A Career Path for Strategic Leadership

How to build the mental habits that enable you to make a living while making a better world.

By Art Kleiner, Jeffrey Schwartz, MD, and Josie Thomson

People at work these days tend to be ambitious. They want a lot from work: Money, recognition, a challenging (but not too challenging) career path, and a sense that they belong. Having lived during a time of pandemic, they also want to accomplish something significant: to make a contribution and be recognized for it. They want to become strategic leaders.

Strategic leadership is the ability to move an organization or group toward long-term plans and goals. It’s the kind of leadership where you face complex problems — in which the stakes are high, there are no obvious easy solutions, and you can’t get results by simple command. You have to influence and iterate your way to success. In our research on neuroscience and leadership, we have found that some people become more skilled at this over the course of their careers.

If you’re a strategic leader yourself, then you have probably developed the habits of mind through challenges at work. The twists and turns of an organizational career are like a roller-coaster of leadership skill-building; each new climb exposes you to greater, more complex hurdles. You’ll be assigned mentors, and find some on your own, but you’ll also develop an inner voice of self-guidance, a mental frame of mind that we call the “Wise Advocate.” This construct, which you get into the habit of summoning, helps you see yourself as others might see you. It operates with a high level of discernment and judgment, while also maintaining a loving commitment to your own growth and success. Over time, as you learn to tune in to this frame of mind, you’ll gain more ability to steer clear of pitfalls, overreach, and unintended consequences. You’ll gradually become the kind of leader who can handle the immense stakes and tangled complexity of our time.

Along the way, you’ll go through transitional moments. They are like passages; you emerge more capable, and different than you were before. They are triggered by challenges that face many business people. And you get through them by developing and summoning your inner resources. Here are four…