Hello, I am Sahar Huneidi-Palmer, Online Transformational Life Mentor for over 28 years. And, I would like to explore with you what a visionary leader is. First, let me ask you a question: Can you sense your way forward in life as we normalise to life with Covid (yes folks, it may be here for a while, but let’s forward-plan)?

To explore what a visionary leader is, let’s look at some definitions to structure a framework for our leadership exploration. Leader: “is the person who leads or commands a group, organisation or country”. Can you think of any context where you are in the role of a leader? Is it in your home, family, community or work? It doesn’t long to discover that we are all leaders no matter what our social status is! The next question will be, what skills does a leader need to be a visionary? 

Skills & Abilities of A Visionary Leader

Before we identify what skills or abilities make a visionary leader, let’s consider the definition of vision. Vision: “the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom”. So, is your thinking process coherent? Are you able to analyse and synthesise the information you have to plan for the future? Moreover, have you learnt from your past successes and mistakes to become wise? 

This leads to the following question: do you know what ability or skill is essential for a visionary leader? To answer the previous question, let’s look at the definition of a visionary leader. A Visionary Leader: “can think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.”

What Makes A Wise Leader?

I have already given you a clue on what makes us wiser. It is the ability to reflect on the past and learn from success as well as failures. Well, that’s the main function of the human brain – to predict a future outcome and help its owner navigate through life’s challenges. When you are self-ware, you make better assessments and therefore more precise and accurate prediction of a future outcome. In my view, personal development is about personal awareness – being consciousness of how we live our lives. And, this is what Unbox The Real is all about. it is about releasing your potential and your inner gifts so you can guide yourself, think clearly, and realise your desired future. 

Can You Imagine?

Now, what about imagination? Imagination: “is the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful; the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses”. Hmm, the ability of the mind. So, that needs some direction from you – the owner of your brain. And to direct, you need to be aware. Leadership now demands self-awareness because it directly translates into better professional and personal choices.

“In a series of in-depth interviews with dozens of executives and managers with experience leading matrix teams, Hay Group determined that leadership traits like empathy, conflict-management, self-awareness and influence were consistently tied to successful business outcomes within matrixed organizations.”[1]

Think about for a moment: if you are not self-aware, as an individual, how would you be able to direct your own life, let alone a corporate responsibility?

Inner Senses

Creativity and resourcefulness come with experience, developing hobbies. Forming new ideas, images or concepts, start with early education, even as an infant and continue through adulthood. The ability to perceive External Objects which are not present to the senses requires developing inner senses; which we all have as an innate gift being a human being. 

Developing your inner senses requires being in charge of your mind. Meditation, mindfulness, deep breathing are all tools to help you achieve inner peace, and therefore the ability to perceive objects and situations outside yourself. I refer to this as your Guiding Star, or inner compass which unfolds naturally as you align your Four Dimensions of Dimensions of Change.

A Clear Focused Mind

I touched on how we can quiet the mind to focus and perceive during a recent interview with Asharq Business with Bloomberg on the occasion of International Yoga day. To be inspired, the mind needs to be clam and focused. 

Inner sensing is perceiving the intangible or the unseen. I speak from experience when I say that inner sensing can be developed because it is an innate ability of human beings. When your inner sensing is well-developed, it acts as your inner compass and directs you in any situation, personal or corporate. 

Sixth Sense

Would you say that you have a well-developed Sixth Sense? Why don’t you join us tomorrow evening, Tuesday 6th July, 21st as my colleague Natalie and I continue our monthly journey of free self-awareness webinars.

 Webinar 5: Realise Your Dreams
 ???? Tuesday 6th July in English
 Thursday 8th July in Arabic
 8:30 pm GST (GMT +4).

Envision & Realise

Whether you are an executive or a house person, vision is essential to living our lives. You may not know, but we all have inner gifts that we are born with – and one of them is the ability to envision our future lives and any future outcome. If you are uninspired, confused about your future, join us and find out more about imagination and making visions real. Register here. You will receive a reminder tomorrow with the link to join our live webinar. No previous experience is necessary. However, if you have missed previous webinars, you can watch them here.

Next month’s webinar is going to be about how to Design Your Life. Before you ask, yes, you can live a life you design.

Hope to see you soon!

Stay Safe

© Sahar Huneidi-Palmer

  [1] Business Wire.

[2] Fame in the predictive brain: a deflationary approach to explaining consciousness in the prediction error minimization framework

Author: Krzysztof Dołęga et al
Publication: Synthese
Publisher: Springer Nature
Date: Jan 29, 2020
Copyright © 2020, The Author(s)