	Vision is critically important to effective leadership, especially transformational leadership. This article presents 4 ways vision defines action and four dictionary meanings of the word vision. Powered by Translate Share
	Source: The Vision of the Cross, Giulio Romano, student of Raphael

Using Vision As a Guide to Action

By Murray Johannsen

"Managers draft plans, leaders construct visions." — Anonymous

One faces a choice in life. You can do what you are told by parents and the bosses or you can define a vision for yourself.

When people speak of having a leadership vision, they typically use it in four different ways. For some leaders, it is the path, for others a destination, for some it involves looking into the past and future, while for others still, it consists of a strategy.

A vision is not a dream, it is not a fantasy. All people have fantasies, many have dreams but few have vision. For mental imagery to be a consider a vision, there must be a focus on:

a. The Future. In fact, the English language has many words meaning about the same thing as vision. These include:
Foresight,

Insight,

Imagination,

Prescience,

Forethought,

Revelation,

Prophecy, and

Expectations.

b. Taking Action. Leaders are driven by internal forces. Those with a leadership vision possess a tremendous amount of energy—something that keeps driving them forward day after day, month after month, year after year.
Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning once described such a vision. In Franls case, it came to him when he was wallowing in the misery of daily existence in a concentration camp during World War II. When he was wallowing in the misery of despair, he saw himself presenting a lecture in a university setting about the psychology of the concentration camp. It was enough to keep him going in the middle of hell. And sure enough, years later this very thing happened.

Focusing Vision on Taking Action

Using Vision as an End "There is a light at the end of the tunnel." — American Saying

Some leaders view vision as a goal, an end result, as in a destination at the end of a journey. In this case, the leadership vision represents a state, the results of a problem solved or an opportunity manifest.
For example, close your eyes for a moment. Imagine that you are on a basketball court. See the ball going through the hoop and points added on the scoreboard. This is what some refer to as goal imagery.
In this case, it is described as an especially vivid or intense set of mental images— something above and beyond that ordinary.

Using Vision as a Means “Go West, Young Man!” — John Soule. Advice given to those seeking opportunity in the 19th Century America. If Soule would be alive today, perhaps his advice to the young seeking opportunity in 21st Century would be, "Go East, Far East."

Sometimes, vision in leadership is more of a journey than the destination. In this case, leaders must construct the means.
To take an example, you are an investor and you want to make 10 thousand Euros within sixty days. One must see the one best path from among thousands of potential choices.
The importance of leadership vision as a means is illustrated with the following story.

Once upon a time there was a man, who know not where he was going since he know not where he was. Since he does not know where he was, he could go neither forward, nor backward. Eventually, he saw the sun setting and saw how to go west.

Vision as a Strategy

To use vision as a strategy, one needs to define three elements—the plan, current state and desired state. It means defining where one is now, where one wants to be in the future and how one is going to get there. In many cases, a leadership vision is about defining all three to be able to persuade the skeptical that there something is doable.
In some cases, this is easy. For example, if one has the money, it's easy to come up with a strategy for buying a home since the process has been defined and followed by millions over the years. An the other hand, nation building is a lot more difficult. As the neocons in the Bush Administration found out when they tried to rebuild Iraq after it had been wrecked by war.

Vision as an Element of Janusian Thinking "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." - Winston Churchill

You might say, that to know how to act in the present, one has to keep one face on the past and one face on the future. This is symbolized by the Roman god Janus.
Janus was actually a transformational symbol who was represented as having two faces. When one walked into a Roman home one saw one face looking outside and the other looking inside. Or you might say, one face was looking forward into the future while the other face was looking into the past.

Other Meanings of The Word Vision

Besides the action element associated with vision, vision has different dictionary meanings. According to Wordnet at Princeton, vision has four major meanings.

Sight: The Ability to See with Eyes

In this meaning, one opens the eyes and is able to see. Seeing is actually an incredibly complex process which different areas of the brain interacting through the optical nerve and the visual cortex. To illustrate the complexity of the process, the retina of the each eye contains about 7 million cones and 75 to 150 million rods.

A Perceptual Experience

Optical illusions are ways to trick the eyes into see something something that is not there. The perceptual aspect of vision can also occur when someone is hypnotize to hallucinate objects that do not exist. For example, rather than seeing a pen, a hypnotized person would see a paper.

Vision as Imagination or Vivid Mental Imagery
	Source: Martin Basmajian's

The psychologists tell us that images are constantly created even with the eyes open. However, these are not perceived as real in that the source is not our eyes. A special type of imagery important to leadership vision is Imagination.
Having imagination means first see something that is yet to exist. But it could exist if the right actions were taken. An example, a person might imagine what would happen prior to meeting with their boss. This is an important aspect of a leadership vision.

Religious, Mystical, or Supernatural Images

Throughout history, famous religious leaders such as Paul, Mohammed, Buddha, the Sufi prophets and Christians Saints such as Mother Teresa have experienced extraordinary images—images that have a strong psychological and emotional impact. It's not only famous people, but a number of ordinary people have similar experiences. In many cases, these images include symbols that have hidden meaning attached to them.