A good amount of people in most workplaces work a real day’s work, but there are few/a small handful that believe being a pass-thru entity who provides verbose email updates qualify as work. The visualist is mainly focused on visibility and will eagerly sign up for any action. That’s when the real fun starts.
FAST FORWARD: Meeting end +30 minutes: The visualist stops by the office and meanders his/her way to a discussion on “who might know this” or “who might know that” or “who could”. After the information is divulged in a way that he or she can comprehend – they disappear – so they’re kinda magician’s as well.
Action item due time -30 minutes: Visualist stops by and plays back their assessments of the status, asks for input and thoughts around next steps. You give it up and – WHOOSH – gone like a phantom.
Status Meeting -12 minutes: Some how in the time you chatted a 3 page missive is sent which is effectively only 3 bullets of update, 2 bullets of next steps and a bunch of “here’s how tough it was” and “thanks to xxxx”. Ah the visualist value add – bloated communication, kudos and poor word choice.
Meeting: He or she boastfully brings in their update printed and reads it, like they aren’t sure they know it outside of the script.
So the fun part with this type of self-proclaimed leader starts when you go for the details. Go into the details, he or she will need to publicly engage the person who did the work or state they need to follow up with the work doer for additional validation and clarity, after fumbling towards an answer.
The other slightly mean thing to do is to send them off to the wrong people, this only works with short deadlines. Or goof with them on next steps… So while the stuck series speaks to leadership and middle management influence, the visualist is typically a climber who believes they are a leader. I mean they typically are in the office early.
These people typically think note taking and action management with the leadership is leadership. Some time’s note taking is just note taking. Typically these peoples ego’s will provide a quick burn from which only a phoenix will rise.
