The Essential Skills You Need to Evolve into Strategist Leadership
By Amanda Da Silva, B.Hkin, B.Ed, and M.Ed
5-minute read
Transformational leadership is the backbone of all companies and organizations.
Transformational leaders are able to create positive changes that improve profitability, boost the market share, and revolutionize their industry. Evolving into this type of leadership requires a great deal of self-knowledge, especially when it comes to understanding your unique strengths and capitalizing on your talents to achieve tremendous professional success.
With that said, not all leaders are aware of their qualities and attributes, nor the most effective ways to utilize them. As a result, they end up missing out on incredible opportunities to cultivate those strengths. They and their company end up falling behind.
What makes the distinction between great leaders and less successful ones isn’t necessarily their personality or philosophy, but rather their action logic according to the “Seven Transformations of Leadership” model by Professor William R. Torbert and consultant David Rooke. They explain that the internal action logic of a leader is what determines their interpretation of their own or other people’s behavior, and what they do to maintain power or remedy threats.
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The Seven Types of Leadership Action Logic
After studying thousands of leaders, Rooke and Torbert’s 25-year long study breaks down leadership styles into seven main categories or action logics: the opportunist, the diplomat, the expert, the achiever, the individualist, the strategist, and the alchemist.
Each action logic has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. With that said, they are progressive as the action logics on the top of the list result in the lowest work performance while the last two represent the highest work performance.
No.1: The Opportunist (5%)
Opportunists are extremely self-oriented and believe in winning by any means possible. They often exploit others for their personal gain. They’re manipulative and calculating. They tend to externalize blame which is why few people choose to follow them in the long term.
No.2: The Diplomat (12%)
Diplomats will do whatever they can to avoid conflict even if it means suppressing their own wants and needs. They want to belong and so will conform to all rules, appearances, and attitudes to maintain their group membership. They’re unable to provide honest feedback and they’re paralyzed when prompted to make a difficult decision.
No.3: The Expert (38%)
Experts make up the majority of leaders in the world. They’re driven by logic, expertise, and hard data. They can be very critical of themselves as well as the people around them. Experts are perfectionists who value efficiency and performance. While they make tremendous contributions to their organizations, they lack the emotional intelligence needed to genuinely understand people and relationships in the workplace.
No.4: The Achiever (30%)
Achievers are results driven. They’re inspired by the future, love acquiring new skills and knowledge, and always seek to promote teamwork. Achievers are hyper-aware of their patterns of behavior which can sometimes bring them down if these prevent them from meeting their own standards of success. While achievers make great managers, their approach usually inhibits creative and innovative thinking.
No.5: The Individualist (10%)
Individualists tend to challenge group norms and seek independent work. They’re focused on difference and change, and they often operate in an unconventional manner. Individualists are highly effective in consulting roles but their disregard for key organizational processes can make them a nuisance to their coworkers.
No.6: The Strategist (4%)
Strategists are both process and goal oriented. They thrive in a variety of roles because they can recognize the importance of collaborative work, as well as principle and judgment. They’re conscious of their personal strengths and weaknesses and they highly value growth, self-fulfillment, individuality. Strategists have a great sense of initiative which helps them generate positive organizational and personal change.
No.7: The Alchemist (1%)
Alchemists can create immense social transformations and are able to reinvent organizations in significant ways. They’re the leaders of social change at massive scales. Alchemists have a deep sense of self-knowledge that allows them to disrupt paradigms of thought and actions to take themselves and their companies to a higher level.
Advancing to a Strategist Leader and Beyond
According to Torbert and Rooke, transformational leadership happens with strategists and alchemists.
What sets these leaders apart is their ability to understand how other people work as well as how their company operates as a whole. They’re able to see the big picture and this perception helps them identify and mitigate the external forces that hinder their organization’s growth and expansion.
They are able to create powerful shared visions that inspire the people around them to persevere in elevating their business or company. Strategists and alchemists are adept at managing conflict and dealing with resistance to change.
No matter which action logic you belong to as a business leader, the possibility for self-development and personal growth is always there. Many leaders can advance from experts to individualists, and from individualists to strategists, and even beyond. You can increase your standing by developing the interpersonal, organizational, and analytical skills required to become a strategist (and eventually an alchemist). These include:
Questioning assumptions
Strategists are great at finding common ground between ideals and reality.
This helps them set ambitious goals that are rooted in pragmatic initiatives. For you to become a strategist, you need to be prepared to question common business assumptions and practices.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. Ask yourself “What am I not seeing?”, “How can it be different?”, “Can I drop this idea altogether?”
Challenging those commonly held beliefs about customers, shareholders, markets, goals, strategies, and even people will help you generate more efficient solutions to relevant industry problems.
Understanding people and data
Experts are great at analyzing data and rationalizing ideas.
With that said, they often have trouble getting those ideas across.
This is because they lack the emotional intelligence needed to effectively communicate strategies and gain their coworkers’ support. While strategists do rely on data to establish adaptable strategies, they use an entirely different skill set to get their ideas heard and acknowledged by their organization.
Showing empathy and respect to others allows strategists to increase feelings of social connectedness in the workplace. This, in turn, creates a more harmonious professional environment that promotes openness and mutuality.
Anticipating and adapting to trends
Successful leaders are aware of the space their organization occupies within a given field or industry.
They’re conscious of the outside forces that may influence the market and so they’re able to adjust their strategy to not only cope with but stay on top of those trends and transformations. Strategists can look objectively at their own company regarding the competition and determine which approaches will succeed or won’t.
Finding the lesson in mistakes
Mistakes and failure are a characteristic part of the innovation process.
So, when companies penalize mistakes, this enforces a culture of shame and fear where employees are reluctant to own up to their mistakes. Strategist leaders understand the importance of creating a company culture that is not paralyzed by failure or averse to learning from it.
Coordinating individual views with a collective vision
Building a company vision can be difficult but getting a whole organization to believe in that vision and pursue its fulfillment is the ultimate challenge.
A successful leader has the communication skills that allow him/her to not only eloquently articulate the goals of their organization but to engage individuals and teams in them as well.
Strategists go out of their way to listen to employees’ ideas without outright rejecting them. They’d rather find a way to coordinate those individual views with the core company vision.
Torbert and Rooke’s findings confirm that the most successful companies are those that have a dominant strategist culture where individuals view challenges as opportunities for growth and development. Cultivating a strategist action logic requires developing the fundamental strategist skills that will help you evolve in a transformative way.
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Hi! I’m Amanda Da Silva.
I’m a mother of two boys, a wife, daughter, teacher, entrepreneur, former CEO, and life-long learner. I’m all about personal growth, community 💕, and being of service. (Find out more about me here.) In addition to being passionate about personal development, I’m an educator and coach with 20-years experience teaching and leading in the BC school system. I have a B.Hkin, B.Ed, and M.Ed, specializing in leadership and administration. Creating community and leading thriving teams are two of my favourite things to do. I also love helping people live empowered and growth-oriented lives.
I hope you’ll join me as we build our success together! 🙌
