Strategic Leader and Leadership: Meaning and Qualities
Strategic Leadership is the capacity to persuade people to freely make choices that will increase the organization’s chances of long-term success while preserving its short-term financial stability. Various leadership philosophies have an influence on an organization’s potential success as well as its growth vision and trajectory. All CEOs need the abilities and resources for both developing and executing strategies in order to effectively manage change. Strategic leaders that are able to foster ownership and alignment within their workgroups in order to execute change, in addition to offering a sense of direction, are essential for managing uncertainty and change.
The capacity of senior managers or executives to decide on the company’s future course of action and direction and to inspire employees to work toward it is known as strategic leadership.
In order to be competitive and relevant, businesses need to decide on their mission and best business practises. Strategic leadership offers strategies to help with this process. Adaptability and learning have become essential for sustainability. The organisation runs the danger of becoming outdated if it is unable to adjust to changing economic conditions, technological advancements, and climate change.
The goal of strategic leadership is to motivate people to take actions that improve the company’s chances for long-term success while maintaining its short-term financial stability.
Strategic leadership is a complex kind of leadership in which managers or high-level executives, or strategic leaders, create organisational structures, assign resources, and motivate staff members to adopt their ideas.
It includes the capacity to foresee, anticipate, and inspire people to support the organization’s strategic change execution.
Chief Strategist
A strategic leader is one who chooses the organization’s courses of action and plans and works hard to carry them out as planned.
Generally speaking, the manager serves as an organization’s strategic leader, anticipating and interpreting the changing business environment and addressing matters that have the potential to both affect and be influenced by events that occur inside or to the company.
The roles of a strategic leader
- establishing the course
- Making strategic decisions
- Management of human capital
- Putting plans into practise
- Management of Change
- Good internal communication in the company
- making sure that efforts are directed in the appropriate way.
- Acquiring strategic skills.
- drafting strategies and policies to ensure that strategic choices are carried out successfully.
- creating and preserving a positive workplace culture
The traits of a strategic leader include being open-minded, anticipatory, accountable, capable of taking risks, influential, disciplined, endurance-minded, modern, self-aware, and self-controlling.
Positions held by the strategic planner
Navigator
A strategic leader pinpoints the main problems and their root causes. In addition, he or she is always searching for greater chances to take action.
Strategist
In their capacity as a strategist, they create long-term plans and set goals that align with the organization’s vision and purpose.
Entrepreneur
A strategic leader is capable of taking calculated risks after carefully considering all of the options. He or she constantly searches for chances and seizes them when the timing is appropriate for them.
Change Agent: A change agent is someone who, when necessary, brings about changes inside the company. And in order for the changes to be properly executed, he or she must first ensure that the organization’s members are aware of the need for change and are able to accept it.
Motivator: To ensure that the company has the greatest human resources, a strategic leader takes on the job of a motivator by bringing in, nurturing, and keeping talent.
Captivator
By influencing others to prepare them to follow the vision, a strategic leader may cultivate passion, devotion, tenacity, and commitment towards shared objectives.
A strategic leader may also be a visionary, policy maker, crisis manager, spokesman, process integrator, mobilizer, enterprise protector, etc. in addition to these tasks.
In summary, visionary leaders have the ability to see, articulate, passionately hold, and relentlessly pursue their goals.