E78. Visionary Leadership Reimagined w/ Dr. Thomas E. Anderson II

Uncover the secrets to visionary leadership with Thomas E. Anderson II, CEO of Teaiiano Enterprises, as he reveals how transformative leaders can harness hidden ideas within their organizations. Learn from his expertise as he shares insights from his guidebook, "Visionary Leadership: A Guidebook for 21st Century Organizations and Entrepreneurial Teams," crafted for everyone from CEOs to team members and academics. You'll discover how integrating personal and collective visions can drive innovation and resist the stagnation of outdated patterns. Anderson's unique counter-narratives offer a roadmap for leaders eager to cultivate environments that nurture transformation.

Dr. Anderson takes us beyond vision creation and communication to emphasize the crucial phases of vision adoption and integration into organizational behaviors. Through discussions of innovative research and practical applications, you'll understand how to embed vision into the fabric of your organization. With coaching highlighted as a powerful tool for bridging communication gaps and enhancing personal agency, this episode is a rich resource for those looking to propel their teams and organizations toward meaningful change.

Connect with Dr. Anderson and find his book on his website: https://www.teaiiano.com  

Transcript

Visionary Leadership Framework and Concepts

Speaker 1 0:00

All right. Well, hey there, and welcome to Conversations where today we have Thomas E Anderson II, who is the CEO and facilitator of Tejano Enterprises, where he is a uniquely adaptable coach, consultant and facilitator, specializing in leadership, organizational development and collaborative workshops. He partners with founders, leaders and managers to clarify visionary ideas, improve focus and implement strategies to navigate the multi-loop process of vision development and realization. Over the last 15 years, dr Anderson has advised early-stage tech founders, consulted Inc 5000 companies and coached Fortune 500 managers. Using the principles in his now published book Visionary Leadership a guidebook for 21st century organizations and entrepreneurial teams, dr Anderson creates atmospheres for personal and collective transformation through his strengths of relator, intellection, individualization, futuristic and deliberative. Welcome to the show, dr Anderson. How are you today?

Speaker 2 1:14

Thank you, Dr Whalen. I'm doing great. It's great to be here with you.

Speaker 1 1:18

It's so good to have you back because you were on episode five of Conversations for Leaders and Teams when we were first kicking off the podcast and you were talking about let's see rebuilding businesses using a shared vision approach. So fast forward. Here we are four and a half years later and look at all that you are doing. Congratulations on your new book.

Speaker 2 1:45

Thank you so much, I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 1:49

It's so fun. It has been fun to see things evolve the way they have for you and I know that really visioning has been part of it's just who you are and your strengths, really, you know, go along with that. So it's been fun to see and I really mean a heartfelt congratulations on that book and thank you for the acknowledgement within there. That's very kind of you.

Speaker 2 2:16

Yes, of course I couldn't let the moment pass, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:20

Very nice. Well, let's just jump in. So who is this book written for?

Speaker 2 2:28

Yeah. So the first thing I think about is who is this book not written for right? Everyone has a vision and so, even though the title says visionary leadership, I like to think of it as a person with a vision. And so you have people in organizations.

Speaker 2 2:45

Of course, founders and CEOs have a vision. Their executive team are supporting them in that vision, but then you have a team member who has an idea and they don't. Maybe, you know, within the organizational context, they may not call it a vision, but it's their idea and it's their personal vision. And you know, if the team leader or the executive can connect with that person based on their personal vision, then that's to me where the magic happens. And so, to answer your question, it's written for the founder CEO, but it's also written for the team leader, the team member. But then you have another audience and my publisher. They actually broaden my horizons about this, but I still go back to it's also written for the academic, the student, the person who may fit all of the categories, because we're not. You know, some of us work in different spaces, like myself. So it's written for a person with a vision.

Speaker 1 3:42

Wow, and you know what I love? I love how you say that because it can be broad, and I think too many times we're, you know, whether we consider ourselves leader or not, we do have a vision, and helping somebody realize that they have a permission to have that vision and bring it out to the organization or within their team, I think that is super important.

Speaker 2 4:10

Yes, it really is. And in this process of writing the book I hope you don't mind me talking about the process a little bit, but I think it might help someone who's just thinking about it but I interviewed and talked with a lot of people and one of those people was Jim Cujas. He was gracious enough to connect with me. I think I've told you before, based on a cold email, and what he told me was and it's always stuck with me he said a leader, a visionary leader, picks up on the vision that is latent, that is buried. That is, you know, buried is really a good word and I could tell you more about that later but buried in the hearts of the people. The leader walks around, talks to people and really extracts that vision and the best visionary leaders, aggregated with the people's input and feedback and participation into something great.

Speaker 1 5:09

Yeah, and I know you talk about that in your book, about you know, the stakeholders and and that we we can't think of just you know, we don't think of it as just a board. We think of everybody who is, has, has a hand in that organization and the importance of that and them raising their voice.

Speaker 2 5:24

Yes, yes, that's that's really important.

Speaker 1 5:27

But you know, I think that takes. I think sometimes leaders need help with their listening and getting people. I think that in uncovering you know what you do have in your book. That will be helpful for leaders, especially leaders who have been in leadership for a long time and have this leadership style that might not be so open to that.

Speaker 2 5:56

Yes, I heard it said somewhere that success breeds success. But in that you have patterns of organizing that sometimes do get in the way of a leader thinking that a left field, an idea that comes out of left field, could actually add to the success of an organization. Because you know as much as we hear the statement in change management it's never been done that way and that's the. You know. That's like the mentality that's an enemy to anything regarding change. Leaders can get trapped in that type of thinking too. And yes, so leaders, every leader can stand to listen better, but it starts with listening to what's going on in here and within themselves.

Speaker 1 6:47

So there's lots of visionary books out there on visionary leadership. What makes this book unique? And I heard a few things within that, but why don't you tell me what you think, why you think that this book is unique?

Speaker 2 7:00

Yeah. So I have whittled it down to three C's because I need to make it memorable for myself. So the first is are the counter narratives that I tell, and chief among them is an immunology counter narrative Well, I call it the antibodies counter narrative, based on the research of Dr Gary Oster and Davila, and you know so many who have contributed to this little known space of organizational research. The second area are the case studies. The second area are the case studies, and so you know I have case studies in there from 3M and Tesla and you know just visionary companies, and I focus more on visionary organizations than the leader themselves, because that's more that's 21st century visionary leadership is looking more like a visionary organization, and you know, just with the pace and how fast paced things are now, it's impossible for a leader to know everything, even half of everything that's going on. They're blind spots, and that's okay. There are some things that leaders aren't meant to see.

Speaker 2 8:05

I went for I know I'm getting a little off topic, but I went for an eye exam on Monday, perfect timing, and my technician told me she said there are some dots that you're meant to see, other dots you're not meant to see. Whatever you're meant to see click the clicker, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is perfect timing because there are some dots yeah, exactly, there are some dots that leaders aren't meant to see themselves, but the organization, when it acts as a whole, is meant to see it. And so that's the second C. The third C is the comprehensive framework. This is a framework that does not exist anywhere else. I know this because I've looked, I've tried, I've searched, I've scoured for years and years and years, and I didn't have an intention, starting out, to write this book, but I was looking for something that did not exist. And you know, I went into my laboratory and I came out with the framework.

Speaker 1 8:57

And so so tell us a little bit about how you've used this framework.

Speaker 2 9:02

Yes, great question. I've used it in my business. Well, number one, to write the book. I'm a musician by trade and so over a period of time, there were words of wisdom, words of prophecy, spoken into my life that I was going to do business, business, business. I had no idea what that meant at the time, and so I just started, you know, started looking into it, and so I've used these principles, not only in my own business, to transform it over a period of 10 years, from a music performance business into a coaching and consulting business.

Speaker 2 9:35

But I was just talking to my wife. My wife gets priority when it comes to these concepts because she has access, and so she's been using this in her employment for as long as we've known each other for about 17 years. And she started off and this is, you know. I'm glad I'm having this conversation with you because I remember the conversation we had about me becoming more of a leader in my business, and so this is an outgrowth of that. My wife. Two years ago she launched out after working in corporate America. She launched out to start her own business, and she's we've been. You know, in the book I talk about the paradigm shift, which is the first of nine zones of Vision 360 leadership Paradigm shift. My wife's paradigm shift was long and it was hard, but she came through it with a business and now she's been in business for almost two years and we just she just counted this and told me before the session she's up to, she has 13 paying clients.

Speaker 2 10:33

That's amazing In her business, and so that's one example, but there are other examples you know of, you know, just you know, maybe I'll do a one-off here and one-off there, you know, but those are the two to me, the two examples that mean the most to me.

Speaker 1 10:48

Well and they should mean the most to you. I mean we can go into organizations and, and you know, work, our work. But it's amazing when it's so close to home because, even though the organizations are meaningful, when it is somebody that you, you love, you know, here we are your wife and you and your business, and a love for you know your own business, that's amazing's amazing to watch it happen and flourish.

Speaker 2 11:13

So congratulations to you both. Thank you, thank you so much.

Visionary Leadership Refresh

Speaker 1 11:16

Absolutely Well. How can leaders and teams benefit from a visionary leadership refresh? What does that look like?

Speaker 2 11:26

I'm glad you asked that question. The refresh, so visionary leadership, without getting too much into the weeds. It emerged in America at a time in the 80s and 90s, at a time where we were in a similar situation economically as we are now. Difference, I do believe, is it came directly out of the transformational and charismatic leadership approaches and so there was this focus. There was a focus placed on the leader, and you know it looks like.

Speaker 2 11:59

I always like to tell this story. You know the leader gets up on stage in January and they, you know, cast a vision. You know everyone gets excited and then three weeks later people don't know it and in most cases that's what it looks like. And so what I did was I just looked through all of the literature and I looked for clues of something more, and they were always buried in the literature. I would see them, but you know they're not in the index. The word vision, you know, very seldom does it appear in an index, in a book. That's not about visionary leadership but, to the point, about the refresh.

Speaker 2 12:34

So what I did was I assembled other or complementary phases. So in the book I talk about these four phases where you have we all know about the creation phase. We all know about communication. In the book, communication is not a part of the creation phase, it's a part of another phase. I'm not going to give it away, but there are three other phases that deal with how to conceive of a vision, how a vision is adopted, and this part has resonated with audiences. They're like I want to know more about this adoption idea idea, and in the book I called it rewinding rewinding to increase buy-in.

Speaker 2 13:16

But then we have very new it's really new research out on integration, vision integration and I connected with Jeff Coles. He's a professor over in California. He actually pioneered this idea. He's a professor over in California, he actually pioneered this idea and it basically says how do we get vision out of the clouds and ingrained in the behaviors of people? And so, at a point where I believe our economy could use something I'm not an economist and I don't claim to be, but I believe it could use something I think it's an important question. We need innovation, we need people's ideas to be able to infuse the organization with a freshness, and that's where the refresh comes in. Yeah, and not to be afraid to approach a refresh that say things get a little worse. You know they get better, but then they take a dive and then you know, do certain things to make sure that that change is sold into the organization and it can stick.

Speaker 1 14:45

That goes back to having those conversations and bringing voices to the table that maybe you wouldn't consider before and allowing those innovations to happen.

Speaker 2 14:57

Yeah, yeah, and that really does take. You mentioned listening earlier. It takes the ability to listen, but it also requires an open mind For leaders to have an open mind, to be open to hear from people who don't think the same way that we do. As leaders, we have a specific language that we speak and I talk to middle managers and they're like our CEOs. They have in our executive teams. They have a specific language. We have a specific lexicon, if you will, and if you veer outside of that lexicon, they can't hear you. Well, sometimes you know, we have to learn the lexicon enough to be able to translate words. You know, in a way, that the executive team, the CEO, whoever the you know, your supervisor is, they can't hear you because using those words they can, you know, then relate in some type of way and take the idea seriously.

Speaker 1 15:53

And I imagine coaching can help in that. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 2 15:59

Yes, I don't have to imagine it, but so much, yes, I have coached. I've had the pleasure to coach one of my friends who is a middle manager in a healthcare company and yeah, she has gone through it as far as getting her ideas sold in and I've coached her through different ways and one of those things was the politics of the place, the sense of belonging. You know, coaching don't get me started on that when it comes to visioning, because you have two big areas and anything is possible within that. But yeah, coaching does provide a space. It's a safe space where people can toy around with ideas that they've been having and figure out what exactly to take action on and figure out what exactly to take action on.

Speaker 1 16:55

Yeah, yeah, because I mean those communication. Like you said, there may be a disconnect, so I love that you can bring coaching into that and help. Yeah.

Speaker 2 17:07

Yeah, yeah, it does help to connect the dots in a way that.

Speaker 1 17:13

And see what you need to see and not what you don't need to see.

Speaker 2 17:17

Yeah, and it's in a way that advising can't do. I've stopped taking advice or I've stopped soliciting advice. I would say that I do take it, but if it does, it helps to have that coaching approach because you're literally respecting the person as an agent in their own life, the main agent in their own life who does have the answers. It's just a matter of taking them off, dusting them off, giving them a nice polish and figuring out what to do with them.

Speaker 1 17:42

That's right. I love that, all right. So this book has a lot of topics. I was tooling through today and looking at all the chapters. So what topics have resonated with the audiences most out of the people that you've talked with? Because it is chock full. I mean, it's chock full.

Speaker 2 18:04

It is. It definitely is, and I'm glad you brought that up because that's the thing. There's a coaching question that says what do you hope? That I don't ask you and you've just asked me that. So I'm glad we got that out of the way Right. But yeah, to the to the point. So there's the nine and I think everything that I've touched on so far is fair game. So there are the nine zones.

Speaker 2 18:32

When I did the focus, when I ran the focus groups for this and I think you were part of one of them I don't know if you were in this one but people wanted to know more about these nine zones and at the time they didn't have names. They do now. They weren't listed. They are now. They had no descriptions, they had no case studies, and so that's, yeah, those case studies do help, yeah. So that's one area that people have told me. Readers have told me they wanted to know more and I've delivered on that. So chapter three is all about the nine zones actually delayed.

Speaker 2 19:18

This book was due last year and I think June. I negotiated more time than I negotiated more time because there were counter narratives that needed to be told, and one of those counter narratives is the antibodies which you know we have been. We live in a post-COVID world, so that language resonates. I, I took it a step further and I and with the diagrams, I talked about the vision culture wars that happened. I mapped them out, you know, as a battlefield and how to change this battlefield into a force field. You know, my wife is really good with diagrams and so she I have to give her credit. She, uh, you know she, she did those diagrams and uh, well, she translated them for me.

Speaker 2 19:55

Um, but then in chapter nine. So I was talking to someone the other day and I started talking about the pathogen of perfectionism. Perfectionism shows up in many organizations almost like an epidemic. It's not something that you can necessarily see. It's not waving this red flag, but those of us like you and myself, who are practitioners can see, okay, people are afraid to make mistakes here. Why are the ideas sabotaged? That's a big thing. And so chapter nine addresses perfectionism and how it shows up in work cultures and what to do about it.

Speaker 1 20:40

Wow, I'm definitely going to have to tune into that. I was just listening to another colleague and in the healthcare space, how you know, it is so imperative that there are no mistakes, do not harm, and all this. But it can be to an extreme where, just as you're saying, they're afraid to make even a small mistake. You know, hopefully not on a patient's behalf, but within their role. And yeah, that's. There's a difference between rising into excellence, which I always talk about, and that perfection.

Speaker 2 21:19

Right, yes, and yeah, that's something I've been curious about.

Speaker 2 21:24

I haven't done a lot of work in the healthcare space but I've talked to people about the book and its content, its content and what one professional. She was actually a consultant in the healthcare space and she told me that a lot of times vision, because of the dynamics in healthcare vision is not necessarily at the level of, you know, those who are touching the patients, the nurses. Vision is not a thing because of the urgency and just the critical nature of the work. She said, a lot of times it's translated through training and development and that's the first introduction that they get to. You know the fact that something new is happening. They're being trained, but they're being trained on the job and so there are professionals that are trying to roll that back to get them the nurses and our first responders, you know in on the changes earlier in a way that and this is this is the struggle, right, the time factor you know we all are pressed for time and the money factor, how much, what is going to be the ROI of doing this. That's right, yeah.

Speaker 1 22:32

Yeah, wow.

Speaker 2 22:48

Oh, where can people find this book, dr Anderson? Exclusively available through Springer at this point. But Amazon also has, you know, has it available and I think that Amazon is giving a 5% discount for pre-orders right now through I think it's maybe October 12th, don't quote me on that but also there's the Kindle version. That can be, I'm guessing. I'm guessing I don't have the Kindle version yet, but I'm guessing it can be listened to. And then Springer is also selling this chapter by chapter. So if you wanted to start, if someone wanted to start with, say, chapter three, because that's where all the you know, all the action happens, you can start there. And then, if you this is what I say start with chapter three. If you're not sure, if you see references in chapter three to at least one other chapter, I would say it's more economical to just go ahead and buy the book, yeah, wow.

Speaker 1 23:44

Well, I appreciate you coming on today and really sharing about what you're doing and how, which I love. Like I said, you know you were episode five of Conversations for Leaders and Teams and now this is, you know, heading into 80 something, so congratulations on that. I would love to be able to give you the last word before I say goodbye.

Speaker 2 24:09

Thank you, thank you. Whatever vision you have, even if it's, whatever form it's in, even if it's a latent vision, I would say take steps every day, no matter who you are, to make that vision happen.

Speaker 1 24:22

Excellent. Well, folks, you've heard it here with Dr Thomas E Anderson II. Thanks so much for being here and until next time. You keep doing great things and we'll see you soon.

Speaker 2 24:33

Thank you, I look forward to it.