This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Strengths Based Leadership" by Gallup, Tom Rath, and Barry Conchie. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What’s the strategic leadership style? How can you be a strategic thinker as a leader?
Strategic thinkers help their teams grow by analyzing performances and suggesting possibilities for improvement. These types of leaders are open to learning and asking questions to uncover new information.
Let’s look at what it takes to be a strategic leader.
Strategic Thinking as a Leader
In Strengths Based Leadership, Tom Rath and Barry Conchie explain that the strategic leadership style involves being analytical and effective at consultation. For example, if you’re a strategic thinker, you may have an eye for noticing inefficiencies in your team’s performance and formulating an alternative game plan that saves time and increases productivity.
To show what strategic thinking looks like in practice, the authors point to Best Buy’s CEO, Brad Anderson. Anderson started as a sales associate at the Minneapolis-based electronics retailer that would eventually become Best Buy, and as the company grew, he ascended the ranks to CEO. His keys to success are his enthusiasm for learning and ability to ask great questions to uncover critical information. For example, he questioned whether a commission-based sales model was best for their stores, and after surveying customers, he realized this model made customers feel pressured by sales associates. So, he adopted a more relaxed model of browse shopping, where customers could shop fully stocked items at their leisure. This model was widely successful and was adopted by many other retailers soon after.
(Shortform note: Asking good questions isn’t just a great way to gather information on how to improve your company, but it also helps you build relationships (which can, in turn, improve your business, as Anderson’s Best Buy demonstrated in the early 2000s when they redesigned stores to cater to their most lucrative customer types). In Just Listen, Goulston argues that asking thoughtful questions helps people feel interesting and valuable, which makes them appreciative of you. In return, they will typically offer interest in your ideas, which creates an opportunity to influence them. Goulston suggests asking for the other person’s advice about something they might have expertise in or asking about their big-picture goals.)
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Here's what you'll find in our full Strengths Based Leadership summary:
- Why good leaders don't necessarily need to be well-rounded
- Why you should build a diverse team to fill in your weaknesses
- The four qualities of a leader that command respect
