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Get Ready to Become a Winning Strategic Leader

You’ve probably heard the advice often given to leaders: people may not remember what you say, but they will remember how you make them feel. How do you want people in your organization to feel about you and your team? Your internal team wants a sense of purpose, an understanding of the connection between their work and the organization’s larger picture. When you set your vision, ensure you are creating purposeful work. By helping your team see the way the vision aligns with corporate strategy, you help them see they are working for something bigger than checking items off some to-do list. This same model applies outside of your team, too. Speak frequently about your vision and help others in the company to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Next, we’d like to introduce you to two fictionalized leaders who will appear throughout this book. While they are a conglomeration of people and behaviors we’ve worked with and coached (and sometimes ourselves), any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental.

Taylor

Taylor is a tactical director at a medium-sized company. She excels at accommodating requests from everyone throughout the organization, and she manages her team so that they can quickly accomplish any work brought to them. Her team’s direction shifts as the demand for learning ebbs and flows. She’s a team player, works hard, and is hands-on with her team as much as possible. When invited to strategy meetings, she’s always rushing in at least 5-10 minutes late and brings reams of data in complex spreadsheets. She tends to be long-winded when presenting to the executive board and likes to share her methods for analyzing the data because she thinks it helps her seem credible. Many board members fail to see the relevance of her points and question whether to invite her to future meetings. But she brings donuts from everyone’s favorite local bakery, so it’s hard to cut her from the invite list.

Sam

Sam is a strategic director at the same medium-sized company. She’s focused on the big picture and is always thinking about a desirable and attainable future for the company. She’s able to connect her vision with the company’s vision, and her team understands their own direction. She also shares that vision with everyone she meets throughout the organization. Everyone knows what Sam’s department is up to. Members of the executive board value Sam’s input, and she’s frequently included in strategy sessions. She comes equipped with data that shows how her department is impacting corporate goals. Less strategic leaders in the organization find her intimidating because of her constant focus on the big picture and avoid taking last-minute meetings with her when they don’t have time for ample preparation. Sam is starting to earn a positive reputation in her industry for her thoughtful social media activity, blog posts, magazine contributions, and very popular conference sessions on driving winning results.

Sam and Taylor will help to illustrate the concepts presented in this book; look for them in the coming chapters and decide which archetype suits the needs of your organization.

To start, we will present Taylor and Sam in terms of leadership behaviors. As you learn more about Sam and Taylor, it’s worth noting that we’ve all been Taylor in our careers! The majority of people start their careers in a tactical role, and then at some point need to make the shift to become strategic. Some people, in fact, prefer tactical roles, and that’s okay! It does, however, mean that they aren’t suited for strategic leadership. Sometimes we need characteristics of both (whether found within ourselves or by collaborating with others), but we need to know when it’s the right time to unlock that skill set. As you go through the book, when you find yourself identifying with Taylor over Sam, it should trigger you to take a hard look at your role and what your business needs from you.

Strategic Leadership Behaviors

There are a number of competency models for high-level leaders; we offer a more informal list of traits and behaviors that have proven successful in our work and have been benchmarked against other leading organizations. The list below are skills that are most important for today’s leaders of strategic organizations. As you look through these, consider the following:

•Where do you see areas for your own improvement?

•Do you see yourself acting like Taylor when you should be more like Sam?

•What are one or two things you could add to your own current development plan in order to get your journey started?

These core behaviors apply across any function. When you build your own development plan, don’t forget to drill down into your own discipline for function-specific competencies.

1.Plan and act strategically. Develop a clear and compelling vision, strategy, or action plan that is aligned with your organization’s goals and possesses a clear view of the future of the company. Having better industry and cultural knowledge enables you to anticipate market and economic trends. Take a longer-term view of the business and the market, and translate the business strategy into meaningful goals and objectives for your department.

Strategic Sam behaviors

•Evaluates and pursues opportunities based on their fit with the broader organization

•Helps others understand how they impact measures of business performance and the organization’s overall business success

•Creates a long-term vision for the organization that clearly defines how it will achieve maximum and sustainable competitive advantage

•Ensures business plans and investments consider future needs and global/industry trends

•Creates a solid plan, and then act upon that plan

•Makes informed decisions based on the best data available

Tactical Taylor behaviors

•Has little or no understanding of or interest in the vision/strategy of the business or of how individual or team goals connect to it

•Stays focused on their own initial objectives and priorities, even when the business circumstances change

•Spends excessive time on elements too tactical for her job level

•Does not keep apprised of industry trends and changes

•Is often seen as working in a silo

•Does not build professional networks across the organization

•Is excited to jump into doing without a clear plan or understanding of the purpose

2.Customer and stakeholder focus and understanding. Understand your customers’ and stakeholders’ needs, concerns, and problems. Strive to deliver high-quality products and superior services that exceed the expectations of your internal and external customers.

Strategic Sam behaviors

•Stays in touch and listens to internal and external customer feedback

•Focuses the organization on maximizing key customer offerings and efforts that enhance loyalty and commitment

•Enhances colleagues’ understanding and appreciation of a diverse customer base

•Monitors the external environment to identify long-term implications of change, e.g., the market or customer behavior

Tactical Taylor behaviors

•Does not approach issues with a customer-first mindset

•Does not truly listen to her customers’ and colleagues’ needs

•Reacts instinctively and jumps on a quick solution

•Fail to recognize opportunities and the potential impact on the customer

•Not taking time for customer and stakeholder contact

•Assume that all customers’ and stakeholders’ needs are the same and/or cannot change

3.Develop and lead engaged and committed teams. Build a highly engaged and committed team. Leverage the skills and commitment of your team to accomplish stretch goals and objectives. Build and leverage your talent base by seeking out high performers, helping others develop and grow, rewarding high achievement, and supporting diversity of thought and perspective. Make your teams the most desirable place to work in the company.

Strategic Sam behaviors

•Holds self and others accountable for developing people

•Identifies and develops talent pools that reflect workforce demographics and business needs

•Creates an environment that retains talented people by addressing critical workplace issues, e.g., career development, work environment, and life balance

•Leverages diversity to drive superior performance

•Ensures that she and her direct reports have clear, specific performance objectives in writing

Tactical Taylor behaviors

•Overemphasizes proving oneself and fails to give credit to others

•Fails to give others constructive performance feedback

•Does not let go of tasks that should be accomplished by others

•Does not apply consistent criteria and standards when making decisions about the people on her team

4.Lead through influence. Positively influence others and collaborate in ways that inspire others to take action and/or change their perspectives.

Strategic Sam behaviors

•Creates new and uses existing coalitions to achieve organizational results

•Builds a broad base of support and influences key internal and external leaders

•Ensures leaders are motivating their employees with minimal reliance on authority

•Inspires passion and excitement in others by appealing to their values and goals

•Hires the best people who are motivated to support the vision

Tactical Taylor behaviors

•Often fails to get support for ideas and projects

•Fails to energize others

•Does not make others feel as though their point of view has been heard

•Is only able to get things accomplished through a directive leadership style

•Hires people who can be micromanaged so they will produce more work

5.Lead change and innovation. Identify the changing needs of customers, employees, and the system as a whole, and successfully lead innovation that improves the business.

Strategic Sam behaviors

•Champions ideas and best practices from both within and outside of the organization

•Leads change in strategic directions for the organization in response to customer or system needs

•Develops strategies for large-scale change initiatives

•Creates a culture that fosters innovation

Tactical Taylor behaviors

•Stays fixed on how things have always been done

•Resists new ideas

•Avoids taking risks

•Applies old solutions to new problems

•Generates ideas that are not suitable for the needs of the business

6.Continual learning. Continual learning is an attribute that reflects your ability and willingness to change and gain from experiences and to apply learning effectively across diverse situations. Assess and recognize your own strengths and opportunities and pursue self-development as needed. Leading research supports the understanding that learning orientation is an indicator of success in future leadership roles. This attribute adds a future focus to how we view an individual’s potential.

Strategic Sam behaviors

•Quests for self-development

•Seeks and uses feedback from multiple sources (peers, customers, and subordinates)

•Engages in active listening with the intent to learn

•Asks questions in a way that shows a genuine curiosity and desire to learn

•Proactively advances knowledge and capabilities through a robust individual development plan

•Reflects on experiences and applies lessons to future experiences

•Adapts quickly and easily to new or changing conditions

•Identifies patterns/trends and apply them to new or unfamiliar situations

•Experiments with new ideas or approaches to determine what works best

•Brings out the best thinking in others

•Encourages others to experiment with new ideas and respectfully challenges others to think in unconventional or unprecedented ways

•Shares ideas and best practices with other parts of the organization to help strengthen the business

Tactical Taylor behaviors

•Reacts defensively to feedback

•Is unaware of her own development needs (has significant blind spots despite being given clear feedback)

•Demonstrates overconfidence in her knowledge or abilities

•Fails to apply information broadly or to new experiences

•Becomes overwhelmed by complexity or ambiguity

•Resists new ideas or approaches

•Prefers to think and act in standard ways, consistent with what has been done in the past