Strategic direction refers to a leader’s ability to implement plans that are required for an organization to achieve its vision and fulfill its goals. It allows leaders to communicate the importance of employees’ work and their contribution to achieving their business objectives.

Strategic leadership direction requires leaders to be able to look towards the future. When doing so, strategic leaders must understand the organization’s strategy. With this understanding, the leaders will be able to align team activities to support the strategy.

To orchestrate a successful strategic direction, a leader must exhibit the following strategic leadership style qualities:

• Open-Mindedness: The ability to remain curious and hungry for new and evolving ideas
• Courageous: An understanding that their current successes and current practices will always be a baseline; the must evolve to achieve increasingly higher levels of quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.
• Disciplined: Strategic leaders understand that being disciplined is a critical requirement from a winning structure and order
• Endurance: Leading a strategic transformation requires stamina and drive to manage elusive, difficult, and painful changes.
• Inspiring: Strategic leaders encourage others to join them on their journey.
• Accountable: Strategic leaders hold themselves accountable for commitments
• Insightful: Strategic leaders scan multiple elements for clues and patterns inherent in a variety of events that might pose threats or reveal opportunities.
• Coach: Strategic Leaders are great COACHES. They realize the importance of passing knowledge forward, building skillsets, and behaviors in others that helps with their strategic growth and knowledge.
• Collaborative: Strategic Leaders realize the need for a strong team of people who are forward-looking and willing to shape the future.
• Perspective: Strategic Leaders know how to adapt by maintaining clarity of purpose.

We believe a leader must be authentic. The OLD concept of Executive Presence assumes that a leader must exhibit behaviors and approaches that are not always consistent with our principles of “inclusion.” At POV, we believe that one’s presence as a leader is about how well one’s demeanor encourages the reception of communications and other messages. We call this Authentic Charisma!

NEW CONCEPT: Authentic Charisma

We believe Authentic Charisma allows leaders to both attract and inspire followers. They are capable of initiating and maintaining a significant level of positive and appropriate change. We believe the following characteristics help define our perspective on Authentic charisma:

• Communication. The usage of extraordinary usage of language with elements of truth, warmth, and care. This works when communicating good news as well as discussing problematic situations.
• Maturity. Along with authenticity is the ability to demonstrate the positive aspects of character with maturity.
• Humility. The ability to place great value on inclusion and ensures each person with whom they interact feels they are cared for personally.
• Compassion. The realization that charisma MUST be accompanied by other elements including compassion, integrity, honesty, and fortitude.
• Substance. The realization that charisma without substance is not authentic; they talk the talk and also walk the walk.
• Confidence. The ability to demonstrate comfort in being who they truly are and not to imitate someone else. They are comfortable in their skin.
• Positive. They exhibit a warm, open, and positive body language. They appear comfortable and approachable to most people.
• Listen. They are very good listeners. They pay attention to what is being said and listen with interest. They engage in conversations with empathy.
• Self-manage. They watch themselves and the impact of their behaviors and actions on others.
• Self-improvement. They have worked hard to understand the qualities that make them different from others. It is important for them to continually improve.

We help leaders develop and hone their specific brand of “executive presence.” They display their unique BRAND of presence with comfort and authenticity.

• In addition to their strategic duties, we believe leaders perform a range of functional tasks to fine-tune daily operations. These functions might include project management, department oversight, team development, and a multitude of tasks associated with continuous organizational transformation. It is therefore imperative that teams and leaders to function in synchrony with the vision, mission, and goals.

At POV Collaborative, we believe effective decision making is composed of three areas: Decision Quality, Decision Practices, and Decision Leadership. These all speak to the key elements that cause effective leaders to “OWN their DECISIONS.” To do so, leaders must consider the following:

• The ability to assume responsibility for making and sustaining their decisions through the implementation phase
• A willingness to be the “face” of the decision
• An ability to ensure that others understand the rationale that supports the decision that was made

Because each decision is different, leaders would be wise to choose the appropriate decision-making style that best matches the situation. This requires an understanding of the leader’s authority and leadership role. When a leader is transparent with the manner of how they made the decision, and why they choose different decision-making styles, they can build trust and respect with their followers.

There are 4 commonly used decision-making styles:

DIRECTIVE. The leader uses their knowledge and past experiences to make a decision. They fail to seek information from others.

CONCEPTUAL. The leader canvases others for ideas. This encourages creativity and innovation. This style works best for long-term projects and planning.

ANALYTICAL. The leader relies on direct observation, data, and facts.

BEHAVIORAL. The leader collaborates with others on options. They are also influenced by their feelings and opinions. However, when consensus can’t be reached, the leader must choose an alternative approach.

At POV Collaborative, we define INCLUSIVE LEADERS as those who are aware of their own biases and preferences as they actively seek and consider different views and perspectives to make better decisions. Simply providing information on compliance is not going to change behaviors, inspire conviction to change, or produce a mindset shift. What will is training that teaches employees to understand and appreciate individual differences, become aware of their unconscious biases and how to manage them, and know the role they play in creating an inclusive culture. Learning this means that participants will return to work equipped with the skills they need to participate in an organization where diverse points of view and backgrounds are celebrated and harnessed.

Becoming a truly inclusive organization requires a deliberate focus on changing the mindset and behavior of employees at every level of the organization, to create an environment where everyone walks in every day feeling they truly belong there and can be their authentic selves. As the research suggests, this is the type of organization today’s employees are actively seeking out, and organizations, in turn, are feeling the pressure and obligation to answer.

In your quest to make inclusion an everyday reality for employees, leaders, and customers, it will be imperative that everybody understands the vision for the organization and has support from the very top. Everyone must understand that creating a culture of inclusion is a process that requires the involvement and commitment of every person in the organization. To ensure that your organization is optimally successful, diversity and inclusion experts with the right tools, team, delivery methods, and experience will be critical.

THE 6 CHARACTERISTICS OF INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP

Definitions of and approaches to inclusive leadership tend to vary widely. The six characteristics listed below represent a conceptual framework for developing inclusive behaviors and encouraging diversity.

Commitment. Cultivating a diverse, inclusive workforce takes time and energy, two of a leader’s most precious commodities. So what motivates some executives to champion this issue? In addition to a belief in the business case, inclusive leaders are driven by their values, including a deep-seated sense of fairness that, for some, is rooted in personal experience. Inclusive leaders believe creating a welcoming culture begins with them, and they possess a strong sense of personal responsibility for change. When executives devote time, energy, and resources to nurturing inclusive workforces—by investing in people and inspiring others to share their passion and goals—their actions signal a true commitment.

Courage. Inclusive leaders demonstrate courage in two ways. First, they aren’t afraid to challenge entrenched organizational attitudes and practices that yield homogeneity, even if their recommendations are politically or culturally unpopular. Nor are they afraid to display humility by acknowledging their limitations and seeking contributions from others to overcome them. Some leaders find it difficult to admit they don’t have all the answers; in that respect, courage and humility go hand in hand.

Cognizance of bias. Inclusive leaders understand that personal and organizational biases narrow their field of vision and preclude them from making objective decisions. They exert considerable effort to identify their own biases and learn ways to prevent them from influencing talent decisions. They also seek to implement policies, processes, and structures to prevent organizational biases from stifling diversity and inclusion. Without such measures, inclusive leaders understand that their natural inclination could lead them toward self-cloning and that operating in today’s business environment requires a different approach.

Curiosity. Open-mindedness, a passion for learning, and a desire for exposure to different ideas have fast become leadership traits crucial to success, especially in challenging times. Curiosity and openness are hallmarks of inclusive leaders who hunger for other perspectives to minimize their blind spots and improve their decision-making. In addition to accessing a more diverse array of viewpoints, inclusive leaders’ ability to engage in respectful questioning, actively listen to others and synthesize a range of ideas makes the people around them feel valued, respected, and represented. Inclusive leaders also refrain from making fast judgments, knowing that snap decisions can stifle the flow of ideas on their teams and are frequently tinged with bias.

Cultural intelligence. Knowledge of other cultures is essential for CIOs whose work takes them, for example, to offshore development and operations centers. Beyond “book” knowledge, cultural intelligence connotes leaders’ ability to change their styles in response to different cultural norms. For example, culturally intelligent leaders who are typically extroverted and demonstrative will make an effort to show restraint when doing business with individuals whose cultures value modesty or humility. They regulate the speed and tone of their speech and modify their nonverbal behaviors—gestures, facial expressions, body language, and physical interactions—as situations dictate. In addition to understanding other cultures, these leaders also demonstrate self-awareness of their own culture, recognizing how it shapes their worldview and how cultural stereotypes can influence their expectations of others.

Collaborative. Inclusive leaders understand that, for collaboration to be successful, team members must first be willing to share their perspectives. To that end, they create an environment in which all individuals feel empowered to express their opinions freely with the group. They also realize that diversity of thinking is critical to effective collaboration; thus, they pay close attention to team composition and team processes. For example, they prevent teams from breaking into subgroups, which can weaken relationships and create conflict. They also engender a sense of “one team” by creating a group identity and shared goals, and by working to ensure team members understand and value each other’s knowledge and capabilities.