture, holds the company vision) often feel just as isolated and misunderstood as we Integrators do. It takes courage, conviction, and unwavering belief in the mission to lead a team of individuals towards a vision that starts in your head, where you alone can see the true image of the future you aim to build. Translating that vision into something the whole organization can picture - and truly get behind - is its own challenge, and that process can feel extremely isolating to a dreamer like the Visionary.
There’s a reason Visionaries have popularized the unfortunate nickname “dream killer” when referring to the Integrator seat. These Visionaries have been stifled by those who have taken their superpower for dreaming and innovating and extinguished those flames of creativity because they didn’t know how to channel that energy into meaningful, focused action. They’ve been burned by those who’ve chosen to take the easier route, who preferred to maintain the status quo instead of chasing an opportunity due to the challenge it presented.
As someone who’s held the seats - a student, a team member, a front-line leader, an Integrator, a mother, and now a Visionary myself - I am seeing things today through a multifaceted lens. It is by putting myself in others’ shoes that I’m able to write this blog and offer some guidance about what it means to work with a Visionary in a way that is healthy, collaborative, and ideally doesn’t result in divorce.
1. Stop Trying to Change the Visionary
The first step is acceptance. You weren’t hired to make Visionaries less visionary. You were hired to help their vision become reality. Once you accept that the Visionary is a valuable and necessary player in the game of entrepreneurship, you will stop feeling the gnawing abrasion of opposition and start focusing on ways to harness their power.
Yes, Visionaries can be intense (right, Integrators?)! Visionaries are often obsessed, eager, optimistic, and proud. They think big picture, 50,000 feet above the earth, and yes maybe a few seem to live in their own universe altogether. But if Steve Jobs had become less obsessive, less Visionary, do you think Apple would be what it is today?
These character traits of Visionaries are not bugs to be fixed, but features to be understood. Use your understanding of the Visionary DNA to help channel their energy into meaningful progress instead of trying to suppress it.
2. Your Job Is Not to Kill Dreams
Some people describe Integrators as dream killers. While I totally get the sentiment, I prefer to call this “fear-based leadership” caused by major burnout in the seat. Taking on the role of second-in-command to a Visionary is, in my humble opinion, one of the toughest jobs that exists. For someone who has fielded ideas, initiatives, big relationships and new products/services left and right for weeks on end, it becomes much easier to say “No” while under stress than to face another second of preterm organizational whiplash.
Dreams without execution are hallucinations. Execution without dreams is maintenance. Your job is not to kill dreams. Your job is to filter, to dissect, to regulate, and to select. Instead of saying “No,” try saying “Add it to your pipeline of dreams and we’ll ideate this during our Same Page meeting.” To ease the stress of constantly managing a waterfall of ideas, a notebook curated for idea hatching is a useful gift I’ve given to Visionaries. This is a place where dreams can be documented and workshopped to a definition of success, helping the writer think through the incubation process of an idea and assess feasibility. The notebook serves as a parking lot and is a useful place to start when talking through your Visionary’s latest dreams.
3. Passion Is Contagious – Don't Accidentally Extinguish It
One of the biggest mistakes executives make is jumping straight from dream to implementation planning, allowing potential obstacles to steer the ideation process and instilling a foundation of doubt and anxiety right out of the gate. Bringing the planning into the conversation prematurely can squash a Visionary’s desire to share their dreams for fear of complexity and rejection. This is a surefire way to extinguish any passion around a dream… and that passion is critical to fueling the team toward successful execution.
Before jumping straight into discussions around budget, timing, staffing, and all of the other aspects of feasibility, start with this one question: What opportunity do you see with this idea? This question allows space to imagine the possibilities of what this dream can create - and taking those extra few minutes to dream alongside the dreamer will make all the difference in how the rest of the conversation unfolds. And who knows… you may find yourself inspired to turn this dream into a reality.
4. Visionary Ego Isn't Always Arrogance
Visionaries are commonly labeled as “egotistical” because they (especially founders) are positioned at the center of the business. In the early stages of growth, the business IS the Visionary. To a Visionary, the business often represents their identity, their reputation, their investment, their family’s future… their legacy. To a Visionary who is living as the focal point of their business, criticism can feel very personal, an honest challenge may come across as combative, and every triumph can trigger as much excitement as winning an Oscar.
To everyone else in the organization, this behavior may disguise itself as ego. But if we put ourselves in the shoes of the Visionary, this can be reframed as a coping mechanism for dealing with the inherent risk and fear of failure that accompanies entrepreneurship. Imposter syndrome is real and affects Visionaries just the same as the rest of us. That doesn’t excuse unhealthy behavior - yet it takes patience and emotional intelligence to recognize that ego is not always arrogance, but often forced confidence in an uncomfortable situation. Meeting a Visionary where they are is the first step to helping them grow as a leader.
5. The Leadership Team Is Not the Visionary's Assistant (and neither is the Integrator)
The process of delegation for a Visionary can be a challenge, especially when the Visionary is used to sitting at the center of their business. They might avoid delegation like the plague, adopting a founder mindset of “if it matters, I should do it.” A Visionary who is not used to working with a leadership team might choose only the most routine tasks or their “undesirables” to delegate to an otherwise competent leader, mistaking their Integrator or leadership team for a personal assistant.
It is our job as executives to respectfully challenge inappropriate delegation and reset this expectation. The Accountability Chart is the clearest evidence of job scope and an excellent place to start. From there, leveraging other tools like the Delegate and Elevate Matrix and a Decision Authority Matrix will allow you to map out what letting go of the vine truly looks like with your Visionary.
The leadership mindset says “If it matters, someone should own it”. This means leaning into trust, accountability, and healthy conflict to ensure continued success when the Visionary has the courage to step out of the center of the business. When parents drop their children off at daycare, they are trusting those teachers to do their job while they focus on other priorities. The same sentiment applies to Visionaries when handing over the reins to their business. Build trust by understanding how it feels for a Visionary to let go of the vine, and honor that delegated responsibility by holding yourself fully accountable to its delivery.
6. Excellence vs. Perfection
This one hits home for many of us who have worked with a high-energy, high-expectation, OCD-level Visionary. Visionaries often say “That’s not good enough” and sometimes they are right. Sometimes they are chasing perfection. The irony is that this tendency to expect perfection is a characteristic many of us Integrators share… which explains why it rubs us the wrong way when we are faced with a taste of our own medicine.
The reality check we all need can be found by asking ourselves one question: When does chasing perfection create meaningful value, and when does it simply delay progress? Perfection is not only expensive, but it’s damn near IMPOSSIBLE to achieve. In most industries, a customer likely can’t tell the difference between 95% and 99%, but they can certainly tell when something is 3 months late. Another example - documenting the vital 20% of a process’s steps should drive 80% of the desired results. So why waste precious time chasing the details that don’t significantly move the needle?
Understanding this reality will change how you approach difficult conversations with your Visionary. Instead of retorting "You're micromanaging again," try "I think your desire for excellence is causing people to stop making decisions and inhibiting our progress." Same issue. Different conversation.
7. The Work-Life Harmony Conversation Nobody Wants to Have
Visionaries may gladly choose to work late nights, weekends, vacations, or 70+ hour workweeks - especially if they own the company. This stems from either pure love for the business or obligation to facilitate its success, or a combination of both. Yet it’s simply not fair to expect employees to love the company more than the owner. Urgency and burnout shouldn't become the basis of your company culture.
With that said, leadership requires seasons, which means making good on our commitments when the time calls for it. There are product launches, acquisitions, quarter close, grand openings, crises like the COVID-19 pandemic… times that depend on everyone to lean in and do their part. One of the keys to a healthy relationship is reciprocity, which means we "give some, take some." No one should have to sacrifice their family or health to bend over backwards for their employer. Every once in a while, though, our commitment to our business’s success (which is what we are all making when we are hired) might mean skipping a Thursday night happy hour or that AM fitness class you love in order to meet a deadline. I promise that doesn’t mean you are giving up your independence, your rights, or your freedom. It means choosing harmony between your personal and professional commitments.
8. The Greatest Gift You Can Give a Visionary
At the end of the day, Visionaries are human just like the rest of us (can you believe it?!), and in this time when robots and AI are revolutionizing the world, humans are still at the center of this transformation. The needs of our businesses may evolve over time, yet in order to thrive mentally and emotionally, the psychological needs of people, of real-life humans, remain fundamentally unchanged: safety and security, meaningful connection, validation, and a sense of purpose.
At the surface level, a Visionary may insist that the business needs to be “harder, better, faster, stronger” in order to feel fulfilled, when deep down what they need is to be seen, to be heard, to feel supported, and to be enabled to do what they do best… dream.
So if you're working with a Visionary, don't spend your energy trying to make them think like everyone else. Your efforts will only bring about tension and resentment on both sides of the relationship. The company already has plenty of people who think within the boundaries of what we know to be possible. Your job is to enable dreamers to dream and to help extraordinary vision become extraordinary execution.
