Strategic Leadership: Importance, Theories and Implementation

Running head: STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
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1STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Strategic Leadership is the potential of forming a vision for a company’s long-term as
well as short-term benefits. It seeks to manage, motivate and persuade the employees to share
that common vision and work accordingly by strategically implementing necessary changes
with respect to constantly evolving market trends. It is the duty of strategic leaders to device
policies that would enhance the organizational culture, thereby improving on the productivity
and profitability of the company. Strategic leadership aims at commonality of direction,
alignment as well as commitment from all the employees (Hughes, Beatty & Dinwoodie,
2014). Incidentally, strategic leadership has a broad scope and its impacts are felt even
beyond the boundaries of its operative control. It views the entire business process as a single
interconnected unified whole and formulates relevant strategies for its growth.
Strategic Leadership encompasses nuanced activities that are considered beneficial for
the company. A good strategy follows a logical cohesion in both thought as well as action. It
seeks to diagnose the existing shortcomings of the company and provide guidance for
betterment. The major outcomes of leadership strategies include the provision of ‘direction’,
‘alignment’ and ‘commitment’. These are integrated to the strategic skills in ‘thought’,
‘action’ and ‘influence’.
The thought or strategic thinking process involves a balanced theoretical approach
towards the existing and ensuing problems and constitutes the root of strategic leadership as it
leads to strategic decision making. It is through this thinking process that the visions
gradually evolves. However, strategic thinking cannot come without scanning across various
areas of the company’s business processes. It helps to assess the company’s current strategic
situation. Strategic thinking follows a particular pattern, whereby the goals are set that should
reach all the stakeholders. This involves the establishment of missions and visions (Goetsch,
& Davis, 2014). This is followed by the necessary steps that should be taken to achieve
success and how they should be taken. The process of strategic thinking ends with finding a

2STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
yardstick and measuring the success of the company. The major issues that must be kept in
mind during strategic thinking are the target customers, the contribution of the company
towards the customers, and unique contrast with the market competitors.
The thinking process also involves an estimation of the core values that the company
stands for, and here lies the importance of strategic leadership. These values are capable of
generating specific idealized behaviours among the stakeholders as well as the customers.
They help to enhance communication within the organization, thereby improving the
organizational culture. These values also seek to bring forth and develop fresh and eligible
talents. They help the leader to assess individual as well as organizational performance. The
values help to avoid conflicts and establish good relationship with the customers.
As mentioned earlier, establishment and of a vision for the company is one of the
main features of strategic leadership. The vision represents the ultimate limit which the
company should aim to reach, whereby, all the core values are optimized (Grant, 2016). It is
the single long-term goal, which can be achieved by crossing small milestones. Converse to
the movement of action, the planning follows a reverse order, where, the planning process
finally narrows down to the initial steps that must be taken with the ultimate vision in mind.
The visions are broadly of four types which are both different as well as
interconnected at the same time – Investment, Imagination, Improvement and Incubation.
Strategists ensure that these four operates across every section of the company, both on the
personal as well as organizational levels (Pisano, 2015). The importance of vision lies in the
fact that it provides clarity and inspiration to the employees for their work.
The importance of strategic leadership also lies in the fact that it seeks to resolve the
creative tension between the vision and reality, when this reality does not follow the line of
vision (Senge, Hamilton & Kania, 2015). It is from this tension that strategic innovations
arise, which tries to strike a balance between truth and aspiration. These innovations lead to a