Strategic Leadership - Definition
and Qualities of a Strategic Leader
Strategic
leadership refers to a manager’s potential to express a strategic vision for
the organization, or a part of the organization, and to motivate and persuade
others to acquire that vision.
Strategic leadership can also be defined as utilizing strategy in the
management of employees. It is the potential to influence organizational
members and to execute organizational change. Strategic leaders create
organizational structure, allocate resources and express strategic vision.
Strategic leaders work in an ambiguous environment on very difficult issues
that influence and are influenced by occasions and organizations external to
their own.
The
main objective of strategic leadership is strategic productivity. Another aim
of strategic leadership is to develop an environment in which employees
forecast the organization’s needs in context of their own job. Strategic
leaders encourage the employees in an organization to follow their own ideas.
Strategic leaders make greater use of reward and incentive system for
encouraging productive and quality employees to show much better performance
for their organization. Functional strategic leadership is about inventiveness,
perception, and planning to assist an individual in realizing his objectives
and goals.
Strategic
leadership requires the potential to foresee and comprehend the work
environment. It requires objectivity and potential to look at the broader
picture.
A
few main traits / characteristics / features / qualities of effective
strategic leaders that do lead to superior performance are as follows:
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Loyalty- Powerful and effective leaders demonstrate their loyalty
to their vision by their words and actions.
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Keeping
them updated- Efficient and effective leaders
keep themselves updated about what is happening within their organization.
They have various formal and informal sources of information in the
organization.
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Judicious
use of power- Strategic leaders makes a very
wise use of their power. They must play the power game skillfully and try to
develop consent for their ideas rather than forcing their ideas upon others.
They must push their ideas gradually.
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Have
wider perspective/outlook-
Strategic leaders just don’t have skills in their narrow specialty but they
have a little knowledge about a lot of things.
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Motivation- Strategic leaders must have a zeal for work that goes
beyond money and power and also they should have an inclination to achieve
goals with energy and determination.
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Compassion- Strategic leaders must understand the views and feelings
of their subordinates, and make decisions after considering them.
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Self-control- Strategic leaders must have the potential to control
distracting/disturbing moods and desires, i.e., they must think before
acting.
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Social
skills- Strategic leaders must be
friendly and social.
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Self-awareness- Strategic leaders must have the potential to understand
their own moods and emotions, as well as their impact on others.
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Readiness
to delegate and authorize-
Effective leaders are proficient at delegation. They are well aware of the
fact that delegation will avoid overloading of responsibilities on the
leaders. They also recognize the fact that authorizing the subordinates to
make decisions will motivate them a lot.
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Articulacy- Strong leaders are articulate enough to communicate the
vision(vision of where the organization should head) to the organizational
members in terms that boost those members.
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Constancy/
Reliability- Strategic leaders constantly
convey their vision until it becomes a component of organizational culture.
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To
conclude, Strategic leaders can create vision, express vision, passionately
possess vision and persistently drive it to accomplishment.
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