Discovering the power of how to develop leadership skills is crucial. While strong operational leadership skills can help you maintain the status quo, strategic leadership emerges as the most effective option to achieve growth in an unpredictable and ever-evolving environment.

At its core, strategic leadership revolves around having a long-term vision or mission. This purpose serves as the driving force behind a strategic leader’s ability to foster employee satisfaction and motivation. By forging a closer alignment between company and employee goals, businesses can cultivate a robust company culture, leading to increased productivity and long-term sustainability.

In this article, we will delve into the essence of strategic leadership, elucidate what it entails, and outline the essential skills and qualities you need to embrace to become a proficient strategic leader.

What is Strategic Leadership?

Strategic leadership is a type of leadership that inspires others to pull together to help the organisation achieve its long-term vision. Strong strategic leadership involves creating a business mission and providing the support and pathway to realise this aim.

Individual day-to-day decisions or operations are important. However, what they add up to makes a difference over extended timelines. By looking at the horizon, senior leaders can select and prioritise the strategies that will make a difference.

Before we talk more about strategic leadership, it’s essential to define some concepts, such as what strategy means in this context and the difference between a manager and a leader.

Strategy: Strategy is about more than just having a plan. It’s about the steps and processes required to meet an objective. Technological disruption and an unpredictable global environment mean markets are constantly evolving. Successful organisations must adapt to meet these changes and stay competitive.
Difference between a manager and a leader: While managers and leaders might seem similar at first glance, there are some considerable differences between the two. One of the main differences is that leaders must have the instinct to know where they need to go and who can help them get there. On the other hand, managers will carry out the plans and objectives to achieve a desired endpoint.

Theory

While operational leaders monitor performance and ensure employees are focused on short-term goals, strategic leadership takes a more expansive view.

Strategic leadership theory is built around a framework that breaks the process of strategy creation into three simple steps. They are:

Defining your company’s vision or mission
Formulating your strategy
Implementing your strategy.

Let’s deal with each below.

Your mission

Strategic leaders are future-oriented. While they care about the day-to-day, it’s about changing behaviours and company culture to align with the organisation’s mission or purpose.

A strategic vision is not something you can tack on afterwards. It’s not an afterthought; it’s the guiding principle of visionary leadership. Working out your purpose means you have a reference point for what you want your organisation to be at all times.

Creating your plan

Creating your plan for implementing your strategic objectives involves:

Analysing the external and internal environments your business faces
Examine opportunities, risks, and other business scenarios.
Breaking your company vision down into the KPIs, milestones, goals, processes, and company policy that will help you turn your ideas into reality.

Executing your plan

Finally, with research and planning out of the way, it’s time to execute your strategy.

Structuring your organisation to serve your vision
Deciding on incentives to motivate your employees and ensure buy-in
Budgeting wisely to achieve your aims
Implementing initiatives and programs that serve your purpose.

Everything works downstream from establishing your purpose or mission. It informs how you plan and execute your organisation’s strategy.

Skills

A strong strategic leader displays relatable and human qualities. Day-to-day strategic management relies on fostering buy-in among employees. The company vision should be meaningful and important enough to them to be a source of motivation.

However, implementing this strategic mindset among your team members is a specific type of leadership. In contrast to traditional operational leadership styles, you don’t rule by fear. Additionally, you’re not motivating your charges solely with short term goals.

On the contrary, visionary leadership requires a human touch. Your team members must feel valued, respected, and part of the long-term organisational purpose. Building trust and loyalty is a massive part of forging lasting bonds that drive employee retention and satisfaction.

Don’t worry if you don’t possess all of these qualities. We will cover how to develop leadership skills in future blog posts.

For now, we have listed some of the key leadership skills and qualities that will help you build the right environment and culture to support a strategic organisational structure.

Strong communication

Strong communication skills are one of the most vital strategic leadership qualities. Having a great mission or long-term vision is one thing, but if you want to foster buy-in, you need to be able to convey it to your team.

Effectively translating your vision is one of the best ways to motivate employees. Understanding how to express yourself to get employees onboard requires clarity and an ability to connect day-to-day tasks with your long-term goals.

An underappreciated element of solid communication is being open and approachable. So express a clear vision and ensure that your staff know they can follow up and discuss the finer details with you in a one-to-one setting at any time.

Positivity

The path to realising your grand plans for the future will be full of twists and turns. Roadblocks, setbacks, and ups and downs are unavoidable. Sometimes your team will need to be dragged through these dark days through their leader’s sheer force of will and belief in the project.

When leaders have a positive attitude, it trickles down to their employees. You can encourage positivity through simple acts like upbeat communication, encouragement, and an attitude that relishes challenges rather than shrinks under pressure.

Obviously, you need to strike a balance during tough times. While leadership in times of crisis requires its own approach, showing up, being available, and exhibiting a belief that you can ride the storm are qualities a strategic leader should display.

Great listening

Strategic leaders tend to have great listening skills. We have mentioned that employee buy-in is essential for the long-term viability of your mission. So, if you want your team members to be on board, they must feel they are seen and heard.

Leaders are busy. They have lots of responsibilities and tend to be pulled in many directions at once. However, it’s essential that you carve out the time to listen to your employees if you want them to feel like a genuine part of your organisation.

Listen to their concerns, thoughts, and feedback. They will be a great source of new ideas, feedback, and unique insights that you can use to inspire and inform your strategic thinking.

Honesty

Your team members need to know where they stand. Transparency is a huge part of developing trust and loyalty. Being honest helps teams realise they are part of something bigger and not just people on the outside looking in.

Honesty is not always straightforward. Of course, some business details cannot be made public at all times. However, keeping your team up to date about the positives and negatives and ensuring decisions do not blindside them is essential if you want to win their trust.

Collaborative

A collaborative approach is key to creating buy-in. If you want to develop a team pulling in the same direction towards your vision, everyone needs to feel that they have a stake in the company’s success.

Strategic leaders are essentially asking their employees to connect with a company vision. This purpose becomes their guiding light and source of inspiration. You need their input and feedback to ensure a sense of togetherness and unity. Collaboration on long-term projects and strategies helps cement that sense of belonging.

Another important element of collaboration is cross-department teamwork. When you encourage different departments to work together to achieve the same KPIs and metrics, you can deepen the bonds within your entire organisation.

Empathy

Knowing how to develop future leaders should be a priority for any organisation. Employing from within has some huge advantages, especially when your potential leader is steeped in the company culture and has an intrinsic awareness of your team and clients.

Empathy is one of the most valuable strategic leadership qualities. Being able to truly understand the concerns and goals of your employees leads to more meaningful bonds, trust, and loyalty.

Additionally, understanding your workforce makes your strategic planning more effective. Knowing the challenges and hurdles each department faces makes you far less likely to burden them with objectives they can’t achieve.

Implementing winning strategies requires a level of realism about what is possible. Being conscious of those limits starts with empathy.

Innovation

Strategic leadership is about being mindful of the short-term financial stability of your business while also looking towards the future. The best leaders must foster innovation and change within the organisation.

As mentioned above, one of the most significant elements of strategic leadership is the ability to guide an organisation through technological and economic change. Business conditions constantly evolve, and standing still suggests an inability to see or appreciate the big picture.

Visionary leaders are adept at problem-solving. Sometimes that means leaving your comfort zone and tradition behind in pursuit of novel solutions that can help you achieve your strategic plans or implement change.

Diplomacy

Being honest and open, encouraging stakeholder feedback and input, and driving collaboration are all vital elements of the strategic leadership role. However, ensuring that all sides have a voice requires diplomatic management.

Even your strategy team won’t agree 100% of the time. However, when making the strategic decisions that define your reign, you need some tact and diplomacy.

You’ll want a team that is vocal and passionate about chasing the right strategic goals. However, you can’t please everyone all the time. Managing the different opinions and philosophies within your team is an essential element of the long-term success of your team and your strategies.

Humility

Strategic leaders can acknowledge their weaknesses, mistakes, and limitations of their knowledge and wisdom. They aren’t afraid to ask for help or defer to subject matter experts in their organisation. Additionally, they ensure that the credit goes where it is deserved.

Humility is a central part of effective communication for leaders. Your team will respect you and your decisions when they know they are the results of careful consideration that is open to fresh perspectives and that you can acknowledge your fallibility.

Characteristics

One of the biggest questions that strategic leadership must address and solve is how to stay competitive and relevant when the world is changing around you. Here are some strategic leadership characteristics that can help you survive.

Curiosity: Strategic leadership retains and harnesses a sense of curiosity. Curious leaders are constantly learning about and trying to make sense of their environment. Read thought leadership pieces, attend events, watch videos, and do anything it takes to learn and grow.
Hire smarter: Even the best leaders need the right people around them to carry out their vision. While not everyone on your existing team will be willing to go into the trenches with you, you can control your recruitment policy. Look to hire professionals best placed to help you meet your objectives.
Stretch your team and yourself: Strategic leadership is about pushing teams to achieve things that are beyond their perceived capabilities. It requires you to inspire and uplift your team, even in the face of unpredictability and challenging conditions. Enacting change opens teams up to the possibility of failure. Ensure they understand that failure is part of the process, and they will be more prepared to take calculated risks that change demands.
Be data-driven: Having a vision is important. But you need the right data to help you guide and inform the strategies to take you there. Embrace business intelligence and analytics to guide your decisions and provide rock-solid proof to convince team members that need more encouragement to get behind your mission.

Styles

There are several strategic leadership styles that you can use to implement your company’s purpose and vision. Choosing the right approach will depend on factors such as your company culture, industry, the team make up, and even your personality.

Visionary leadership: Visionary leaders can get the buy-in required for company-wide transformation. These charismatic, fearless leaders aren’t afraid to do the unconventional, challenge the status quo, and put a few noses out of joint while they do it.

Ambitious, energetic, and not afraid of failure, these leaders find innovative solutions through big and bold thinking. While they might not always make for the most popular leaders among all staff members, they inspire loyalty and backing from those who share their long-term vision.

Directive leadership: Directive leadership is the most traditional form of strategic leadership. While this style is top-down and autocratic, it demands buy-in and discipline from the organisation, which can boost motivation.

This leadership style demands clear communication. It’s structured and straightforward, and it gets results. While it definitely has characteristics of a more old-school approach, most organisations can benefit from uniting around a leader who knows what they want and how to get it.

Collaborative leadership: Collaborative leadership styles encourage creativity, teamwork, and innovation. This type of strategic leader creates vibrant, energetic environments where teams feel valued and important, regardless of their role.

Collaborative leadership is about sharing power, listening, and building relationships and trust. It encourages the whole team’s input to solve problems and challenges while focusing on creating positive work environments and experiences.

Making The Transition to Strategic Leadership

According to a hugely influential article by the Harvard Business Review, there are several strategic leadership skills that can act as a road map towards making the transition from more traditional styles. These tips and directions can help you implement change in your own organisation. However, they are also helpful for anyone trying to figure out how to lead a team as a first-time manager too.

Anticipate

At an enterprise level, leadership is often relatively poor at understanding risks and opportunities existing outside its peripheral vision.

Strategic leaders engage in deep thinking and research beyond the confines of their organisation. They have an appreciation for the future, especially the trends, both economic and technological, that will shape their industry.

Collecting data, listening to customers, reading industry blogs and magazines, and attending conferences will put you in a position to anticipate changes. Additionally, paying close attention to policy and regulatory change is crucial to future-proofing your business.

Challenge

Strategic leaders are not afraid to challenge the status quo or their own beliefs and assumptions. This careful and deliberate process helps leaders understand and solve problems. As external conditions evolve, approaches that worked in the past become less effective. A leadership approach that is not afraid to try novel approaches offers the agility to adjust to changes. Embracing inputs and perspectives from all stakeholders can provide rich, actionable insight.

Interpret

The best strategic leaders take input from anywhere they can get it. However, such leaders must find ways to synthesise this diverse and often contradictory information. A massive part of effective leadership is the ability to interpret and sift through this information and find underlying and meaningful patterns.

Decide

Decisiveness is an element of all leadership styles, not just the strategic kind. With enough data and experience, your decisions have a better chance of being optimal choices. Establishing a solid decision-making process is essential, whether that involves building a committee, gathering information, or using proven strategies like pilot programs that can test the long-term viability of any significant changes.

Align

Managing various team members means finding a way to handle diverse goals and opinions. Strategic leaders must balance those short-term or individual goals against their long-term strategic vision for the organisation. Communication, collaboration, and diplomacy are all strategic leadership skills that we have highlighted above that you can use to align your team around a common goal. A good strategic leader will know how to manage resistance, deal with objectives, and get team members pulling in the right direction.

Learn

Strategic leaders are constantly learning and growing. Their orientation towards attaining knowledge and improvement acts as inspiration for their team. Both success and failure are learning opportunities; this kind of thinking should be imprinted in your organisation’s DNA.

All strategic leadership styles should encourage innovation and experimentation. An organisation overly focused on results is in danger of missing out on potential winning strategies that didn’t deliver because of mitigating circumstances.

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Pulling it all together

Tying these elements of leadership style together is critical to developing your organisation’s strategic competencies. The working definition of strategic competency involves three factors:

Knowledge, skills, or processes that the organisation can draw from
Attributes that provide value to your customers
Elements that competitors can’t replicate too easily.

When you combine these elements, your business will have a robust strategic approach that can weather even the most challenging or disruptive environment.

Conclusion

Strategic leadership is about much more than making plans. It’s about using long-term vision, reliable analytics, and innovation to inspire buy-in, loyalty, and trust. Additionally, it’s about embracing a wide range of human qualities.

For an organisation to thrive and flourish, they need the right blend of people, a strong company culture, and the right strategies. On Q Recruitment has helped both private and government organisations in the life sciences sector achieve these objectives since 1999.

Our services include, but are not limited to:

Sourcing incredible and skilled STEM candidates for permanent positions
Recruitment for temporary and contract positions
Executive search
Payrolling services
Succession planning for life sciences
Industry-leading rep

Get in contact today to discuss how we can help you achieve your strategic leadership objectives by providing the people or services you need to move your business to the next level.

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