Once a leadership team can consistently think strategically as leaders, the next crucial step is to train employees to think strategically within their own area of responsibility. A broad definition of strategic thinking involves using available resources and data to formulate plans for achieving long-term goals and generate value for stakeholders.
By fostering strategic thinking through your organization, you can unlock hidden potential and seize strategic opportunities at all levels. It simply requires leaders to provide a little time, guidance, and effort in developing their team members.
With a range of proven techniques at your disposal, you can confidently shape your team’s strategic thinking capability and create a workforce that is prepared to tackle the future.
How Do I Get My Team to Think More Strategically?
If you want to coach strategic thinking in your team, consider leveraging the following tactics.
Explain the Big Picture and Present All Available Information
When strategizing with team members, don’t just delegate projects and tasks. Clarify how the projects and tasks they are involved in help to move the company forward. It is essential for individuals to understand their role within the business and the significance of their contributions to long-term success. For example, you can describe how evolving market conditions are changing the work or how competitors are influencing the direction of the company. Providing your team with additional information inspires them to envision the bigger picture and see the connections to the strategy and vision.
Creating these connections is an important first step in obtaining buy-in and commitment to strategic thinking.
Provide Room for Trial and Error
Strategic thinking is developed through creative and repeated efforts. That requires a safe work environment to practice strategic thinking and experience smart failures. The space to experience trial and error builds the process of thinking strategically and helps team members grow and improve.
It can be difficult for team members to feel comfortable making efforts outside their comfort zone when failure is a potential risk. They may hesitate because they want to avoid creating waste, rework, or affect timelines that impact their peers.
Let them build those intellectual muscles by asking your team open-ended questions in brainstorming sessions or one-on-one meetings. Questions such as “What would you do in this situation?” Directly challenge your team to think strategically and get out of the box.
The best part is that even if the answer doesn’t quite work, there are no consequences. Instead, you can utilize it as a moment to teach, explore, and further refine approaches.
Create a Mentor Program
Strategic development doesn’t need to be placed at the feet of a single leader. Mentor programs and educational resources are vital. A mentor program will partner inexperienced team members with skilled strategic thinkers. These Mentors can challenge and guide team members in a way that is heavily focused on support and growth, setting them up for success.
As their formal leader, you can then oversee their development with an occasional check-in meeting or request the Mentee report out on their progress.
If you lack skilled or experienced team members, you can invest in other education tools. For example, CMOE has multiple strategic thinking programs that can assist with driving growth and behavior change. Team members can further sharpen their skills by exploring related books, articles, and resources or by attending relevant conferences.
Highlight Strategic Thinkers
Acknowledge instances of strategic thinking effort among your team members. Celebrate as each contributor grows and demonstrates their skills or experiences success. This will provide working examples for other team members to follow, and the highlighted contributors can feel positive about their efforts.
How to Teach Someone to Think Strategically
In addition to implementing the tactics listed above, utilize these methods on an individual basis.
- Focus on opinion leaders and managers: Devoting the time to teach managers about strategic thinking will trickle down to other team members. Investing in managers allows you to take a step back without sacrificing the quality of the insights and skills your team members receive.
- Teach and explain the difference between tactics vs. strategy work: If an individual struggles to understand the fundamentals of strategic thinking, devote time to educate them about the difference between the two thought processes. Tactical thinking is task-oriented and short-term, while strategic thinking is about the bigger picture and long-term thinking.
- Be available and answer direction questions: As someone develops their strategic thinking skills, questions are sure to arise. Make sure to answer these questions and provide guidance. The less confusion a team member has, the better their growth path and engagement will be.
Learn More: The Three A’s of Strategic Thinking
Cultivate Strategic Thinking with CMOE
Formal learning and development opportunities are a direct approach to build strategic thinking skills among your team members. CMOE offers multiple learning programs and decades of research and experience. We work with leaders and teams across diverse industries from around the world. Our team can tailor or customize our solutions to your business operations and objectives.
Learn more about our Strategic Teaming workshop today.
