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30.10.2024 Today’s Insights from Harvard Business Review: Reflections on Demonstrating Strategic Thinking

30.10.2024 Today’s Insights from Harvard Business Review: Reflections on Demonstrating Strategic Thinking
Dear Students,
It’s been called one of the greatest paradoxes of leadership: While young professionals like you often find yourself advanced based on demonstrated ability as an individual contributor, and performing a clearly-defined set of tasks, you may later discover that you have been suddenly thrust into a position of considerably more abstract, less executional responsibility. An ambitious international student like you may be surprised to learn that you are expected to not only continue to demonstrate subject matter expertise, but also now to inspire, motivate and develop less-experienced colleagues in both the short and longer-term.
The “icing on the cake” is that you now are additionally advised “to become a more strategic thinker” en route to your next promotion.
Strategic thinking is a combination of multiple power skills associated with leadership, and also a critical competency for candidates like you to develop if you aspire to global management roles. For many young people (perhaps you and your friends), though, the idea of formulating vision for and suggesting tactics to a team is completely new, even if you have headed small projects in other contexts.
Our MCI coaching provides an excellent opportunity for teasing out just what strategic thinking means (and doesn’t mean), how developing and demonstrating it will provide you with an edge in both the application process and on-the-job and how readily it can be developed within a trusted relationship with experienced professionals, like our coaches, who have exercised the same muscles throughout their own careers.
It’s clear from the HBR article that follows (which is chock-full of discussion-worthy sub-topics) that strategic thinking fits well into the hefty portfolio of global power skills our students – that means you! are fortunate to be able to master through our program, which is, of course, all part of our global leadership team’s strategic plan!
So, what can each of us think more strategically about this evening?
Best,
Amy-Louise