Strategic Leadership and Practice

This document provides an in-depth analysis of strategic leadership, including the traits of a strategic leader, the advantages and disadvantages of strategic leaders, and the adoption of leadership styles. It also discusses essential principles associated with strategic leadership and the actions taken by strategic leaders.

Running Head: STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP 0
Strategic Leadership and Practice

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Traits of a strategic leader.....................................................................................................................3
Advantages and disadvantages of strategic leaders................................................................................4
Adoption of leadership style..................................................................................................................6
Essential principles associated with the strategic leadership................................................................8
Actions taken as strategic leader...........................................................................................................8
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................9
References...........................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Strategic leadership is the calibre of a person to express the strategic vision in an
organisation. Strategic leader in an organisation motivates the person to work on that vision.
It is also said to be the person who utilises the strategy in managing the employees.
Therefore, strategic leaders are required to work in an indefinite environment on difficult
issues. They are therefore required to bring the strategic productivity in the organisation.
They also develop such environment where employees forecast the needs of the employees in
their own job. Strategic leaders also make the greater use of incentives as well as rewards in
order to bring the productivity by showing better performance. They are concerned about
connecting the present, past and future if the organisation (Norzailan,Yusof & Othman,
2016). At the time of crisis, strategic leaders are required to act so that they can influence the
members through transformational and charismatic leadership. the most significant role of the
strategic role is the development of organisation through sharing the information and
knowledge. However, it is not completely true as most of the firms learn by facing several
problems. Whenever organisation comes across any of the problem, they try to investigate it
properly and adopt the solution for solving such problem.
In the recent time, leading has become quite complicated that presents several
challenges to the organisation. At the time of disorder, it is the strategic leader who knows
how to resolve the conflict or manage the situation. It is true that strategic leaders are able to
minimise the level of conflict by ensuring the effective listening and communication skills.
Strategic leaders require the strategic communication. Therefore, leaders should make the
communication as their personal priority and get the value from the organisation. In order to
stay or survive in the challenging business environment, strategic leader is needed to equip
itself with the regular training and learning. Continuous learning helps the subordinates to get
the necessary skills and bring changes. Similarly, training is also significant as it works in
order to achieve organisation goal by ensuring the development skills as well as improving
the performance.
Traits of a strategic leader
The first and foremost trait of any strategic leader is the effective communicator. It is
essential for the leader to bring everyone for a common purpose. Therefore, strategic leaders

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are required to be purposeful and clear communicator. The main objective of any strategic
leader is to bring everyone on the team for similar goal by taking strategic actions. Strategic
leader also share the passion of charismatic and visionary leadership. They are also required
to commit in the job with passion. They are also required to roll their sleeves with the
employees and support them in order to help them. strategic leaders always keep the details
with them and keep them updated in advance. They also anticipate the entire problems and
make some plan for them. The weak areas are identified and work with team in order to find
out the solution for problem area. Besides keep themselves the forward thinkers, they also
keep the ideas challenging. However, they always look for the creative ways in order to
create the better and effective process. Same as the democratic leaders, strategic leaders
understand the significance of keeping everyone on the similar page (Yahaya & Ebrahim,
2016).
Strategic leadership also shares the various characteristic with the other leadership
styles. I believe that the two top most quality of strategic leader is the charismatic leaders as
well as visionary leaders. The people who follow these two leadership styles tend to acre
regarding the efficiency as well as create the processes in order to provide clarity as well as
ease. Strategic leader also enrol others in the journey (van Prooijen & de Vries, 2016).
Strategic leaders help the members to sell ideas and influence them in the team direction.
These kinds of leaders also celebrate the progress and inject the fun into the progress. It is
also the trait of strategic leader to hold them accountable for commitment. Strategic leader
also scan the environment that helps in revealing the threats and opportunities presents to the
success of team. In this way, they are not the one who sees the developments and trends but
they work at it by knowing the early signs of the storm (Shu, 2013).
Advantages and disadvantages of strategic leaders
The biggest advantage is that strategic leaders help the management to understand the
connection between the day-to-day work as well as future. It is true that not every member do
aware of the single goal. Therefore, strategic leader helps in installing such strategic model
where each of the decision can be considered. It can also help in staying each person on the
similar page and ensure the company moving on same and right direction. Strategic leaders
also help in diminishing the conflict and increasing the participation of employees. There are
times when several employees do not clarify themselves what they are doing and how they

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are doing. In such a case, strategic leaders make the practice of properly communicating the
significance of task and how does it related to the overall objective.
Besides offering several advantages, it also provides the limitation in several aspects.
It is true that it is not possible to predict the future. There is time future is not same as the
strategic leader anticipated it. It might be but their possible that strategic leaders are adaptable
but their framework might not be. If strategic plans do not implement all over the company,
then something is not required to altered or change. It can also put the negative impact on the
working of the whole department.
As a senior manager, it is essential to acquire the higher-level skills in order to fulfil
the demand of current job. Senior managers are the front line in every company that helps the
organisation achieves objectives and goals. Strong and effective leaders also properly
understand the value of terminating the employees who are performing poor. IN addition to
this, great leader always lead their team member through example. The most popular model is
the 360 degree model that allows the workers to get the feedback of each person. It is also
true that employees do not want to guess. Great managers also effectively understand the
requirement of adapting the vision.
At the position of senior manager operating 57 employees, democratic and
participating leadership style will prove to be effective. A democratic leader is the one who
always share their responsibility with the team members. The main goal by using this
leadership style is to encourage the members for participating more in the decision-making.
Democratic leadership style will help the entire employees to connect with the each member
(Cable & Judge, 2013). Improvement in employees also becomes possible by creating
engagement with the help of democratic process. Whenever workers feel that they are
engaged in the organisation, they always try to improve their performance and productivity.
Democratic leaders also put emphasis on involving their team members with the process of
problem solving. Using this, employees will be encouraged to share their opinion regarding
any decision (Mulki, Caemmerer & Heggde, 2015). This will help in smooth flowing of the
information and ideas. It is true that workers must be in that environment where they feel
comfortable at the time of sharing the idea. Democratic leader also move beyond the
performance and productivity for creating the meaningful relationship professionally and
personally. Democratic leader also put more emphasis on the morality and values. By using
this leadership style, leader includes every person of the team by ensuring that it is

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fundamental right to be heard. It also helps in facilitating the interaction between each
member as it helps in providing the greater opportunity for the entire group. It is true that
more employees means more creative ideas. Therefore, the use of democratic leadership style
makes the easier for leader to make the decisions that is morally as well as ethical. As a
strategic leader, it is also essential to have the open minded in every situation because there
are many opinions from the team members. There is always a place and time where those in
charge will listen. In order to motivate the whole 57 employees, strategic leader must include
the variety of ideas that in turn come from the team members (Fiaz, Su & Saqib, 2017).
Feedback also proves to be effective and valuable source of input because people who work
on the front line always see the information as the valuable source. By asking the employees
their ideas, opinions, thoughts and observation, it is possible to make the better and effective
decision, because team members are required to be more involved in the output.
Adoption of leadership style
Whenever democratic leadership style is used, team members are encouraged more to
work together with the help of discussions in order to find out the most effective decisions.
The critical aspect of democratic leadership style is that sometimes employees take the wrong
advantage of independent ideas and opinions (Norzailan, Othman & Ishizaki, 2016). They
also out the significant news or information of the company that they received from the
participation in decision-making. It is also required by the strategic leader to regularly make
the efforts for designing the best strategy in order to analyse the marketplace. As a strategic
leader, it is also significant to find out the alternatives and choosing the best among them. It
is true that the leadership design is vibrant by nature and requires the workers participation
and high level of dedication (Jenkins & Williamson, 2015).
Employee’s dedication as well as higher level of participation is achieved by
including every member in the decision-making. Therefore, by using democratic leadership
style, it becomes effective for the leader in getting the several opinions from the team
members. By adopting this leadership style, it is easy to get the several benefits as employees
also started feeling that their perspective as well as benefits matter. The main benefit
achieved from the democratic leadership style is the ability to empower the employees
(Burgelman, 2016). By requesting members to contribute, democratic leadership style helps
in a great way. The model of democratic leadership model also helps in creating such
structure that encourage and support the deliberation. It also helps in providing the good

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working environment to the employees. Using this style, subordinated also feel engaged and
take the several challenges in order to prove themselves. Due to the sense of engagement, it
also increases the job satisfaction on the part of employees. Besides this, subordinated are
also encouraged in solving their problem by own initiative. This will help in creating the
higher performance team. Therefore, the higher performance will lead into the greater
productivity (Kaiser LeBreton & Hogan, 2015).
In addition to democratic leadership style, participative leadership approach will also
proved effective in order to lead the 57 employees. Participative leadership style involves the
entire members in order to identifying the significant goals and developing the strategies in
order to reach the goals (Khan et al, 2015).The main benefit of the participative leadership
style is that it allows the development of the organisation by serving the organisation in a
better way. the sue of participative leadership style helps in putting the positive effect on the
performance of employees as they feel confidence and power in doing their job. As compare
to the autocratic leadership style, employees feel more happy as they are allowed to take part
in the decision making of the organisation. However, it might be possible that participative
style proves to be unproductive in the short term but in long term, this style will prove to be
productive for the organisation. It is because of felling of more commitment and
empowerment toward the work as well as goals (Coleman, 2017). Using such leadership style
has also proved to be success of several big industries. they also believe that if employees
will be happy and engaged in the organisation, they will work with more enthusiasm.
There are times when Laissez Faire leadership style proves to be helpful. By using
such leadership style, lot of freedom is provided to the employees for doing their work as
well as setting deadlines. This type of freedom can lead to the higher job satisfaction in the
organisation. However, it proves to be ineffective because some employees start taking the
unnecessary advantage of this freedom. In addition to this, subordinates also starts missing
their deadline due to freedom in deciding their deadlines. However, in the recent time,
situation changes quickly. Therefore, it is beneficial for the leaders to adopt the situational
leadership style. Adoption of this leadership style will also help the strategic leader to make
the strategy according to the situation. There are times problem arise suddenly that requires
the quick reaction on the part of leaders. Therefore, adoption of situational leadership will
help in such situation. This style also helps in providing the effective results on the part of
members (Grint, Jones & Holt, 2016).

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In this way, the adoption of the effective leadership style helps in improving the
performance of subordinated. It is also seen that employees get motivated when they are
involved in various activities of the organisation. Besides this, employees always give their
best when they are involved in decision-making.
Essential principles associated with the strategic leadership
The first principle of strategic leadership is that it pushes the power to lower level for
ensuring the active involvement of every employee. By doing this, it involves the employee
of every level. It also provides the chance to subordinates for taking part in decision-making
and brings best out of them. by doing this, adaptability, collective resilience and intelligence
is achieved in the organisation. besides this, the best way of growth in an organisation can be
achieved by sharing every information with the employees. It is true that small information is
also the part of decision-making phase. A strategic leader also effectively understands the
value of every idea. By ensuring this, a strategic leader brings out the effective and creative
ideas from the employees. In big and successful companies, it is seen that strategic leaders
have to deal with several tasks. An effective leader also provides the positive competition by
dealing with the different tasks. An effective strategic leader also boosts the skills of all other
leaders.
As a strategic leader, it is the role of it to present as well as develop the idea. By
ensuring the several ways for people in bringing the creative thinking can bring out the most
of creativity. In the new organisation, it is effective to make use of the several channels in
order to promote innovation. As a strategic leader, it is also significant to have the
intelligence and humility for realizing the development and learning. This feature will add the
benefit by allowing other people to become the expert in some of the situation (Iqbal, Anwar
& Haider, 2015).
Actions taken as strategic leader
As a strategic leader, it is also significant to take the necessary actions. The first
action that is required by strategic leader is determining the strategic direction. It includes
development of clear direction and vision for the organisation. A clear vision always works in
the best interest of the organisation. As the leader of around 54 employees, it is essential to
provide them clear vision so that they work effectively. It will also help in pushing the
employees to achieve the objectives. The second action that is required by strategic leader is

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the human capital. As employees are the significant assets in any organisation, it requires the
proper investment in the innovation, research & development as well as creation (Rosenbach,
2018). Training is also essential part of the employees. Therefore, proper action is required
on the part of strategic leader in providing the training and development to each of the staff
member. In every organisation, employees work well when they are given the positive
organisational culture. It is the set of values, beliefs, principles, work practices and traditions
that are followed in organisation. It also serves as the source of competitive advantage as it
helps in creating the set of strategies and monitoring the performance of employees. at the
time of ensuring democratic leadership environment, it is also essential to ensure the ethical
considerations (Detjen & Webber, 2017).Therefore, ensuring and creating the ethical
consideration is quite essential. For example- communication or developing the ethical code
of conduct, providing ethical and proper training to employees, encouraging employees are
some of the actions taken as the strategic leader.
Conclusion
In the limelight of above discussion, it can be concluded that strategic leader is the
person who helps in achieving the strategic vision of the company. Strategic leaders help in
developing the designate resources, organisational structure as well as ensuring the clear
vision. It also helps the organisation by anticipating the environment effectively. Therefore,
the essential element of the strategic leadership is the clear vision and shared values that
enable the staff members to work effectively. By considering several aspects, strategic leader
also takes the active function and guide the business.by undertaking these functions, it is clear
that performance is the first and foremost objective for any strategic objective. Besides this,
the use of different leadership styles, a strategic leader encourages and empowers the
subordinates. It also helps in developing such environment where staff members bring the
productivity.

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