Strategic Leadership
The only thing harder than being a strategic leader is trying to define the entire scope of strategic leadership a broad, difficult concept. We cannot always define it or describe it in every detail, but we recognize it in action. This type of leadership involves microscopic perceptions and macroscopic expectations. Volumes have been written on the subject, which may in fact contribute to the difficulty of grasping the concept. One finds confusing and sometimes conflicting information on this blended concept that involves the vagaries of strategy and the behavioral art of leadership. Sometimes the methods and models used to explain it are more complicated than the concept and practice of strategic
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Strategic leadership entails making decisions across different cultures, agencies, agendas, personalities, and desires. It requires the devising of plans that are feasible, desirable, and acceptable to one’s organization and partners whether joint, interagency, or multinational. Strategic leadership demands the ability to make sound, reasoned decisions specifically, consequential decisions with grave implications. Since the aim of strategy is to link ends, ways, and means, the aim of strategic leadership is to determine the ends, choose the best ways, and apply the most effective means. The strategy is the plan; strategic leadership is the thinking and decision making required to develop and effect the plan. Skills for leading at the strategic level are more complex than those for leading at the tactical and operational levels, with skills blurring at the seams between those levels.
Developing Strategic Leadership
If becoming a strategist is the ends, then leadership is the ways, and development is the means. Learning to become a strategic leader requires special preparation in several areas. First, one must understand how such a leader develops in essence the anatomy of strategic leadership. Second, one should recognize some of the essential competencies a strategic leader must have. Finally, the prospective leader needs to assess his or her current abilities and commit to a development plan.
Anatomy of a Strategic
The definition of leadership comes from within each person. Every person has his or her own interpretation of how a leadership should be defined. This definition most likely comes from past experiences under leadership or being the leader. My personal definition is very lengthy because I feel like leadership is very important.
In the opening of this paper the below description of the need for strategic leadership and the difficulty in defining it can both be seen. In Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization 's Enduring Success by Richard L. Hughes and Katherine Colarelli Beatty define this difficulty beautifully in their opening. The book opens with a description of the difficulty of learning to surf. As you stand looking at the beautiful ocean, you move to begin paddling out through the waves only to fail each time at getting up and successfully riding a wave all the way to shore. It speaks of trying and practicing at home, only to be thrown when the "moment ' counts. The imagery of attempting to learn to surf and failing due to a lack of
Today's organizations face difficult challenges in order to remain competitive the quickening pace of change, increasing uncertainty, growing ambiguity, and complexity. To meet these challenges, organizations must broaden the scope of leadership responsibility for strategic leadership and engage more people in the process of leadership. In Becoming a Strategic Leader Rich Hughes and Kate Beatty from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) offer executives and managers a handbook for implementing a strategic leadership process that reaches leaders at all levels of organizations. Based on CCL's successful developing the Strategic Leader Program, this book outlines the framework of strategic leadership and contains practical suggestions on how to develop the individual, team, and organizational skills needed for institutions to become more adaptable, flexible, and resilient. The authors also show how individual managers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive and systemic approach thinking, acting, and influencing. The author calls our attention to engage us and help us to become strategic, helping and understanding how to help others build strategic teams. The book helps us
1. Strategic leaders are always vision directed, goal oriented, and self confident. They see their organization both as it is, as well as how they feel it should
The ability to influence others to commit to accomplishing organizational goals and objectives is the fundamental basis of strategic leadership. The objective of strategic leadership is to develop long-term success for a going concern. This cannot be accomplished without developing a financially stable organization. Executives are required to formulate, implement and evaluate strategic initiatives in order to build sustainability into the fiber of the organization. Strategic leadership requires the leader to think in the abstract and make unprogrammed decisions in planning the future of the organization.
Assume that you are asked to complete a SWOT analysis for a fictional, large, physician cardiology practice. You are having a hard time fitting all of the characteristics into the SWOT analysis categories. After careful deliberation, you complete the analysis and submit it for review to the practice manager.
The focus of strategic leadership is the enduring performance potential of an organization- achieving the potential of the organization over time so that it will thrive in the long term (Hughes, et.al, 2014). Strategic leadership happens when individuals create the direction, alignment, and commitment needed to achieve the enduring performance potential of the organization (Hughes, et.al, 2014). Leaders are more strategic when they are strong strategy makers, that is, when they develop effective organizational strategies. Strategy involves change, and achieving long-term performance potential in an ever-changing environment requires continuous change. The critical issue for strategic leaders is how to make changes that progressively build on each other and represent an evolving enhancement of the organization’s well- being.
Each person in a company brings his or her own experiences, values, and beliefs to the company. All the experiences, values, and beliefs combined formulate the organizational culture of the company. A sick organizational culture can cause failure in a company. In a company with a healthy organizational culture employees work together to ensure the company reaches its goals. This paper will discuss the roles leadership and management play in a healthy organizational culture. How the four functions of management support and maintain a healthy organizational culture will also be addressed. In addition, strategies that leaders can use to promote a healthy culture will also be reviewed.
Therefore, assessment of these approaches underscores the fact that there is no universal and consistent definition for strategic leadership (Ahmad Maez, 2017). In fact, every CEO and leader have considered it from their viewpoint. An interesting viewpoint for some leaders is to define management as the ability of getting the task done through people. Which in essence means, leaders can have the job done by the others’ is considered as a successful manager (Donovan, et al., 2016). In other words, a successful leader is the delegator and conductor of group task of accomplishing the organization 's desired objectives with maximum efficiency (Ahmad Maez, 2017).
This study is very crucial for all coaches and people of leadership. The purpose of this article is so simple but the information is price less. You need to be able to develop leaders in order to be successful as a person in charge. Voight (2015) shines some great insight on how to develop leaders and the process one should take.
While defining along with measuring the effectiveness of leadership and their impacts of strategic decision makings, the process still is difficult, as it remains not only multidimensional but also not reducible ,that can be done in a single measurement . The leadership styles became even further complicated in course of time by the fact that people have been socially
Strategic leadership is the use of strategy in the management of employees or workers. The main goal is to find methods to motivate workers to take interest and initiative in improving and increasing their productive contributions to the company in question. Strategic leadership is a model of management that trains workers to best prepare the company for what’s ahead. Awareness plays a major role in strategic leadership, and so strategic leaders are constantly looking towards the future and analyzing all possibilities in terms of preparation. Other features that these leaders must have are adaptability and growth-orientation; after all these
Strategic leadership is the capability to incorporate forward-thinking ideas and concepts into a business’s functions while simultaneously influencing employees to accept the new processes (Malewska & Sajdak, 2014). Consequently, leaders cannot announce a change or new strategy and expect the staff to understand the latest expectations; it takes a more in-depth, hands-on approach to make the system work. In a 1998 study, chief executive officers (CEOs) from American businesses ranked
After reading the course text and materials, the author's views have changed considerably. What has changed is the real world applications of strategic leadership. Initially, this author felt that leadership was a kind of ability to handle or control a group or an organization members to do things together ass a group. Leadership includes a lot of conditions, such as communications, statements and agreements. Originally, strategy meant how to plan to lead a group or an organization by the leadership. The term strategic leadership meant that to be a good leader should represent different kinds of leadership to head each different group or organization. Finally, execution to the author originally meant putting some things together that the company or organization is developing. The developed ideas are listed below.
The strategic management planning goes hand in hand with strong leadership that can deliver and execute organization plans and succeed in the business market. Leaders for large organizations should poses high management quality with interpersonal skill to be able to achieve organization’s goals and deal with unexpected challenge in a very competitive market.