As a leader, you are in a position to deeply consider what types of development are going to be important for each of your team members. For sure we all benefit from developing personal mastery and constructive leadership behaviours, this enables us to lead teams, get great outcomes and create amazing organisational cultures. But in terms of skillsets, I’m campaigning for all emerging leaders to have the opportunity to grow their strategic thinking skills.
As we develop in our careers 3 key leadership abilities become increasingly important:
- The ability to lead others
- The ability to create a great culture
- The ability to think strategically
I know of an organisation that recently rolled out a large-scale leadership development program, they had identified that all their leaders and managers needed development, on a range of leadership behaviours and skills. However, they did a cut-off with the strategy module: only those at a very senior level in the organisation got the “how to think strategically” module.
This is not the first time I have seen this, it won’t be the last…and I do understand why we do this. I admit I have done it myself when designing organisation-wide programs.
But I want to challenge this.
Firstly, regardless of level in the organisation, everyone is already making strategic choices: every job requires decisions to be made, you choose to do one thing and not something else. So it’s a misconception to assume that strategy only happens in the boardroom, strategic choices happen at every level of the organisation. It’s just the complexity, breadth and impact of your strategic choices that change as you progress towards the C-suite.
As people grow in their careers and reach more senior positions they will, without a doubt, need to be comfortable and confident with strategy that is more complex, higher impact, and broader in scope. It comes with the territory. I would go so far as to say it comes before the territory – you get promoted to senior roles when you are perceived to be able to operate strategically.
So, if you want to develop your people to really excel: help them think strategically and upskill them in how to create a strategy.
Strategy shouldn’t be the reserve of people who have an MBA or sit in the C-suite, it’s a must-have skill for anyone in business. Unfortunately, it’s become a bit elitist and sounds a lot more complicated than it is. It doesn’t need to be that way.
By not developing your teams on strategic thinking you are missing the ideas and innovation that it generates. But also you are potentially holding your team members back from fully developing the skills they will need for career progression.
So, give your teams the gift of strategic thinking, help them feel confident and competent with strategy, I think they will thank you for it at some point in the future.
If want to upskill your teams in strategic thinking then find out more at Sarah Robertson Consulting or book a discovery call
