Innate Strengths Complement Learned Skills to Drive Strategic Planning 

Key Takeaways:
  • Effective strategic planning relies on leaders’ innate strengths—self-awareness, team building, communication and humility—to elevate learned skills.
  • Leaders who blend intuition with expertise delegate tasks wisely and guide teams with clear, quantifiable goals.
  • Building trust and open dialogue turns strategic planning into a collaborative process that drives meaningful growth.

 

Strategic planning for a business requires multiple layers of skills among the people around the table. The learned skills that professionals bring to their work every day — financial acumen, IT and HR expertise, operational know-how and management skills — are a given. They are needed for strategic planning, but they are not enough. 

Often, it is the innate skills of company leaders that make the difference between a perfunctory strategic planning experience and one that truly propels a company to the next level. 

Which leadership skills are important to strategic planning? 

1.Self Awareness 

Successful leaders are ones who understand the people around them and their role in the success of the Company, not just the direction in which their companies are headed. Self awareness is a key characteristic that enables that understanding.  

Self awareness is both innate and learned. It comes from effective listening, learning from both past successes and failures, and putting that experience to work. Most importantly, company leaders and owners who possess a high degree of self awareness encourage it in others. They ingrain it in how they manage teams and how they communicate with others.  

Self-aware leaders tend to be critical thinkers. They want to know the “why” as well as the “what,” and they use that secondary level of meaning to help lay the groundwork for future plans. They can accept ambiguity because mental flexibility is a key element in their thought process. All of these qualities are important to successful strategic planning. 

2. Team Building Strength 

Many leaders struggle to acknowledge their professional (and in some situations, personal) limitations and this is understandable to a degree: it’s often the fear and anxiety of “will my team think less of me if they know I don’t do everything well. When in reality, if’s often the leaders who are willing to let their guard down, acknowledge these limitations, and delegate roles & responsibilities to the team members who are strong in these areas (of limitations), that are often more successful when it comes to executing a strategic plan. The old saying “It takes all kinds to make the world go around” could have been said about strategic planning. That’s because the process of putting together a strategic plan involves widely varied skills and talents.  

In summary, a leader who values working with colleagues whose thought processes, skills and strengths are different — and can empower them — are more likely to be successful executing a strategic planning process. 

3. Strong Communication 

Communication skills are essential to strategic planning, particularly since it is a process that relies on collaboration and group consensus. You can have the best idea on the planet, but if you can’t communicate it clearly, it’s useless. 

  • Keep it simple. The first element of effective communication is simplicity. This sounds a lot easier than it is because it requires breaking down complex ideas and data into the clear goals and objectives that make up a strategic plan. Moreover, some people are uncomfortable with simplicity because it implies they aren’t thinking deeply, or that their role in the plan isn’t challenging. It’s important to remember that simplicity — getting back to basics — is often quite hard. 
  • Communicate a tangible goal. During strategic planning meetings, instead of stating that the company should pursue a certain objective, quantify it by stating what will happen if that objective is included in the plan and achieved. Will it expand the company’s markets? Will it add 15% to topline revenues? Quantify the “why” when introducing an idea to help people know how it will benefit the strategic plan. Subtly, doing this also communicates to other people how they can successfully sell their ideas. 
  • Clearly define roles and responsibilities. Can you imagine driving a car if the steering wheel didn’t know what its role was? Every participant involved in a strategic planning process should understand clearly what his or her first task will be toward achieving the plan’s goals, and how each task will integrate with the work that others are doing. This means the leaders who craft the plan must understand every person’s role in the company and must not only delegate, but delegate effectively. You wouldn’t ask the HR director to be in charge of a software upgrade, and you wouldn’t ask the IT director to perform a financial analysis. Delegate the right tasks to the right people. 
  • Encourage open communication. Good leaders are able to maintain control in a planning meeting without being controlling, and without being overrun by people with conflicting agendas. Good meetings are not top-down, one-way communication sessions. They are collaborative, but with the guidance of a strong leader who is respected. An effective leader will encourage communication by giving people a chance to speak and holding them accountable. 

4. Humility 

The best leaders know they don’t have all the answers. They know they need help. That’s why they surround themselves with teams of intelligent, capable people who will help push the company in the right direction.  

There may be certain key elements to a strategic plan that someone else at the table is better suited to put together. The leaders who are successful value those people; the ones who are unsuccessful view those people as a threat. 

Humility starts as a personality feature in a leader who recognizes their own leadership and feels like a leader. Humility in an individual is correlated with high confidence and self-esteem. But the right leader (or leaders) can implant humility in an organization’s culture, creating an environment that encourages collaboration and innovation. This can be difficult, as many organizations impart the message to their up-and-coming leaders that when you become a leader, you’re in charge of a deliverable and of a team of people.  

But those people need to trust you to put them in the right positions to be successful. They need to trust you to understand the things they do well and help them mitigate the things they don’t do well. They need to be honest with you about their need to be placed in the right role to maximize their talents, skills and knowledge.  

The first element of humility is trust. If a person on your team has been put in a leadership position and is thriving — because you understood what they did well, and provided them with what they needed to do the job effectively — they will trust you as a leader and most likely become a key member of your collaborative team. 

Why a Strategic Plan is Important 

A leader needs to have a good holistic understanding of the organization. When you are reporting to shareholders, the most effective and successful communications are those that focus on the present and future state. A strategic plan makes the conversation come alive, giving employees and stakeholders a vision of where the company is going and how it will get there.  

If you would like to discuss putting together an effective strategic plan process for your company, contact an Adams Brown advisor.