How to Bring Your Team Along With Your Vision

If you’re a visionary leader, chances are that your ambition runs a few steps ahead of your team’s.

You see opportunities.

You set the direction.

You move quickly.

But then you glance behind you —and realize your team isn’t moving at the same pace.

·       Meetings are muddled.

·       Decisions get revisited.

·       Execution lags.

Frustration builds at the top. Exhaustion builds in the middle. And the momentum you’re trying to create slows to a crawl.

It isn’t because your vision is wrong.

It’s because your systems can’t keep up.

The hard truth is that you can’t fix the gap by pushing your team harder. You fix it by bringing your team with you.

When ambition outpaces readiness

I coached a senior commercial leader recently — we’ll call him Ben — who was experiencing this exact tension.

Ben was sharp, ambitious, and relentlessly future-focused. Alongside his President, Matthew, he could see the potential to turn things around and accelerate growth — but the pace of ambition was outpacing what the team could realistically deliver.

On paper, the two leaders were aligned. But in practice, things weren’t working.

·       Meetings drifted without clear decisions.

·       Priorities shifted without context.

·       Execution dragged behind strategy.

When we dug in, it became clear the delta wasn’t about vision. It was about readiness.

He didn’t lack ambition, but Ben’s expectations had outstripped the structures needed to support the goals he had for his team. He was moving faster than the people and systems around him could absorb.

And Matthew, while equally motivated, was reacting instead of proactively steering — which only widened the gap.

The turning point

Through coaching, Ben recognized that no amount of pressure would fix the problem. He couldn’t simply “drive harder” and assume people would learn to keep up.

Instead, he needed to reset the way he engaged with both Matthew and his broader leadership team:

·       From reactive updates to proactive alignment. Instead of waiting for issues to bubble up, he began scheduling structured planning sessions with Matthew and peers to clarify priorities and ensure alignment before pushing initiatives downstream.
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·       From tactical meetings to strategic focus. He tightened agendas so discussions stopped spiraling into operational minutiae. This created more space to think — and act — at the right altitude.
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·       From shifting demands to clear priorities. He became explicit about trade-offs: What comes first? What can wait? What does success look like this quarter versus next? That clarity reduced the whiplash his team had been feeling.

The shift was profound.

Execution picked up. Momentum accelerated.

Ben could channel his energy into growth, while Matthew stabilized operations.

And the team finally had the capacity to deliver at the pace of its leaders’ ambition.

Why this matters for every visionary leader

Ben’s experience encapsulated a classic leadership trap I see all the time: mistaking pressure for progress.

It’s easy to assume your team just needs to “step up.”

But teams don’t accelerate because you push harder.

They accelerate when you create the conditions that make forward motion possible.

That means:

·       Clarifying the gap between your strategic vision and the team’s current capacity. Where are the gaps in process, skill, or structure?

·       Investing in capability-building so your team isn’t just running faster, but running stronger.

·       Setting expectations explicitly so no one is burning energy guessing what matters most.

Ambition is necessary. But without structure, it becomes noise.

As I wrote recently in Harvard Business Review, when guidance from the C-suite is inconsistent—whether it slows down or surges ahead—department leaders need to turn that uncertainty into direction their teams can act on.

Your job isn’t just to hold the vision. It’s to give your people experiments they can run, visible progress they can celebrate, and the confidence that they’re not running in circles.

If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated that your team “just isn’t keeping up," pause and ask:

• How can I be clearer about priorities, rather than just being vocal about urgency?

• What opportunities exist for proactive alignment, rather than relying on reactive updates?

• ·Which of my systems support the pace I’m setting — or am I expecting people to sprint through quicksand?

Your vision matters.

But its power comes from your team’s ability to bring it to life. And that doesn’t happen by pushing harder.
It happens by pulling people with you — through clarity, alignment, and trust.