To be a visionary leader and a good manager you must have this one skill

Would you rather work for Steve Jobs or Steve Smith, the down-to-earth PMM at Initech? Elon Musk or Elon Montgomery, Manager of the Year at Bed, Bath N' Table?

If you were wondering, Bed, Bath & Table is a real company, even if the manager name is fictional. It's basically the Aussie version of Bed, Bath & Beyond...only with more tables.

Aussie retail outlet names aside, I recently put the question to a LinkedIn poll, "Would you rather work for a visionary leader or good manager?"

Voters had some interesting things to say, so bear with me as I work towards that one absolutely necessary skill needed to be either a visionary leader, a good manager, or both at the same time.

Singapore-based APAC Senior Marketing Lead at Paessler AG Marcella H. commented, "If I really can only choose one then having a good manager can make or break my career growth and overall well-being at work (talk about psychological safety)."

California-based LinkedIn Senior Editor at Large George Anders suggested the answer might depend on the stage of life you're in.

George related that working for a good manager right out of college, "modeled a lot of wise habits, and they helped me find my footing in an industry where some talented people wash out."

By his mid-20s he was ready to give visionaries a try and that he loved the "excitement about rallying around some giant new goal, and I coped okay with the periodic collapses of all the big dreams, and the ensuing re-orgs, departures, etc."

But then once he had kids it became important to "return to the land of good managers" again.

I envision "The Land of Good Managers" to look something like this:

Wrong gif. Snuck in from my "Land of Agro Bosses" folder.

My bad.

More like this...

I'd work for any one of those joyful looking people dancing across the original Windows desktop background. You just know they're going to go easy on your KPIs and not flip out if you're five minutes late back to work from lunch.

Fixed income credit analyst Mervyn Teo believes, "Good managers are good because they have the vision in sight, aware of situation and able to execute to hit interim milestones. They are willing to be wrong, admit and explore alternatives," while visionaries are "overrated."

How about the visionary leader camp?

John C. Abell, Head of Discover News & Editorial Trust at LinkedIn would rather work for the visionary leader "because (even though I can only work for one* *at a time) there are fewer of them, and I can quit."

Fair point.

Cecilia Cheng, a Singaporean business owner, entrepreneur and digital marketing and e-commerce professional chose Visionary leaders. She comments, "They lead by influencing others and have a mindset to be successful. They are likely a mentor and have the ability to place the right people in the right role. A good visionary leader will empower the team to succeed."

She also agrees that the preference is dependent of the stage of your career.

Or you're Nick Raven, a reporter for the Colorado Springs Independent, who commented that he, "Wants to be a Thought Ninja."

You do you, Nick.

Overall, when push comes to shove and people are forced to choose between one or the other, the results are pretty even and the justifications for either choice makes a lot of sense.

But the reason it was so hard for people to choose one or the other is because the Holy Grail is to work for somebody who is both a visionary leader and a good manager.

Or to become one yourself.

?? Is possible to be both a visionary leader AND good manager?

The answer is, yes. But it's uncommon.

Not impossible, just uncommon.

Why?

Good managers focus on process, connecting with individual staff, closely managing expectations, providing support and encouragement, setting reasonable and achievable goals, standing up for members of their team, they care about the careers of their individual reports and don't see them as numbers on an expense sheet. Good managers can solve problems.

They get results and they coach and upskill their direct reports leading them to operational and career success.

Visionary leaders on the other hand tend to focus on the big picture and strategy, they push innovation and are often thinking ahead, willing to take risks, have the ability to motivate and inspire groups of people, and solve big problems.

These things, in general, are at odds.

• Visionary leaders need good managers to get results, people manage, and provide reality.
• Good managers need visionary leaders to drive purpose and inspire.

It isn't that a person isn't capable of being both at the same time, it's that it takes time, energy and effort to either be a truly visionary leader or an exceptionally good manager.

?? You MUST have this skill (and not use it for evil)

To be a visionary leader or good manager or both at the same time there's one thing you have to be really, really good at. I hinted at it above.

Problem solving.

If you can consistently discover and solve problems big and small throughout your career, then you're 100% capable of being a visionary leader and good manager at the same time.

Being a good problem solver enables you to actively better those around you as well as identify opportunity in a variety of environments, work or otherwise.

Approach solving the problem of the intern not being motivated enough with the same zeal as forecasting revenue for the year, identifying new customer markets, improving staff mental health or even fixing buggy code. Do that and you're golden.

Care equally about people and profit. Solve for each.

Back to Steve Jobs...

He solved a problem that nobody even knew existed yet. Pre-smartphone days nobody knew they couldn't live without their smartphones, because they didn't exist yet. That goes for any true, visionary innovation.

Steve Jobs saw people, as in every human, walking around without a phone with a touchscreen as a problem to be solved and he set out to solve it.

The man was not a good manager. But he was a problem solver and that allowed him to become a visionary leader.

Problem solving is scaleable

You can apply the same problem solving skills you learn early on all the way through the mid to late stages of your career.

Take the skill of listening for example. If you're not a good listener and you can recognize that as a problem, then you can work to solve it. Solve it early and it will help you for the duration.

If you're complete jackass of a person but can solve a problem that betters the people around you and your business, your jackassery can be overlooked (for a time!) And if you recognize your jackassery as a problem, even better.

Because then you can work to solve that as well if you also want to be a good manager of all your people, and not just looked at as the tech bro who started a ride sharing service.

Being the person who becomes the go-to for solving problems puts you in position to be heard and recognized.

You need that recognition to be "visionary" because you need to be a voice that's heard by those around you. A trusted voice, and a voice capable of teaching problem solving so as you grow your career, you can delegate to others problems to solve.

Without being heard, you're just being visionary in a void, with an audience of one... yourself.

If you don't think your problem solving skills are quite up to snuff, there's no lack of self-learning courses out there for you to take to set you on the path.

The better you are at this the easier it becomes to recognize when a leader or manager is a great or poor problem solver, and that can help you immensely when choosing where and who to work for.

?? The takeaway

Hey look, nobody wants to work for an uninspiring leader or a bad manager. Or worse yet, be an uninspiring leader or bad manager. But it does happen.

Some people might want to be an evil visionary leader, but I'd advise against it.

Just remember that you're never truly stuck in a bad situation nor incapable of improving yourself.

All a bad situation is, is another problem that needs solving. So get to solving it and find a way to work for who you want to work for, or to become the leader or manager you aspire to be.

See how this works?

Problem solved.

*Small* ask: Just don't aspire to be like Mark Rylance's character in "Don't Look Up". His visionary leadership resulted in the Earth being destroyed. Best to avoid that.

?? One more thing...

#Quietquitting. I'm over it. It isn't a thing.