STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP ALICIA MCKAY
What exactly is strategic leadership? It’s fair to say that, for some, the topic of leadership has become cliché and jargon. Alicia McKay seeks to cut through the gibberish and focus our attention on what really matters when it comes to leading our people.
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eadership is a lot more than managing people or saying the right things. A favourite recent definition (amongst the smorgasbord of definitions out there) comes from Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s Director-General of Health. “Leadership is an invitation to collective action.” – Dr Ashley Bloomfield In just seven words, Bloomfield sums up the essence of leadership: that it’s about more than you; that it’s about action; that it’s an invitation – because people have a choice. When I work with people, we define it like this: A leader is someone who makes good sh*t happen. This definition strips leadership of title, status and platitude. You don’t need to be a chief executive, run a large team, or head up a country 14
HUMAN RESOURCES
SPRING 2020
to be a leader. You don’t need to have a large following or a senior position either. You don’t need to know everything. In fact, you’ll find it easier to learn if you’re aware that you don’t.
more toward the operational and management end of the spectrum, and were more ‘plot’ driven. They tended to be short-term, and focus on incentives, performance, projects and delivery.
What you need is to care about doing worthwhile things – and do them.
A third and lesser-known fiction format is the ‘arena-driven story’. Here, the emphasis is more on context. In arena-driven stories, the environment is a critical antagonist for the main character. In stories like Castaway, Gilligan’s Island and Lost, the main character has to survive a challenging environment, which drives individual choices and overall results.
Strategic leadership: step into the arena
In fiction, writers often talk about the difference between character-driven and plot-driven stories. In characterdriven writing, the focus is on the inner conflict of the people in the story – who they are, what they think, what decisions they make and how they evolve.
It is in the arena that we find strategic leadership.
In plot-driven stories, the emphasis is on action and external conflict, where we follow the twists and turns of an outcome.
In a changing environment, our challenges are less about personality or projects, and more about context.
Much of today’s leadership theory is character-driven. They describe the kind of traits you need – assertive, confident, empathetic, and so on. Leaders undergo extensive profiling and testing so they can sum up their personality and style as a snappy acronym.
The Oxford Dictionary defines an arena as “a place or scene of activity, debate or conflict”.
Less popular now are transactional approaches to leadership. Popular in the 80s and 90s, these leaned
What is an arena?
Arenas represent places where decisions are made, where something is at stake, and where there are both constraints and aids. The arena is about more than a physical location or an institutional construct. It’s about the spaces – ideological, relational and tangible – where important ideas
