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The unstable global economic environment of today’s world, makes it inevitable for organizations to make a change in their leadership dynamics. Studies showed that businesses know that they need thought leaders, positive instigators, exciting and inspiring innovators, and different thinkers to continue their existence.
Having strong strategic leaders at all business levels has never been as important for organizations as today. Leaders must lead others to overcome the challenges of the competitive market and ensure longterm success of organizations, implement ideas, initiate change, and be excellent at guiding long-term initiatives.
This is where “Strategic Leadership” emerges.
Strategic leadership is an application where leaders develop a vision that enables organizations to adapt or remain competitive to the changing economic and technological climate, using different management styles. It also refers to the most powerful use of the management strategy by the employee.
Strategic leaders mobilize employees with a positive impact and have a very high potential for change. Instead of detailing specific actions or demonstrating micromanagement, strategic leaders excel at communicating their message clearly and leading their team to develop a plan to achieve the ultimate goal.
The main purpose of strategic leadership is to streamline organizational processes, to encourage innovation, and to increase strategic efficiency by creating an environment that encourages employees to be productive, independent and develop their own ideas. In this regard, strategic leaders are much more concerned with “creativity, motivation, perception and planning” that contributes to the realization of the goals and objectives of the employees. These leaders that can work with very difficult issues and uncertain environments, create the necessary resources by contributing to the organizational structure and continue their work with a strategic vision.
How does strategic leadership progress?
Being a strategic leader begins with fully understanding the organization’s mission. Leaders who know why the organization exists, what kind of customer portfolio it has, and how they can add value by understanding their needs, can progress towards becoming a strategic leader.
In the next step strategic leaders need to establish a vision of what this mission will look like and how it will be delivered at a particular time in the future. Then they need to create a strategy that enables this vision to take action, including the steps and changes that need to be made to bring the organization from its current state to the targeted state.
Main characteristics that ensure superior performance in strategic leaders are as follows:
- With effective self-control, they act thoughtfully at every step.
- By adapting very quickly to technology, they know how to collaborate, motivate, and create strong teams in the digital age and in a virtual environment.
- They have a variety of sources of information to keep themselves and their team up to date.
- Instead of imposing something by using their power, they accept the ideas of their team and are open to reverse mentoring where necessary.
- They are loyal to their visions.
- They have high self-awareness. They are successful in terms of emotion management by being aware of the effect of their own emotions on the team.
- They are competent in authorization and delegation.
- They have a consistent and reliable attitude in communicating their vision until it becomes part of the organization.
- They ensure complete information flow between the team and other leaders by having strong communication skills.
- They have high intrinsic motivation, know their team and their sources of motivation very well, and do not hesitate to invest in it.
- As they have high emotional intelligence, they are described as compassionate and empathetic people.
- They have a positive approach to the future, a passionate way of working, and inspire those around them with their energy and enthusiasm.
Kaynak/ Source: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/strategic-leadership.htm
