Four Ways To Demonstrate Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Developing your strategic thinking skills is not enough to secure a future promotion.  You also need to demonstrate these skills at work every day.  Many talented executives fail to appreciate how critical this is.

This failure or blindspot is typically rectified with feedback from HR, outlining how influential senior leaders within the organisation perceive them as “not being strategic enough.”  Feedback like this is never pleasant to receive, and for most people, the issue is not that they are poor strategic thinkers.  The real issue is that they are not good at demonstrating their skills in a way that the senior leadership team can see them. 

To avoid ever receiving this feedback, here are four proven strategies from my client coaching programmes that you can put into action today: 

  • Define Your Role’s Top 3 Strategic Priorities – Identify these within the bigger-picture context of your division’s strategic ambition and your manager’s key deliverables.  Once identified:
    • Rank each initiative with respect to its potential strategic impact e.g. 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
    • Plan how you will put your time and energy into each e.g. lead vs. support, hours per week/month etc., and schedule this into your calendar.
    • Delegate all the operational tasks others can do, using them as “stretch assignments” for team members looking to step-up their leadership impact.
    • Take the lead on your highest priority initiative; taking the time to package your ideas into a compelling vision aligned with the organisation’s strategic goals.

This shift in focus from operational to strategic initiatives will now become your new way of  working, and it’s these priority change initiatives that will become the focus of your day-to-day conversations when engaging with senior leaders, clearly demonstrating that you can initiative and lead impactful change.

  • Engage in Strategic Talent Discussions – With greater clarity of vision regarding the change initiatives you will lead on, you will now be in a position to provide stronger team leadership on the specific skills required for delivery.  From this vantage point you will be able to shift from having reactive, operationally focused discussions on talent with your HR business partner to engaging in future-focused discussions about the strategic hiring and talent development investments that you see as critical for your team.  This ability to think strategically about future hiring and talent development is a quality greatly admired by senior leaders, not to mention your own team.
  • Bring Your Point of View to the Executive Table – Senior leaders want to know what you think and where you stand on important meeting items.   This is an opportunity for you to add-value to the wider organisation and to do so you must take the time to prepare your thoughts and talking-points in advance.  The best way to do this is to block off 30 minutes on your calendar before every important meeting to prepare your thoughts.  This investment of your time, is an investment in demonstrating your strategic acumen by showing the executive team that you’ve come prepared, as opposed to rushing from one meeting to the next with little to no preparation or time to gather your thoughts, which in turn will make you less vocal and less capable of contributing your knowledge.  This small action alone is a game-changer.
  • Become a Good Story-Seller – Initiating strategic initiatives will make your manager, peers and senior leaders notice you, especially when you proactively do so without their prodding. But to secure their buy-in and backing, you will need to sell them a compelling story of the future – an exciting vision that clearly frames “what is” versus “what could be.”  Doing this will require that you engage both the logic and the emotion of your most important stakeholder groups – as logic alone is rarely enough to get decision-makers over the line. Understanding that you are selling your ideas, rather than merely communicating them, and becoming really good at this is a surefire way of advancing your career.

If you want to advance your skills in any of the above areas, I invite you to explore our Creative Leadership programme, which focuses on strengthening strategic-thinking skills and driving innovation.  Or, explore our Persuasive Presentation programme if selling your ideas with confidence is your area of interest.  You can learn more about both programmes here.

Wishing you well,

Carolanne

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