Real Women, Real Leaders: Surviving and Succeeding in the Business World

8 Develops Strategic Perspective

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

—Sir Winston Churchill

The stories from our Real Women show real-life examples of how leadership competencies manifest in the world of work. From business to education, from politics to the non-profit world, there are myriad lessons we can derive from the Real Women. However, while these women have taken paths to success, finding these paths can be difficult. In order to succeed in our quest to be transformational leaders, we must also talk about the competencies at which, according to the research, women do not naturally excel.

While women outperform men in almost all of the Zenger and Folkman competencies, it is also important to note the competencies in which we do not excel. Develops Strategic Perspective is the one competency on which males rated significantly higher than women (A Study in Leadership: Women Do It Better Than Men, by Zenger Folkman). In an attempt to address not only our strengths, but also our weaknesses, we discuss below what the competency entails and how you can improve your strategic perspective.

Strategic Perspective can be described and interpreted in a variety of ways. For this purpose, the competency is defined by Andrea Moore, senior consulting manager at FlashPoint as:

• Understand the current context
  • Assess current strategy/approach and results you are getting
• Develop high performance strategy
  • What's keeping you from realizing your ...