The 9 Elements of Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership is a highly sought-after skillset. But the path to becoming a strategic leader is vague and varied, much like its definition. Now more than ever, businesses are looking towards their leaders to deliver strategic direction in uncertain times.

There are hundreds of articles that attempt to define strategic leadership – it’s a much-debated topic and a much-desired trait. An article in the Harvard Business Review, for example, explains that strategic leadership is based upon a leader’s ability to anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align and learn.

Other publications, such as strategy+business, argue that the 10 principles of strategic leadership include core skills such as the ability create an environment that accepts failure, carve out multiple paths for testing new ideas, be honest, hire for transformation and actively reflect.

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Some business leaders argue that strategic leadership is your ability to influence people with your vision, others say it’s all about the money – securing financial stability today while enhancing tomorrow’s prospects. But we think that strategic leadership is more like a process – one that can be demonstrated through this analogy.

Picture this: In the depths of every dimly lit arcade, amid the sound of ringing bells and the glow of flashing neon, you’ll find a coin pusher game hoarding a mound of 10p coins. Its victims are those who believe a one-off investment can trigger a cliff-edge change.

This arcade game is much like the impact of successful, strategic leadership; small, slow-burning acts are crucial to nudging things along day by day, but only when you look back over time will you see the fruits of your labour. The 10p coins will eventually drop to be collected.

While it’s a nice metaphor, it takes a lot of patience, investment and resilience to put in to practice. Being told to “lead strategically” or even “think strategically” can leave us perplexed. We know it’s important to do, but how do we do it? What leadership principles do we need to follow in order be truly strategic?

The 9 elements of strategic leadership

We’ve collated the opinions of business leaders from across the UK to answer this. We asked: What leadership skills does a strategic leader possess? And how can business leaders start leading strategically?

Hopefully, these tips are full of tangible leadership examples which alleviate some of the ambiguity around the term – and offer up some insightful takeaways that you can start putting into practice today.

1. Know the difference between management and leadership

Leadership and management are two very different things. Leaders work with vision, while managers work with objectives. Leaders need to know why, where and who. Managers need to know how and what.

Leadership requires you to know where you need to go and be agile in how you get there. Management requires you to go where you’re told to go and be brilliant at knowing how to get there.

While management can be taught, leadership asks you to tap into something braver: instinct. Writing in Forbes, William Arruda seconds this in saying: “Managers mimic the competencies and behaviours they learn from others and adopt their leadership style rather than defining it”.

But leadership requires you to truly innovate, to try new things and to follow the road less travelled. As Francis Bacon said: “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils”.

2. See the bigger picture

Strategic leadership is about climbing out of the day-to-day drudgery and seeing the bigger picture. It requires a keenness to learn, constantly.

Both new threats and new opportunities are likely to exist in the periphery of what’s happening in front of you. Take a step back to expand your field of view.

Look at other world-class firms outside of your industry, understand your competitors well enough to map them in your business ecosystem and know your customers – who are not like you.

3. Set stretchy goals, but be brave enough to fail

Setting stretch-targets is an important part of achieving more than you think you can, but the world is an unpredictable place, full of curve-balls and constant change, which strategic leadership requires you to embrace. It takes courage to go back to the drawing board and re-forecast your targets to be in line with a new landscape.

If you’re too afraid to step back and say: “Hang on, we’ve got this wrong”, you’ll set yourself up for a very difficult conversation in the long-run in which you’ll have to explain how you missed the mark so drastically.

Don’t lose sight of ‘what is’. Constantly review your business plan, it can’t just sit there for three years. And be willing to fail, often and fast. It’s part and parcel of success. Discovering what doesn’t work paves the way for what does.

In a Harvard Business Review article titled ‘Increase Your Return on Failure’, Julian Birkinshaw and Martine Haas say: “One of the most important—and most deeply entrenched—reasons why established companies struggle to grow is fear of failure.”

4. Build a team that gels together

Hiring the right talent is a highly strategic steer. Your team must fit together, as if like a puzzle; eclectic in its makeup so that, at the end of the day, everyone truly gets on.

This genuine companionship will uplift team morale, especially through the highs and lows every business is set to face. You’ll end up with a far stronger team in which everyone pulls together, relies on one another and takes accountability for their role.

Failing to build a team that gels together will either force you to micro-manage or leave you with a piecemeal and legless strategy.

5. Use the data at your fingertips

Technology continues to advance and become ever more pervasive. With this comes a raft of data that can broaden the scope of what can be measured, analysed and improved.

You can access behavioural insights on your audience, track your marketing efforts and understand your brand sentiment through social listening tools.

There has never been more opportunity to be strategic. Growth is now a meticulous science that we can steer and adjust the speed of, rather than a gut instinct upon which we hope for the best.

6. Keep your sense of play

As the philosopher Alan Watts says, the existence of everything is essentially playful. Compare it to music: You do not ‘work’ the piano, you ‘play’ it. The point is not to reach the end.

Dancers do not focus their routines around reaching a final spot on stage, and musicians don’t race to reach their final chord. It's the play of the act that creates the point.

Under the same logic, your role as a strategic leader should set an example. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the task – especially when you’re given a role that looks enormous.

But remember that no one expects you to tackle it all in one go – no one expects you to reach your final chord or your final pose right away. And for those that do, it’s about bringing them to understand what is possible within existing frameworks. Managing expectations is key.

Don’t walk around with the world on your shoulders, however you’re feeling, remember to enjoy the play of it.

Leadership is about actively lifting people up to your level, not just showing people how you got there.

Amanda Lim

Head of Flexible Office Solutions

7. Lean on those around you

The age-old maxim to success is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. And while that’s truly important, there’s much more to it. You must engage with the people you’re leading.

For starters, a strategy dropped from above on those who need to execute it won’t work. You need to make everyone feel as if they’re part of the process, right from the very start. But secondly, you have to make time for people – especially if you feel like you can’t spare a second.

Amanda Lim, Head of Knight Frank’s Flexible Office Solutions, says: “Leadership is about actively lifting people up to your level, not just showing people how you got there”. It’s about championing those around you – create a step ladder out of the pool for others to join you.

And while you’re doing it, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You are never too old or too wise to have a mentor.

8. Remain endlessly curious

The value of curiosity is well documented. It’s a primal instinct, it’s how we learn and make sense of the world around us, how we suss out danger and discover what we like. We are what we experience.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Francesca Gino explains the importance of curiosity in business. She writes: “[Cultivating curiosity] at all levels helps leaders and their employees adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures: When our curiosity is triggered, we think more deeply and rationally about decisions and come up with more creative solutions”.

Read management books, the Harvard Business Review, thought leadership from people who inspire you and LinkedIn discussions. Listen and watch TED talks, podcasts and interviews. Know the mega-trends in society, politics, economics and technology.

9. Find the right balance of presence and absence

Lao Tzu, author of the 6^th century BC Tao Te Ching, talked about leadership in terms of having just the right amount of control over those you lead.

The idea is that when a leader is unobtrusive and acts with integrity, then people will become whole, as they are granted the space to naturally evolve.

Avoid micro-managing at all costs. You will suffocate your team and stifle their growth. Equally, leaders who are too absent provide no guidance at all. Strategic leadership invites enough direction within broad enough boundaries to enable those you lead to reach their potential.