Abstract
Business success depends on many factors, and one of them is understanding and proper contribution of leadership roles. On the one hand, leaders are responsible for establishing organizational policies, rules, and resources. On the other hand, leaders have to work with people and consider their needs and expectations. Therefore, their level of knowledge and experience affects the quality of work demonstrated by the company. In this paper, five interrelated leadership tasks will be examined. Understanding the context helps learn the environment, and understanding people is necessary to see how to distribute resources in a team. Collective leadership is another task to foster in strategic planning to promote enough support and motivation. Communication through dialogues and discussions allows leaders to gather information, exchange opinions, and establish equal relationships. Finally, leaders must decide and introduce policies for a company to work effectively. All these tasks cannot be ignored in strategic planning and leadership because they show how fair business is organized.
Introduction
Creating a strategic plan is a complex process that requires a number of skills and background knowledge. Implementation leadership is one of the steps when a proactive approach is taken to identify and coordinate participants in business (Bryson & Alston, 2011). Leaders have to complete multiple tasks, and some of them include understanding the context and the people involved, fostering collective leadership, using dialogue and discussion, and decision-making (Bryson, 2011). In this paper, the goals are to discuss leadership tasks and learn the impact of leadership roles on strategic planning. Leadership is complex, and organizations should know how to put everything together, distribute responsibilities, and offer a successful strategic plan.
Understanding the Context
The work of any company should be developed in a specific environment, and one of the leadership tasks is to understand this context. Many internal and external political, social, economic, and technical factors affect strategic planning and regulate most working processes (Bryson, 2011). Leadership aims to guide people and organize tasks, and understanding the context is a critical step that allows for establishing necessary contacts and recognizing valuable changes. This task helps people be attentive to details, needs, and possibilities. An organization can hardly achieve success if its employees and leaders have poor or limited background knowledge about its determining influences.
Understanding People
Another vital task of leadership is to understand the people who may be involved in a working process. Bryson (2011) underlines that leaders have to comprehend themselves as a part of a team, develop strengths, and eliminate weaknesses. Even being well-prepared for the chosen area of business, people may have some problems, and leadership in strategic planning focuses on dealing with everything. Developing interpersonal skills, motivating, and supporting are the tasks for leaders to build meaningful relationships in a team (Llopis, 2012). Assessments help gather enough information about people, reflect on their behaviors, and choose the most effective managing approaches.
Fostering Collective Leadership
There are many reasons to explain success in business and leadership, and collaboration is one of the most significant contributions. Strategic planning is never simple, and the leadership role is to collect people, their ideas, and their decisions. According to Bryson (2011), it is necessary to rely on teams because members have much qualitative and quantitative information about projects. In addition, collaborative leadership promotes coalition development when people are united as per their interests, skills, and professional goals. Finally, as soon as people learn the worth of collaboration, they are able to share power, identify their responsibilities, and become accountable.
Using Dialogue and Discussion
Another critical leadership task is to create meaningful working processes through dialogues and discussion. Communication plays an important role in any activity as it is a good chance to interpret real events, articulate missions, and strategies, and discuss challenges (Bryson, 2011). Modern employees want to be recognized for their skills and knowledge (Llopis, 2012). Discussions on forums make it possible to exchange information quickly and deliver the necessary messages. Leadership is not always about planning but about real needs and real situations, and dialogue is a meaningful tool to evaluate visions, advance strategic planning, and cut concerns at the workplace.
Making and Implementing Policy Decisions
Finally, when people think about leadership roles, decision-making is probably one of the most serious expectations. Not many people in a team are ready to make a final decision and choose a policy for strategic planning. Leaders should first gather and analyze information but consider their predictions and then suggest how outcomes can change their work with time. Decision-making tasks vary, including awareness of the environment, conflict management, supporting coalitions, and avoiding punishment (Bryson, 2011). All these steps are taken with respect for such principles as emotion-reason balance, employee satisfaction, customer needs, and organizational culture.
Conclusion
In strategic planning, leadership roles have to be properly identified and distributed. There are many tasks for leaders and employees to complete. In this essay, attention was paid to the necessity of understanding the context, learning about the people, fostering collective leadership, communicating, and making decisions. Each process has its goals and contributions to project management, and leaders are responsible for establishing a strong organizational culture, motivating employees, and explaining how to implement a new policy into the already created environment.
References
Bryson, J. (2011). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Bryson, J. M., & Alston, F. K. (2011). Creating your strategic plan: A workbook for public and nonprofit organizations (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Llopis, G. (2012). The top 9 things that ultimately motivate employees to achieve. Forbes. Web.