Management and visionary leadership

Vision has been discussed by many authors in recent years. But, there has been a little definition of the content of this word. No one has described how to develop vision, how to communicate it, how to renew it, and how to sustain it over long periods of time. However, vision is addressed to all those interested in the art of leadership and management. Also, organizations should have interested in the meaning of vision if they want to have a success in the long-term future. In this study, leadership and management, professional management, the powers of a leader to influence organization's members, vision and visionary leadership concepts have been examined. The importance of a leaders' vision for Turkish organizations have been explained. Also, the traditional and current leadership behaviors such as transformational and transactional leadership, charismatic leadership, symbiotic leadership, superleadership have been examined. This study also explores the elements of a leader's vision: The values as the foundation of the vision; the mission as the fundamental statement of what the organization is today and what it aspires to be in the future; and the goals as setting the long term direction of the organization. Beside these, the formation of the vision, the steps how to communicate vision throughout the organization. The relationship between the vision to the strategic planning is also briefly addressed. In the last chapter of the study, a research based on a questionnaire covering the Turkish business organizations which is in the largest 500 industrial business is taking place. With the result of this study, evaluating the results obtained, the visionary leadership and management concepts and the problems about these concepts in the organizations have been determined and proposals oriented to the solution of these problems have been developed.Key Words: Vision, Visionary Leadership, Leadership and Vision. XVII