Why Visionary Leaders are So Rare

By Murray Johannsen

Few Adults are Leaders

	Compilation of pictures available on WikiCommons under free licenses. Originals: Lincoln Montezuma Hammurabi Ramses Elizabeth Napoleon Friedrich Alexander Gandhi Genghis Khan Caesar Stalin Shaka Mao

If leadership is exercise of authority [link], anyone who happens to occupy a position of power [link], can be called a leader. By that definition, all Kings and Queens, CEOs and judges are leaders since they primarily use positional authority [link] as a major form of influence.

And of course parents use authority (often combined with a measure of punishment and coercion) to get children to obey. So the first point of why there are so few visionary leaders, is the fact that there are relatively few leaders. And secondly, of those who have leadership ability, why are there still fewer visionary leaders? So why might this be the case?

Few Adults Have Vision

Blind Men and an Elephant A classic tale that been told in the Middle East and India for thousands of years
	From The Heath readers by grades, D.C. Heath and Company (Boston), p. 69.

If you talk to four or five year olds they are always clear about what they are going to do with their life. They say with absolute certainty that they are going to be a nurse, a teacher, a doctor, a fireman. If you ask the same question of teenagers, many choke, being totally clueless. And those that say something, parrot back their parents view about going to college, becoming a professional who makes lots of money.

Many a mother would love to say with pride, “My son, the doctor.” A general lack of visionary leadership results from a number of individual and social factors. A few of the more important ones are listed below.

Regressing Into the Past
	Der Jungbrunnen, 1546, Quest For the Fountain of Youth, Wikimedia

If you were a fly in a bar listening to the conversation of the people around you, you might be struck by the fact that people in their daily conversations live in the past. They relive the events of the day; the little stupid actions of the minions, the small slights of the powerful. People at work or in social situations rarely share what they expect to occur in six months, their goals, their aspirations, their dreams.

I have a friend, a very bright, highly intelligent Ph. D. from a top ten university. Everytime we get together I will ask him, “What do you think the economy will be like in six months?” He keeps avoiding the future but boy does he love to regress into the past. Despite my efforts, the Ego defense mechanism flairs goes into and he always changes the subject. He literally is not capable of thinking out into the future.

Unfortunately, few people spend any meaningful time thinking about the future. They think mostly about what happened to them in the past.

Imagination Lies Untapped “Use it or lose it.”— A saying often heard in body building circles
	Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's story "Ligeia" by Harry Clarke (1889-1931), published in 1919.

How many times has a teacher, your parents, your boss asked you to close your eyes and use your imagination?

I have has a number of college students who have told me, “zero.” In my case, not once in thousands of hours of class room education has an instructor, professor, teacher even looked at harnessing the power of imagination. In fact, if you actually close your eyes even briefly, the teacher or (the boss for that matter) would assume that you’re a slacker who is whiling a way the time sleeping.

The education system (at least in America) stresses language, analysis, logic and reason—what people tend to call left hemispheric processes [link]. Nothing wrong with that. However, rather than imagination being a partner in the thinking process, it is the beggar you would rather not see and want to ignore.

Ignoring Background Mental Imagery	\
	Source: BenTheWikiMan at nl.wikipedia, 3D rendering

Normal consciousness has many strengths; but experiencing visionary imagery is not one of them. We see the images coming from the eyes, but we are barely aware of the images associated with thoughts.

Try this thought experiment.

Keep your eyes open. Now think, “I am happy!” Are you aware of any image? Many would say no, especially when that statement is sandwiched with between other thoughts.

Now think, “I’m happy,” again but this time keep the word happy in mind for a few seconds, as a focus of attention. Does an image come up? Some say no, but many would say an image does come to mind when you give it enough time.

Now try the same thing with the eyes closed. Visualize “I am happy.” Is the image more easy to see? Most would say it is, closing the eyes helps to see the picture or the movie. Of course, that brings up an interesting question. Do you routinely close your eyes and visualize things? Again, most people would say no.

Lack of Parental Support
	Wikipedia:Krishna|Krishna meets his parents

Parents often discourage the evolutions of imagination. Children tend to live in a world of fantasy [link] anyway so it would be relatively easy to induce them to become visionary. But many parents assume vision is like fantasy—it’s more destructive than constructive.

Few Understand The Meaning of Imagery
	Spraypaint Art by BenTheWikiMan at nl.wikipedia

Meaning is often attached to visionary imagery. And because it is attached to the image, it frequently slips through our grasp; we fail to see through the darkness of ignorance. In fact, there is a whole difference set of words that is used when where are in the kingdom of imagers. Test yourself, how many of these words do you know? [links]

1. Metaphor 2. Simile 3. Analogy 4. Allegory 5. Symbols 6. Myth 7. Idioms 8. Parables 9. Archetypes 10. Hallucination If you cannot get 6 more, it means you have not been that you are not that familiar with the use of words with high image content. Another obvious example of images with meaning are dreams. The vast majority of psychologists assume dreams to have meaning. [citation] In fact, one can buy dream dictionaries. [citation]

Conclusion

For a number of individual and societal reasons, visionaries tend to be rather rare. After all, how many of you in August of 2007 foresaw that much of the world would be in recession by December of 2008? Yet, the forces leading recession were clearly evident in 2007. Just as it is important for each of us to develop vision, it is even more important that our leadership is visionary.