When it comes to being a leader, it often takes specific personality traits and skills to pull off a certain leadership style. Strategic leaders are no different and the qualities of these leaders have been extensively studied as well. Below are some of the core traits strategic leaders should have and the abilities they need in order to lead strategically.
The characteristics of a strategic leader
The strategic leadership model requires plenty from its leader. Since the leader has to be involved with every aspect of the organisation, the needed characteristics emphasise the leader’s people skills and organisational abilities. The below five are the key characteristics a strategic leader should focus on developing in order to succeed.
Inquisitive
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Influential
The above two characteristics are not enough to convince other people of your leadership qualities or guarantee they trust your vision. You need to be able to use your influence to get people on board. Influential people can succeed in achieving objectives because they make it easy for others to trust and listen to them. If you can’t get others to buy into your plan, you won’t be able to achieve it.
The ability to influence is especially important for strategic leaders because they are often implementing strategies others might not find as easy to follow. Changing a system around in a business, for example, can be difficult. The better you are at ensuring others trust you vision, the easier it will be to move towards the goals.
Fast Company outlines seven easy ways you can improve your influence over others:
• Becoming a better listener.
• Learning to read body language and making decisions based on that.
• Acknowledging the accomplishments of other people.
• Seeking advice and assistance, even if you don’t necessarily always need
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Since you need to be able to manage and inspire the workforce, you must be able to get your message across in a clear manner. Furthermore, strategic leaders are often hands on with the job, which means communicating directly with customers and other stakeholders. If you can converse easily, you can get other people more invested in your chosen strategy.
While most characteristics on the list are qualities anyone can improve and train, communication skills are perhaps the easiest trait to master – you don’t need to be a natural in communication, as you can implement easy strategies in order to improve your skills. The key to a good communication comes from:
• Learning to listen – Don’t listen passively and wait for your turn to speak, but engage in the listening process. Pay attention to what the person is saying and even repeat the key points in your head.
• Use the BRIEF method – When you are communicating with a person, you should use the BRIEF method to keep your message concise and clear. The acronym stands for background, reason, information, end, and
In December 2001, the Chief of Staff of the Army tasked the Army War College to produce a report which identified Strategic Leader Competencies for the post 9/11 Army. Dr. Leonard Wong and four U.S. Army War College students prepared a report under the direction of the Director of the Strategic Studies Institute. That report produced a list of six meta-competencies.3 Although the title of that report and the materials presented here have a similar name, that report dealt with soldiers operating in a strategic environment, where tactical and operational level decisions can have strategic ramifications. This paper addresses more broad-based attributes, which in some instances are complementary to several characteristics described in the Chief of Staff of the Army's report, but this paper will be more focused on strategic leaders at the strategic level. The strategic leaders discussed here are those who deal with resourcing, policy, structure, and a host of other strategic issues.
Persuading others of your vision requires knowledge and a clear strategy (Business Dictionary). Leadership is a natural quality that comes up as responsibility in exchange of having followers with, in return, the followers creating a leader. Concluding that leadership in general cannot be taught, as per the Trait Theory, we argue that it is different characteristics in different situations that result in good leadership. The Trait Theory points out that there is a certain type of person making a good leader, with the decisive factor being: having or not having distinctive qualities of being a leader. Despite that, being an effective leader still can be trained. External and internal influences impact the effectiveness and must be considered in order to succeed. Which leads us to the Behavioural Theory, thinking of what a good leader actually does. Kurt Lewin developed three leadership types such as the autocratic leader who is a maker, someone who makes decisions without consultation with others. Contrasting, the democratic leader who consults with others (a team, for example) before making a decision. Laissez-faire leaders, as the name already indicates, occasionally lets other people make decisions, doesn’t
On the other hand we have the explanation of strategic leadership: Strategic leadership is the process of using well considered tactics to interconnect a vision for a group or one of its parts. Strategic leadership typically manages, motivates and persuades staff to share that same vision, and can be an important tool for implementing change or creating organizational structure within a
Vince Lombardi once said, “Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all of the needed talents that go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader.” A person needs many qualities to become a great leader. Throughout history, four qualities have remained constant: vision, communication, fixed principles, and confidence.
To inspire and influence others, a leader must possess many skills and abilities. As motivational speaker Peter Northouse, states, “a leader should be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant” (Northouse, 2013) Moving an entire group of individuals toward a singular goal is a considerable undertaking. Without effective communication skills and a clear vision of what needs to be accomplished, one will feel like they are trying to herd cats rather than leading.
The best characteristics for an effective leader are integrity, passion, patience, transparency, innovation, and a good listener (active listening). It is imperative that the leader possess these characteristics to provide competent/effective leadership. As noted earlier a leader influences (motivates) the team to
Many Scholars characterize the core qualities and skills necessary for an effective leader. Useem defines leadership as “Creating a vision and translating that vision into actions”. Historically, an effective leader was assumed to be exceptionally knowledgeable, authoritative, and dominate. Those leaders applied the command and control method to lead an organization. With the passage of time, this definition has been changed. The modern definition of an effective leader is honest, courageous, trustworthy, inspirational, and result-oriented. Today’s leaders create shared values and vision, and empower others to achieve their targets.
Considering a person to be a leader for an organisation is essential for successful business practises hence keeping in mind the certain characteristics an individual needs to have in order to be a leader and the responsibility of the leader to make sure that if any conflict arises they are able to handle the problem with care. They need to be able to manage themselves and people, to ‘drive them’ in order to allow them to strive to do their best.
...needs of their followers. Communication is also a key factor that influences effective leadership. Effective leaders are able to pass out message to their followers and get appropriate feedback in return. Leadership is not determined by the authority of a position or position but by the results. Ability to positively influence the behavior of others toward attaining a specified goal is what makes for effective leadership. Situational leadership is the best approach that could make leaders effective. Leaders need to be flexible and open minded to be able to utilize the different styles of leadership in different situations. Flexibility is a major quality of effective leaders who wish to get things done and in the right manner.
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. The symposia are a lot of fun. We cannot always define it or describe it in every detail.
The most important quality that differentiates a leader from other people is the ability to think strategically. Vision is the most important aspect that drives a leader’s strategy. It is all about where you want to be. Other qualities include Decision making, problem solving, time management, self-motivation, emotional intelligence and many more. Once we know the type of leadership, it is easy to find what leadership skills we have and which we need to develop which is explained in the book “Leadership: Theory, application, skill development (5th ed.) by Lussier and Achua.” Also, Keirsey Style Sorter personality type helps to knowing our temperament type, and work on our weakness and to emerge out as a good leader.
In closing, leadership is a complexes process, there are no simple paths or guarantees to becoming a successful leader. Each individual is unique, and each of us has our own distinct talents for leadership. The traits that seem to be very important in leadership are intelligence, confidence. Charisma, determination, sociability, and integrity. By knowing your traits and nourishing them, you will be a well-developed and successful leader.
The thought of that the way leadership is being made based on characteristics is called, “Trait theory of leadership”. The leader as a person needs to be creative, original, and inspired behind the movement of the company. By doing this it can further help the leader as a person have new ideas and create more contributions to the organization the leader is in charge of and while having these characteristics they should be able to be organized, dependable, and be an achiever. Their personality should also be talkative, very social, and outgoing; this will help them move forward the most. Finally, another point that helps me from my definition of a leader is most of all a leader needs to be trustful, tolerant, kind and this will help them be a great person to get along with. Without trust in the leader nobody will follow someone who cannot be trusted because the leader will look as if they will not accomplish
According to Kay H. Roman, some of the traits that are key to becoming a successful leader are being able to work well with other people, effective time management with tasks ...
Another aspect of leadership includes leadership traits such as being influential and inspirational. There also different contexts of leadership, e.g, leading oneself, leading other individuals, leading groups, leading organizations. Some traits that are often associated with being an effective leader include a measure of intelligence, high energy, self confidence, dominance, and a need for achievement. An effective, charismatic leader must lead by example. That leader must be able to know what is going on, the job or task that is being accomplished, and be able to lead the group into performing the task at hand successfully.