Strategic leadership and strategic management skills are essential for managers and leaders to drive growth, innovation, and success in today’s complex and fast-paced business environment.
Developing strong strategic leadership capabilities enables leaders to think long-term, anticipate change, and make informed decisions that align with organizational objectives.
This guide will provide an overview of strategic leadership, its key skills, and methods to build these competencies.
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What are Strategic Leadership Skills?
Strategic leadership refers to a manager’s potential to express a strategic vision for the organization and motivate and persuade others to adopt that vision.
Strategic leaders focus on the organization’s long-term direction and inspire staff to work towards overarching goals.
Key skills of strategic leaders include:
- Strategic thinking – Ability to analyze the competitive landscape, trends, and opportunities to plan for the future.
- Visioning – Capacity to create and articulate a vision of the organization’s future state.
- Cross-functional perspective – View issues from different functional perspectives to develop integrated solutions.
- Change leadership – Drive organizational transformation and lead teams through change.
- Communication – Effectively communicate vision and strategy across the organization.
- Coaching and mentoring – Develop leadership capabilities in others.
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Examples of Strategic Leadership in the Workplace
Here are some examples of strategic leadership skills in action:
- A CEO recognizes emerging technology trends, acquires innovative startups, and steers the organization towards digital transformation.
- A marketing leader identifies new customer segments and growth opportunities. They rally their team around a vision to expand into these areas.
- A department head assesses changes in the industry landscape. They realign their group’s structure and capabilities to maintain competitiveness.
- A project leader sees a more efficient way to configure team workflows. They implement cross-functional changes to streamline operations.
5 Methods to Improve Strategic Leadership Skills
- Take a systems thinking approach – Adopt a broad perspective and end-to-end view of the organization and value chain.
- Network externally – Connect with stakeholders, partners, and industry peers to understand the broader ecosystem.
- Ask probing questions – Challenge assumptions and conventional thinking to foster innovation.
- Pursue continual learning – Stay up-to-date on emerging trends, technologies, and business models.
- Reflect critically on decisions – Analyze results, successes, and failures to grow strategic thinking abilities.
How These Strategic Leadership Course Can Help
Oak Innovation’s Strategic Leadership course provides practical frameworks, tools, and activities to develop critical strategic leadership skills.
Key topics covered in the course include:
- Understanding strategic management principles.
- Adopting a strategic mindset.
- Crafting vision and mission statements.
- Conducting situational analyses.
- Setting strategic goals and priorities.
- Creating implementation roadmaps.
- Leading change management.
Through interactive discussions, case studies, and group exercises, participants gain hands-on experience with core strategic performance practices.
The course is designed to build strategic acumen and position leaders to drive organization-wide change.
With strengthened strategic management and leadership capabilities, managers can steer their teams and organizations to greater success.
Our corporate training material offers you ready-made training courses that are editable, user-friendly, practical, and flexible. We provide training guides, workbooks, PowerPoint slide-decks, activities, exercises, icebreakers, and more.
With 30+ years of experience, Catherine Fitzgerald, B.A., M.A., PGDip, founded Oak Innovation in 1995. Catherine received her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s from University College Cork. She holds qualifications in Professional Development And Training from University College Galway. She is completing a second Master’s from University College Cork. Since 1995, clients include Apple, Time Warner, and Harvard University.