Have you ever worked with someone who had a natural gift for long-term strategic thinking, particularly when it came to acquiring, consolidating, and extending their power and influence in the workplace? Leaders with higher ‘Strategist’ personality traits are the ‘Chess Masters’ of the corporate world. They stand out as leaders because they’re naturally adept at long-term, covert planning that enables a future vision few others can see. Amongst a multitude of studies highlighting strategic thinking as an essential leadership attribute, 2023 research by McKinsey found that 97% of executives believe strategic thinking is the most critical leadership skill for business success. So, the question isn’t “Is strategic thinking important?”, but “How do you know a leader can truly think strategically?”
And with any personality trait, more isn’t necessarily better because context matters. Often businesses need leaders who can deal with immediate challenges in a transparent and tactical way - leaders who are excellent in a crisis, using the resources on hand to make the best of a bad situation. Think of the person leading triage in hospital emergency rooms, making life and death decisions in a split second – they are the ‘Tacticians’ you need in a crisis. This is the domain of leaders with lower ‘Strategist’ traits, where less future focus is more effective in the right context.
‘The Strategist’ personality traits are anchored in two things: strategic planning, ranging from short to long-term horizons, and information sharing, ranging from full disclosure to absolute deception. The psychology underpinning ‘The Strategist’ leader is linked to Machiavellian personalities, which has its origins in the writer Machiavelli’s philosophical proposition that ‘the end justifies the means’. Leaders with extremely high ‘Strategist’ attributes are the ‘Cunning Chess Masters’ who will do anything to achieve their objectives and only reveal information that aides their outcomes. In comparison, leaders with extremely low ‘Strategist’ attributes are the ‘Transparent Tacticians’ who thrive in situations where time and resources are limited and transparency with all stakeholders is critical.
Unpacking the Performance Personality of ‘The Cunning Chess-Master’
Having high ‘Strategist’ traits does not mean a leader lacks emotion or empathy, but their care for people tends to be superseded by a desire to achieve their objectives. The ‘Chess Master’ is represented by highly strategic actions, not leaving things to chance, and providing or concealing information so people act as required to achieve the plan. This style of leadership means the variables will be explored, the strategy formed, and the outcome almost predetermined before others are aware that the wheels are in motion. ‘Chess Masters’ tend to keep their friends close and their enemies closer, and they disclose information or vulnerabilities only when it is to their advantage to achieve the outcome.
While the ‘Chess Master’ is concerned with achieving their personal objectives, their strategy may have significant benefits for their team, the business, and even society at large. A classic example is the act of adding fluoride to the water supply to decrease dental problems, which sounds like a wonderfully benign act, yet it also served the objective of keeping the population healthy to serve the nobility. In contrast to this benign strategy, landmines were specifically designed to severely injure but not necessarily kill enemy personnel, forcing adversaries to redirect time and resources to transporting, triaging, and treating soldiers with potentially fatal injuries. Both examples highlight the importance of one key factor that contains the best and worst impulses of the ‘Chess Master’ – morality.
Their ability to adapt their strategy to achieve their ultimate goals makes them incredibly effective in disruptive, volatile, and complex operating environments, but this behaviour can become toxic if it is not well contained by the right virtues and motivations. ‘Chess Masters’ that can execute long-term strategy while looking after people not only have the personality to drive unrelentingly towards their goals, but they also have high levels of morality and fairness, and low levels of greed. When these ‘winning combinations’ of personality and containment factors come together, the leader is likely to have an incredible impact on both people and business performance.
Their impact on the psychosocial safety of their team depends on how they manage information. The ‘Chess Master’ has a strong ability to lower anxiety and stimulation in their people because they function as the gateway of “need to know”. They are comfortable defining what the team needs to know and excluding information that may distract the team from their objective. This ensures energy and resources are directed to problems and tasks that relate to the long-term goal, rather than being overwhelmed by problems outside their area of control.
However, if they hold information too tightly and operate in an overly clandestine fashion, then ambiguity and conformity can lower the psychosocial safety of the team and impair business performance. As ambiguity escalates, team members disengage due to the paralysis of action that ambiguity creates. If people do not know what the problem is, what has been agreed, or what needs to be done, then they do not know what to do or where to begin. Conformity is amplified if team members find things increasingly ambiguous and start to feel their decisions have no purpose, benefits, or consequences. This can create a culture where people ‘give up or give in’ if they don’t understand where the business is heading or why they are doing what they’re doing. ‘Chess Masters’ need to recognize and mitigate conformity, as their master plans will be improved and future risks will be better mitigated if more people are informed and encouraged to challenge and contribute to the plan.
Unpacking the Performance Personality of ‘The Transparent Tactician’
A leader with lower levels of ‘The Strategist’ personality traits – the ‘Transparent Tactician’ – tends to be excellent in a crisis as they focus on the ‘here and now’ and are transparent with information where possible. They are highly effective when resources are limited, when planning time is not available, and the response must be sooner rather than later. They also thrive in situations where transparency with all stakeholders is critical, and this is enhanced when the ‘Tactician’ has high levels of morality, fairness, and sincerity in their communication.
However, in most business environments, the lack of forward planning and a future view can be problematic - leaders without long-term vision can find themselves obsolete. Tacticians can be blindsided by market dynamics, as their preference for ‘living in the now’ rather than looking at the bigger picture can see them descend into dealing with continual crisis due to their intense focus on the present, which prevents them from noticing shifting dynamics and external forces. This can create crisis situations of their own making, but ironically, their ability to deal with the crisis helps them get through it, which can create a cycle where the ‘Tactician’ and their team are continuously dealing with one crisis after another.
The significant advantage of the ‘Tactician’ in creating psychosocial safety is their ability to communicate in a clear and timely fashion, which lowers the team’s anxiety and ambiguity. As business is fundamentally about ‘getting stuff done,’ the unambiguous communication of the ‘Tactician’ tends to make sure it is the right stuff that gets done. This galvanises the team around the actual problems they need to solve with little energy lost on wondering what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, or how to get it done.
While all of this sounds incredibly positive, there is a significant risk. While the ‘Tactician’ is operating in their sweet spot of crisis management, their team may be hyper-energized, overly stimulated, and burning out because of the continuous cycle of crises surrounding them. With effort being channelled to urgent and important tasks, there is little time or energy left for the important but not yet urgent activities. This can result in the team lurching from crisis to crisis, continually surfing on high adrenaline waves. This leaves individuals and teams feeling locked into crisis mode and unable to regroup and recharge.
Identifying and leveraging the Chess Masters and Tacticians
So how do you know if you have the ‘Chess Masters’ to drive long-term covert strategy, or the ‘Tacticians’ to manage continual crisis? As business becomes more complex and challenging, organizations can no longer rely on assessments that measure a leader’s ‘identity’ - their self-perception and the view others have of them.
As things get tougher In the modern business environment, better measurements and data related to a leader’s actual capability must get better must be used. Organizations need scientific, reliable data on the true personality of their leaders, to deploy those leaders effectively and as required across the business.
The Greyscale is the only commercial leadership test that uses science and psychology to measure what type of ‘Strategist’ a leader is - are they the ‘Chess Master’ who excels at long-term strategy or the ‘Tactician’ who thrives in a crisis? To test your leaders and learn more, check out The Greyscale Assessment at http://tgsleadership.com.
