Boost Your Ways to Create A Strong Leadership Strategy
Published: 2019-11-27 11:15:22

An organization’s success is not accomplished by a well-defined strategy, single or group of leaders. It is a collective effort of formal and informal leaderships coming together to achieve the mission of an organization. The team here is interdependent, transparent, collaborative, influential, and communicative across the organization.

A well-defined business strategy may fail to lead the business when there is an absence of strategic leadership. Leadership competencies cannot get generalized. It must align with the specific business strategies of the organization. To create a leadership strategy, a systematic approach is necessary to identify the qualifications and quantity of leaders across the organization. A thorough review of the leadership competencies that can support the organization’s culture, strategy, and desired leadership style is crucial. 

Before stepping into how to create a strong leadership strategy, let us understand in detail, why strategic leadership is necessary. 

<b>The necessity of leadership strategy</b>

Leadership bench strength determines what is essential to fulfilling the current and future strategic direction of the organization. It gives clarity on qualities that support the culture and how the team leaders can collaborate to implement strategies, solve problems, make sustainable decisions, adapt to change, address threats, grab opportunities, and witness growth. 

The implications for leadership strategy include:
• Create collaboration across functions to bring new products to the market
• Increase leadership involvement while gathering consumer insights 
• Translate ideas into profitable business products and services
• Anticipate capital, resource, and space influence by expanding the product portfolio
• Introduce cultural change taking the risk aversion factor in consideration

So, creating a leadership strategy is of utmost importance. Some of the factors that influence while setting up a leadership strategy include:

<b>Influential factors while setting up a leadership strategy</b>

Quantity 

While setting up a strategy, we should know the available number of leaders, projected and informal leadership positions.

Quality 

The characteristics of an individual leader must be considered for representation and inclusion. 

Skills and Behavior

The skills, competencies, knowledge, and behaviors of the leaders influence a lot for business strategy implementation and therefore must get scaled according to the business.

Collective capabilities

Leadership involves collective work. We should scale the capabilities needed to act in groups for smooth response, solve problems, respond to change, or support innovation.  

Leadership culture

The leadership practices goal must be to achieve employee engagement, create opportunities for others, and so forth.  

Each component of the leadership strategy must align with the business strategy and get tied to measurable outcomes. 

Let us know how to create a leadership strategy step-wise. 

Steps to create a strong leadership strategy

A focused vision and mission enable the organization to create a strong leadership strategy. An experienced <a href="https://www.thestrategyinstitute.org/">business strategist</a> would be a great help in this matter. Some of the steps include: 

• Creating a vision and mission in alignment with the vision and mission of the organization
• Collecting data to analyze the present situation and plan for the future
• Identifying the gaps as per existing strength and expected demand
• Creating an action plan to implement a leadership strategy
• Gaining commitment, involvement, and accountability from all the stakeholders
• Reviewing and updating the strategic plan as per trend and identify demands (if any)
• Defining the metrics for outcomes and success
• Identifying the budget, time, support, resources, priorities, and systems
• Identifying the leadership development process
• Supporting leadership development
It may include hiring, onboarding, training, succession planning, coaching, talent pipeline, rewards, internal promotions, and so forth. 

Moreover, to witness success, it is necessary to customize the leadership development program as per the organization’s needs. The business strategist should visualize the link between the business strategy, leadership strategy, and leadership development strategy. 

Wrapping Up

Organizations may face challenges to operate efficiently and gain a competitive edge during times of change. The reason is change demands new behaviors, perspectives, technology, routines, and much more. 

It is mandated to rethink how to develop leaders at all levels and prepare them for the change. Learning and development departments must understand the new change and may pitch in to understand the current barriers in realizing the potential and establish structured governance for the new leadership strategy. 

This will help to improve today’s performance and equip the leaders to solve issues, offer a transforming leadership development framework and deliver the promise.