I haven’t watched much of the new TV show, Undercover Boss, because it sounds manipulative and because any boss who has to go undercover to find out how his company really works is not the kind of role model we should learn from.

Visionary leadership is a Baldrige core value. It emphasizes senior leaders’ personal involvement in communicating, coaching the workforce, developing future leaders, and recognizing employees. Visionary leaders do this every day, not just when a TV camera is turned on, and they do it without a disguise. They interact with their people daily, in every imaginable venue, nurturing an environment in which employees feel valued and engaged.

In “Management Lessons from Undercover Boss” (HBR, March 23, 2010), Michelle Buck, director of leadership initiatives at the Kellogg School of Management, points out that “leadership is a relationship, a partnership, and employee engagement isn’t just a soft and fuzzy topic but has bottom-line implications.” Senior leaders who spend their days holed up in their offices or surrounded by other executives cannot build the relationships or strengthen the partnerships that sustain great companies.

I spent much of last week traveling to sales offices in Europe with the president of a company with a half-billion dollars in annual revenue. He spends most of his time meeting with these small teams and with key customers scattered across nearly 120 countries around the world. Unless they are very new to the company, the employees have met the president on their turf and at orientation held at the company’s U.S. headquarters. He has shared his vision of the company and explained their role in it success, and he has sung with them and laughed with them and left them feeling passionate about the company’s future and about their contribution to it.

He is the opposite of undercover, a role model for visionary leadership. In 30 years he has built his company from nothing to industry leader by creating a culture that is agile, innovative, ethical, customer-focused, and socially responsible.

He has proven that leadership is, indeed, a relationship and a partnership, and that great leaders can’t go undercover–and have no need to–when every employee knows who they are.

To read more about visionary leadership, click on these articles:

• 10 Critical Questions: Senior Leadership
• Co-Creating a Shared Vision
• How to Build a Culture of Social Responsibility
• 4 Parts of True Sustainability

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