Everything you need to know about Strategic Leadership style

Leadership in general is the ability to influence a group to work towards achieving a set of goals. Choosing an exemplary leadership style is a challenge. The most effective leadership style involves anticipating, visualising, remaining flexible, and empowering others to bring about change as circumstances demand. Here is where strategic leadership can be put into practice.

Why Strategic Leadership is important

Strategic leadership is better because strategic leaders:

• Are open to new ideas as long they support the overall vision
• Make calculated decisions 
• Know how to prevent and mitigate risks
• Are constantly looking for ways to improve
• Encourage objective thinking that supports the overall vision
• Support unity
• Build commitment

Strategic leadership is built upon traits and actions that include the successful execution of all leadership styles. It is the process of providing the direction and inspiration necessary to create or sustain an institution. 

Any school can flourish by developing the right strategies, hiring the right people, and creating a positive culture. However, there can be no winning strategies without bold leadership.

Skilled strategic leaders make a major difference in how well a school performs. According to John J. Mauriel (1989), strategic leadership can be identified by some of the traits of those who practice it. 

1. Strategic leaders have a clear vision of where their schol should be going and can express that vision to others and motivate them to embrace it as well. Their zeal for the vision inspires others within and without the organization.
2. They listen to all the stakeholders to determine the current situation of the school and to evaluate the future situation where it should reach. 

Strategic leaders understand the value and impact of the services provided by the school, and they know how to use that information to adjust the mission and vision, mobilize resources, and generate action.

The picture below shows us the ten important skills a Strategic leader must have.

Tips to become a Strategic Leader

• Balance the present with the future
• Challenge the current situation to bring in more improvisation tactics
• Have a risk management plan to counter any negative outcomes
• Communicate effectively all the plans, and strategies to everyone involved 
• Establish a planning committee to keep stakeholders at all levels well-informed about every action and plan

Two of the critical challenges any school faces are how to come up with strategic insights and how to develop those insights into strategic action plans.  It is here that strategic leadership becomes critical. 

With strategic leadership, schools have a clearly defined strategic roadmap based on the vision and long-term goals. It ensures the school’s ongoing development and also helps with employee engagement by allowing them to align their personal goals with those of the institute. This can help foster school culture and innovation.

Also Read: Simple guidelines to improve teaching quality and effectiveness in the classroom

Strategic planning for a Strategic Leader

Schools on all levels plan activities, set time frames for them, determine who will be responsible for carrying them out and how much it will cost to implement these plans at all levels within the institution.

Longer and more detailed school plans cannot be the solution as the educational environment becomes more complex and the demands on schools increase in the current environment. To create flexibility and strengthen operations, especially in times of challenges, the focus should not only shift to learning outcomes, and support for quality teaching and learning, but also on management that reinforces them, thus focusing operations around the school’s articulated vision.

Tools 

Next, let us look at some of the tools all strategic leaders use to help them develop their strategies:

1. PESTLE Analysis   – PESTLE stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors.PESTLE analysis should be used to assess external threats and influences on your organization and accordingly plan for future growth.
2. SWOT Analysis –  SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  It allows the identification of weaknesses and threats in the organization, maximizes opportunities, and prevents harm from threats. 
3. Porter’s Five Forces  – It is a framework for analyzing the competitive environment and strategizing progress accordingly.
4. BCG matrix –  It is a tool that can identify an organization’s portfolio services and the positioning of its products.
5. McKinsey’s 7S framework – An organization’s internal situation can be analyzed using this framework.

Strategic Leadership and School

Strategic leadership is essential for schools to keep up with the current and changing times. Effective strategic leaders focus on areas of need while keeping the vision intact. They work with their team community to develop school-wide change targets. They also empower individuals and departments within the school to develop their own small targets to steer the school toward the larger ones. 

Strategic leadership leads to school effectiveness. The following points will add more insights to this idea.

• When school administrators adopt strategic leadership they
• Set the directions of the organization 
• Specify strategic plans
• Impendent the strategic plans.
• Control and evaluate the strategic plans
• Organization culture.

 As a result, strategic leadership in school impacts school’s effectiveness positively leading to

•  Learning achievement
• Satisfaction of teachers 
• Improved Students’ characteristics
• School climate and development 
• Great school environment

Conclusion

In conclusion, strategic leadership is crucial to the successful functioning and progress of schools. It involves finding what you can do well in your school to differentiate yourself from your competitors. It requires a more creative approach than simply looking for obvious solutions. Your school’s future growth is greatly influenced by your leadership style, and your vision serves as the compass that directs that growth.