Both team members and leaders are highly valued for their strategic thinking capabilities. The characteristics of a strategic thinker represent skills that can elevate a team or organization, to the point where identifying strategic thinkers is a priority for leaders across the organization.
Strategic thinking characteristics come from a specific mindset. They include listening to other perspectives, thinking creatively, and using your ingenuity as you prepare for the future.
The outline below will provide deeper insights into the characteristics of a strategic thinker to foster growth for yourself and your team.
Strategic Thinkers Look Ahead
A strategic thinker always looks toward the future. This could mean searching for ways to improve, analyzing industry trends, or understanding the effect of a project’s success to set the organization up for longevity.
As a strategic thinker, you understand that each action you take has an impact. This is why strategic leaders invest in their team’s growth and new tools. They can envision a bigger picture of success with their team and anticipate issues or obstacles that could derail success.
For example, a strategic leader provides a new type of communication software after noticing a pattern of miscommunication problems. The new system opens the door for immediate responses between team members. The leader knows there may be minor problems as the team gets used to the new system, but ultimately understands the communication issue will be resolved with time. With improved communication, project completion will go according to plan resulting in fewer problems to solve.
Strategic Thinkers Don’t Fear Failure
Strategic thinkers understand that failure is part of their growth journey. They do not let feelings of discomfort create roadblocks. Rather, they persevere through them, understanding the effort and work will pay off in the long run. The ability to try new things even in the face of failure is a vital characteristic of a strategic thinker.
These individuals do not simply follow the crowd. Instead, they are inventive and try solutions no one else has considered. Forging new paths requires trial and error, and mistakes are a natural part of the process.
When they fail, instead of dwelling on the failure, strategic thinkers look at the root cause. Why a concept, idea, or project failed. They examine the situation from multiple angles and find potential answers. They think, “Maybe I should have done X instead of Y. What would have happened then?” This allows them to go into the next project with more information, improving their chance of success.
Strategic Thinkers Can Adapt
Fortunately, being open to setbacks permits strategic thinkers to become more adaptable. Adaptability is a crucial skill because markets and customer demands are always changing, no matter what industry you are in. Being able to adjust to shift dynamics and deviations separates strategic thinkers from others because they believe that change is the law of life.
Creative thinking is also part of adaptability. When your back is to the wall and your team is out of options, you need out-of-the-box solutions. Strategic thinkers will leverage all the available resources and data and immediately start brainstorming.
Strategic Thinkers Are Willing to Learn
A best practice in becoming a strategic thinker is to continuously learn something new. Curiosity and strategic thinking go hand in hand.
The more information you have available, the stronger your strategic thinking skills become. Keeping up with the newest trends and technologies, what competitors are doing, and the latest insights from experts makes thinking creatively and adapting to change easier.
Learn More: How to Instill and Inspire Strategic Thinking in Your Team
Strategic Thinkers Challenge the Status Quo
When a business is busy, it’s easy to grow complacent with the status quo of daily operational duties. With numerous tasks to complete, communications to answer, and people to attend to, it’s easy to see why some leaders get lost in short-term tasks.
Strategic thinkers avoid falling into complacency. They think about working efficiently and how they can change established practices and systems. They notice operational patterns and discover ways to improve them so everyone can work more effectively. This could mean delegating tasks to others, overhauling an established structure or by eliminating non value added activities.
For example, a company’s document-sharing system is outdated. People struggle to use it because it requires passwords or authentication for each document. Changing it is not necessarily an urgent priority for leadership at the moment.
A strategic thinker would take the initiative to research and find a better system to use. They would present the options to either their leader or the organization’s leadership team. They were proactive and did the work for the leadership without being asked and brought the suggestion to them, which can be a bit uncomfortable when you challenge deeply rooted, traditional practices. The strategic thinker pushed through resistance, which resulted in gaining a newer, more efficient document management system.
Strategic Thinkers Are Mindful of Emotions
Another characteristic of a strategic thinker is the ability to control their emotions and think before they react. This makes communicating with team members more effective.
Composure allows strategic thinkers to hear different points of view. If a team member disagrees with your idea, maintain professional composure. Be patient and listen to what they have to say. They may provide creative insights or perspectives that you haven’t considered.
Emotions can also get in the way when people need to think of a new solution in an emergency or crisis. A strategic thinker puts their emotions aside to focus on the goal. This enables them to think clearly and consider alternative solutions and achieve their milestones.
Learn More: If you are job hunting, learn how to demonstrate your strategic thinking skills on your application.
Develop Strategic Thinkers with CMOE
CMOE has been developing great leaders and strategic thinkers for over 45 years. We offer a variety of strategic thinking workshops, tools, and assessments based on our experience working with numerous teams, leaders, and globally recognized organizations.
Let us help you develop strategic thinking skills and competencies in your team or organization. Explore our strategic thinking programs today.
