Response to Badesha’s Post 3.1-DQ-LDRS 501

 

Response to Badesha’s Post 3.1

Organization and Systems thinking

Thank you for sharing your thought about strategic leadership that I advocate sincerely.

Strategic leaders provide a cognitive guide to their employees to make decisions that are good for the business, and to make those decisions on their own, therefore, help leaders design and maintain effective teams. I can visualize your viewpoint as noted in Lepsinger (2010), “they create a supportive environment and catch employees doing something right as opposed to always seeking what they might be doing wrong.”

Strategic leadership (SL) leads to higher workplace satisfaction and employees who are more engaged. I have come to understand one of the Senge’s law as noted; “Systems Can’t fully perceived with one set of eyes.” And because happier employees naturally want to do better work, then, productivity is improved. SL promote an inquisitive workplace culture and system thinking; thus, the ability to be self-critical is essential in strategic leadership development. Developing the capacity to challenge preconceived notions by focusing on the cause of an issue instead of symptoms and effect; therefore, thinking about assumptions critically and encouraging debate and different opinion in a safe-zone meeting where everyone knows the importance of their input and participation.

Team effectiveness measured by, “the ability and willingness to make choices among many alternatives of activities in which the team could invest its energy and resources or ask the whole organization to invest (Hughes, Beatty & Dinwoodie, 2014). Creating a strategy as a composition of trade-offs and effectiveness of SLTs requires communicating, disseminating, and receiving. Additionally, delegate responsibility and foster ownership to the team so everyone is sharing the burden, thus, accepting ownership of their duties and they hold themselves accountable for the task success or failure.

The importance of having trust and mutual influence as a leadership strategy,  where, taking an intelligent, calculated risk and common sense collectively; thereby,  “embrace a bold strategic decision with a level of commitment and collaboration throughout the organization” (Hughes et al., 20014, p.210). Effective team leaders are committed to the team’s goal (Northouse, 2013), and give members autonomy to unleash their talents through their participation and maintain collaborative climate and building confidence among members through ownership and involvement. As a result, driving change and leading successful team involves changing with the time. It’s all comes back to taking a strategic risk and knowing when to jump on a good idea.

The tactics inherently in SLT are the ability to make the strategic choices and examine the influences in the leadership context and taking into consideration the cultural climate of the team.  It is about deliberate and sustained practice. Thereby, fostering the climate of learning into an organization as a learning process without affecting the team’s norms, shutting down team creativity, efficiency and cohesiveness. Resulting, designing future strategy where all staff can engage in and positioning themselves for the future.

 

Reference

Hughes R., Colarelli-Beatty K. & Dinwoodie  D. (2014) Becoming a Strategic Leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Second Edition.

Lepsinger R. (2010) Closing the Execution Gap. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline. New York: Doubleday. Retrieved from: https://create.twu.ca/ldrs501/unit-3-learning-activities/