The Paradoxes of Leadership Series: Courageous vs. Strategic
The PSG Paradoxes of Leadership Series is a look at four crucial areas where complimentary skills must be developed. The successful leader will be able to move quickly from one skill to another, providing their teams with whatever leadership style is needed in that moment rather than defaulting to their natural comfort zone. This series is additive to the PSG Leadership Map and will help you to understand your personalized results.
We begin with the paradox of the courageous leader vs. the strategic leader
What is strategy? Strategy is one of those words that everybody loves and that almost nobody can accurately define. A former professor of mine once joked that “Strategy is what you put in your job title when you want a raise” and I think that’s about as far as many leaders understand the concept.
For our purposes, the strategic leader is one who values the power of information above all else. The strategic leader is constantly working to see the entire field of play and to understand the second, third and fourth order consequences of every decision.
Courage is easier to define, but harder to do. Courage is “Action in the presence of fear” and when your decisions carry consequences for your business and your teams almost every action requires some level of courage. Particularly when the stakes are high.
In the PSG Leadership Map, we have arranged Courageous and Strategic as complementary antonyms because the complete leader must understand when it is the moment to take action vs. when it is time to consider what action should be taken, and the complete leader must possess both courage and strategic thinking equally.
When you complete your PSG Leadership Map, you will receive a brief summary of the strengths and the weaknesses for the trait where you scored the highest just like this sample. Those automated summaries are below for both courageous leadership and for strategic leadership so that you can view your evaluation and the evaluation of leaders who scored differently than you did.
Click here to take the survey and see where you score.
Courageous Leadership
➕You are a person of action. Even in very difficult circumstances, your team can count on you to make hard choices. You are self-motivated, assertive and perhaps even brash. The people around you can be deeply motivated by your confidence which empowers them to take risks that they might never be willing to engage without the support and energy you provide.
➖On the flip side, some people might experience you as reckless, arrogant or even narcissistic, leading to political opposition before action is even taken because of the force of your personality and approach.
Strategic Leadership
➕You are calculated, rational and precise. The people around you know that you have considered every possible angle and that they can count on you to make the right call with the information you have. Your choices are thoughtful, deeply rooted in logic and therefore your hardest decisions are easier to analyze and defend after the fact.
➖However, some colleagues might experience you as too calculated and distant from the motivations required for a truly innovative approach. Your desire to avoid impulsive choices could build anxiety in your teams which might lead to a risk-averse culture where the goal becomes the avoidance of failure rather than achieving success.
Faced with a difficult decision, sometimes courage is the right tool for the job and sometimes it’s better to be strategic. And with the PSG Leadership Map we learn the benefits and the costs of both styles. As we always say, becoming a complete leader is the work of a lifetime and nobody begins with the ability to be all things to all people. But the thoughtful leader will always seek to evolve and grow their skillset.
Want to see whether you are naturally more courageous or strategic? Click here to get your free PSG Leadership Map