Can anyone become a Visionary Leader? This question, laid out at the onset of the book, is answered with a resounding Yes! throughout its chapters. Stephen R. Mason was inspired to shares his reflections on his long career as an executive in the healthcare industry. Simply put, Mason is motivated by the thought that sharing his journey and the insights he has learned along the way might be of service to others.
That journey shows up as a series of refreshingly personal analogies and anecdotes organized around a set of guiding principles called The Success Formula. While leaving plenty of room for individual interpretation, The Success Formula offers time-tested and well-vetted recommendations for making the most ambitious vision a reality. Mason incorporates interesting examples from his own career in healthcare to illustrate how any organization–including those in fields not known for their swift adaptation and market repositioning–can learn to innovate and think beyond the status quo.
Once you know that becoming a Visionary Leader is possible, the inevitable follow-up question is: How? The author answers this question in the section of the book that precedes The Success Formula: Prepare for the Journey. One of the primary ideas of the book is that visionary leadership comes from within, not from without. A Visionary Leader must be willing to wrestle with his or her thoughts, emotions, and deeply held beliefs to find the confidence to stand up in front of an entire organization and say, Follow me.
Visionary Leadership: Learning to Lead from the Inside Out explains these concepts in a way that is straightforward in both comprehension and application, without shying away from bigger themes of meaning, purpose, and spirituality. Readers will find this book inspirational and instructional, a roadmap for exploring the path of their own careers.
About the Author
Stephen R. Mason has dedicated his entire professional career to the health and well-being of others. In his four decades of service to the healthcare industry, Mason has held a number of management and leadership roles, most recently as CEO of one of the largest regional health systems in the country. He has extensive experience as a Messenger-in-Chief, using engaging language and storytelling to distill a message into its simplest form.
Mason’s leadership style blends personal experience, effective communication, and relationship-building skills with a commitment to tangible outcomes and measurable improvements. Recently retired, Mason is spending his second career both as an author and as a founding partner of CSuite Solutions, which helps healthcare systems evolve and adapt to the changing demands of their industry.
