Leadership Seeing: How We Enact an Eye for Possibility and Reframe

Abstract

One of our colleagues, Rob-Jan de Jong, a strategist, whose work is around engaging leaders to embrace the future,¹ sometimes starts his leadership seminars with the question “What is the one word used in every definition of leadership?” The first reaction is consistently “vision.” Indeed, we do associate leadership very strongly with the concept of creating, maintaining, and sharing a vision. Yet, when he asks a follow-up question to his groups of senior leaders, querying them on “who feels that they have a vision (e.g. about where their industry is going)?”, hardly anyone raises their hand.