127: You've Been Told to Be More Strategic — But What Does That Actually Mean?

You've been told to "be more strategic." It's in your performance reviews. It's in your job description. But here's the problem: no one has ever actually defined what that means.

In this episode, Dr. Nicole breaks down what "strategic" actually means, why Black women are brilliant executors but rarely taught to think like strategists, and how this one gap is keeping high-performing directors stuck as middle managers.

What You'll Learn:

✔ The real definition of "strategic thinking" (and why corporate feedback is so vague)
✔ What strategic thinking looks like at three different leadership levels
✔ Why execution excellence stops being enough at the director level
✔ The difference between tactical and strategic career management
✔ Why most Black women give 150% strategic thinking to their employer's goals — but run their own careers on autopilot
✔ Three questions to ask yourself if you've been stuck at director level for more than two years

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Transcript

Rainy Day Reflection And A Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey lady leader. At the time of this recording, it is a very overcast day outside, which is making me feel very calm and very cozy and very relaxed, which you likely can hear in my voice. But it reminds me of my time in London, which was several, several years ago. But one of the things that I always hear about people criticizing the UK, particularly London, is that it's, you know, there's a very long or extended rainy season. But that's actually what I loved about it. And so one of my favorite things now is walking in the rain, watching the rain, smelling the rain. There's just something about it that soothes my soul. Curious if that is your experience as well. But it tends to just make me calm and even more reflective than I normally am as my with my introverted self. So you may hear a little bit of that in my voice, but I am excited to talk to you about today's topic. And it came up, it's actually inspired by one of my very, very good and long-term friends. So shout out to M, I'll call her M to protect her anomonymity. I was texting with M a few weeks ago. She's a director at a global publishing company. She's been there nearly 15 years, if not longer, actually. She's had a very solid career. She's very well regarded. And I know this because she's navigated multiple leadership changes. People around her have come and gone because of these leadership changes because they couldn't keep up with what was happening. And she has not only risen to the occasion, but she has come out on the other side, very well regarded in her organization. Now, we were having a talk about her situation that she has right now with a new boss. In the middle of that conversation, she shared with me that she is not certain that she knows what it means to be strategic. Now, this is a woman who has almost 30 years of professional work experience. She's a very seasoned leader, and she's someone that other people look to for guidance. And the fact that she had the courage to admit that she doesn't know what being strategic actually means and what it actually looks like is very, very telling about who she is. Now, here's the thing: she's not alone. Most of us, as black women, black introverted women aren't necessarily strong enough or feel safe enough to admit that we don't know what being strategic means. So what do we do? We fake it. We use the word in meetings, we put it on our resumes, we nod when someone tells us that we need to think more strategically. Hell, we even use it with our direct reports. You need to be more strategic. But deep down, we ourselves are guessing at what being strategic means for us. And that is not a personal failure. It's a structural one because no one teaches leaders, let alone black female leaders, what strategic actually means. We're taught to execute, yes. We're taught to deliver, of course. We're taught to prove our value through output, absolutely. And that works, but it only works until you hit a certain level, usually the director level inside your organization. Because at that director level, usually it's the director level, sometimes it's the senior manager level, but it's usually the director level. But at that director level, that is where the rules usually change. Because being an executor stops being enough. Being scrappy stops being enough. And strategy starts to become the price of entry into the next level of leadership that you're trying to attain. And if you can't define what being strategic is, then you won't be able to demonstrate it. And if you can't demonstrate it, then you won't get promoted past that. So today, that is what we're talking about. We're fixing that exact issue today.

Why Strategic Feels So Vague

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Now, if you're new here, my name is Dr. Nicole Bryan, and this is Leading Her Introvert Way. This is the podcast for Black introverted women who want to get promoted into senior leadership and executive roles. Okay, so let me ask you something. Have you ever been told that you need to be more strategic? It may have shown up in a performance review, or maybe it's in every vice president or senior vice president job description you've looked at inside your organization, and even ones that you've looked at, if you're keeping your eye out on LinkedIn for new roles and new possibilities, you've probably seen it there as well. Or maybe your boss has said it to you in passing, which is, you know, I need you to think more strategically about this. Another place that strategy and being more strategic tends to come into play is when you are reading your company's goals or your company's five-year plan. It's usually a strategic document that the whole organization is expected to understand where we're going as a company. So strategy is oh, the word strategy, the term strategic, it's everywhere. Hell, it's almost on every LinkedIn post that I read that is about being inside a company or leading a team. And so you may have heard this term, it may have been said to you, and you've nodded. You've wrote it down, you've told yourself that yes, you want to work on it or you are already strategic. But here's the problem: what does being strategic actually mean? Because strategic has become one of corporate's favorite vague feedback terms, right up there with executive presence and leadership potential. It sounds like something, it feels important, but no one ever really defines it. So you're left trying to demonstrate a skill that you actually haven't defined, the organization haven't defined it for you, and so you can't demonstrate it. You're trying to build something you've never seen modeled, and you're wondering why you keep getting that feedback or why you keep hearing that you're too in the weeds or too focused on execution, and you don't know what it is exactly. That's the opposite of that. Now, the truth is, we as Black women, we are brilliant executors. We are the ones that get it done, we are the ones who deliver when everyone else is still talking about it. But we were never shown what it is to think like strategists. So we were taught how to work harder, we were taught to deliver more, to prove our value, to be indispensable, and that has worked until it doesn't. Because at a certain level, execution stops being enough and strategy becomes the requirement. And if you don't know what that looks like, you can't apply it to your work or your career. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation today is believe it or not, it's actually not about applying it to your work. Your organization will care that you apply being strategic to how you show up inside your company, how you show up as a leader, how you show up as a future executive. And that's important. But what I care about for you is even more significant. I care about the definition of being strategic, specifically when it comes to you and your career. Because if you don't know what strategic is and you can't apply it to your work, then you damn sure are not gonna be able to apply being strategic to your career. And that's the only way that you will ever keep getting promoted and keep moving your career forward and up into the senior leadership and executive ranks. So today I want to do three things. And those three things are gonna answer my friend Em's question, and it's gonna answer the questions that you have about this topic that either you have not asked yet or you don't even realize that you need to ask yet. Those three things are I want to define what strategic actually means. Not the corporate jargon version, but the real applicable version. The second thing I want to do in today's episode is I want to show you what strategic thinking looks like at different levels of leadership, because it's not the same at every stage. And the third thing I want to accomplish today is I want to show you how to apply strategic thinking to your own career growth, because that is the part that most of us as Black women skip entirely.

A Clear Definition Of Strategic

SPEAKER_00 10:26

So let's start with the definition. And we're gonna go straight to the dictionary, right? If we want a definition of something, let's start with the socially accepted and clearly defined dictionary definition. So strategic means relating to the identification of long-term goals and the means of achieving them. It's about planning with the end in mind. It's about resource allocation, and it's about making intentional choices based on priority and impact. So, in plain language, strategic thinking is about deciding what matters most and organizing your actions around that. It is the opposite, the antithesis of reactive. It's the opposite of being tactical, it's the opposite of let me just get through today. And it's the opposite of being passive. Strategic thinking asks, where are we trying to go? Why does this actually matter? What's the highest impact way to get there? And what do we need to stop doing in order to focus on what matters most? Now, here's where it gets tricky when you work in a corporate environment. Because when your manager tells you to be more strategic, they're not always asking you to think long term. Sometimes they're asking you to stop doing the work you're doing and start thinking about the business impact of that work. Other times, they're asking you to elevate your perspective, to zoom out and see the bigger picture instead of staying focused on the task level. And other times, frankly, they're using strategic as a proxy for something else entirely, like executive presence or confidence, or you're not ready yet, but I'm not going to tell you why. So often, as a black woman, you find yourself in a position where you have to decode what they mean when they say strategic. You are forced to ask yourself, what does strategic mean in this context, in this moment, at this level, and for this role? And that brings me to the second part of what I wanted to cover today, which is what strategic looks like at different levels of leadership. Because strategic thinking is not a one size fits all, it looks different depending on where you are in your leadership journey. So let me break it down into three levels.

Level One Strategy For Managers

SPEAKER_00 13:19

In level one, it's all about tactical execution leadership, right? And usually this is when you're a supervisor, a manager, senior manager, that type of level. At that level, your job is to deliver, and your job is to manage others who have to deliver. So you're managing projects, you're managing timelines, you're managing tasks for yourself and for those who report into you. And you're solving problems as they come up. You are literally reacting and being reactive by design because your role is to execute on the strategy that somebody else created. Being strategic at this level, it means that you need to understand why the work matters, not just what needs to be done. Being strategic at this level means that you're anticipating roadblocks before they become crises. And being strategic at this level will likely look like you asking clarifying questions that show that you're thinking beyond the most immediate task. Yet you're still deeply in the work. You're still very much hands-on. And that is definitely appropriate at this stage, which I call level one, the tactical execution leadership level, right? Again, supervisor, manager, senior manager level.

Level Two Strategy For Directors

SPEAKER_00 14:57

At level two, this is where the rules change. And I call this level strategic leadership level. And that's when you are either like a senior director or a vice president. Because at this level, your job is no longer just to execute and no longer just to manage others whose job is to only execute. When you become a senior manager or a vice president, your job then shifts to shaping the strategy within your function or within your department. At this strategic leadership level, this level two, you're expected to think proactively, not reactively. You are being held responsible to connect your team's work to the broader business goal. So not just within your department, but what's happening across the organization. You're also expected to identify trends, look at patterns, look for opportunities that others aren't able to see yet. And you are often, as a senior director and a vice president, you often have to make trade-offs. You have to say no to some good ideas so you can say yes to the right ideas. And then finally, you literally have to influence across functions, not just within your team or within your direct reporting line. For you as a senior director or a vice president, being strategic means you have to ask different questions. The questions you have to ask are things like, what should we be focused on six months from now? What's the business outcome we're trying to drive? Where are we spending our time that's not moving the needle? So you can make the decision to pull those resources and put them somewhere else. This level is where most black women will get stuck because we were trained to execute brilliantly, right? At level one, we are the bomb. But here at level two, we're not needing to execute as much. We're needing to shift our brain power elsewhere. We were never taught to zoom out, to make trade-offs, and to think at an enterprise level. So as a result of that, we go where our comfort zone is. We choose to stay in the weeds, we choose to keep delivering, we choose to continue to be hands-on, and then we wonder why we're not getting promoted.

Level Three Enterprise Strategy

SPEAKER_00 17:37

So let's move on to level three, which is the enterprise strategic leadership. Now, this is when you're a senior vice president, executive vice president, C-suite member, right? In some organizations, you might be an executive director, for example. At this level, you're required to think two, three, four years out, not just two or three quarters or two or three months. You are literally expected, when you get to this enterprise strategic leadership level, you're expected to shape the strategy for the entire organization, not just your function. Because you are then sitting in meetings and sitting at tables where your opinion, even though you might not be responsible for a function, your opinion influences the ultimate decision. You have a vote in terms of what those other functions and what the entire company is going to do. So you're expected to shape the strategy for the overall organization. You're also expected to anticipate market trends and know what the competitive threats are. When you're at the level one and level two, you're not, you're not seeing that, you're not thinking about it. Decisions are already made that has taken those things into account. But when you're at the enterprise strategic leadership level, it is your job to anticipate and know what's happening outside of your organization so that you can plan for and get others ready to address those things. You're also expected to drive cross-functional alignment around enterprise-wide priorities. Again, when you're an executive, and it you're usually an executive for a function. So even if you're like the chief commercial officer or the chief information officer, you are responsible for your function. Absolutely. You're responsible for marketing, you're responsible for information, you're responsible for administration. You have a functional responsibility, but that is only about 50% of your role.

Responsibility Versus Accountability

SPEAKER_00 19:55

This is probably a good place to talk about the difference between accountability and responsibility. It deserves its own separate episode, but let me clarify this now. Because as executives in any organization or senior leaders in any organization, you have both. You have responsibilities and you have accountabilities. Many people will use those two words interchangeably, and they're not interchangeable, they are different. Responsibility deals with tasks and roles, focusing on who does what. Accountability, on the other hand, is all about owning the results, whether the results are good or bad. As an executive, you may not be the person actually doing the task. You may not be the person who is hands-on and executing something, but because that function will port into you, because those roles will port up into you, you are ultimately accountable for the outcome. So that's the difference. Responsibility means that you're doing it, it's on your job description, it's in your immediate purview. These are the things that you as an individual have to do andor get done. Accountability is different, particularly when we get to the executive and senior leadership levels. We don't have to be the ones doing it, but we ultimately are accountable for it. All right. Okay, so getting back to the actual level three enterprise strategic leadership conversation, being strategic at that level means. Means that you're operating at the intersection of the business, the people on your team, and market forces. So you're not thinking just like a manager or a leader of the organization. You're thinking also like an owner of the organization. Because literally you become accountable for results that you don't directly have influence over. So you have to think broader. And here's what most people don't realize you don't suddenly wake up and become strategic when you get to the senior vice president, the executive vice president, the chief levels, or executive directorship levels, or managing director. You don't suddenly just become that. You demonstrate strategic thinking before you get those roles. You demonstrate and curate your strategic thinking capabilities along your leadership journey. That's how you know you're ready. And that's how they know that you're ready. Now, here's the part that's going to change everything for you as you continue to navigate

Stop Running Your Career On Autopilot

SPEAKER_00 23:14

your career. Most black introverted women are brilliant at applying strategic thinking to their work. Once we know what being strategic is, once we get that understanding, it becomes easier for us to apply it to our day-to-day work responsibilities. But we almost never apply it to our own careers. Now let me show you what I mean. We're really good at tactical career management, reactive career management, because it looks like things that you are doing, probably doing right now all the time. You see a role open up inside your organization or it gets posted and you go and you apply for it. Or you see a job on LinkedIn or ZipRecruiter or indeed.com and you update your resume and then you submit it and apply for the job. Other tactical career management activities look like you waiting for feedback from your boss about what work needs to get done, what you need to do, what you need to work on and focus on. Or you react to opportunities as they come up. I was talking to someone the other day and she was like, Yeah, I'm just waiting to hear back. And I'm like, why are you waiting? But that's what we do. We're gonna wait to hear back to determine what our next steps are. Right? Other tactical career management things include like you take on more work to prove your value because that's what we do. We execute. So we are more hands-on. We when we feel like we have more to contribute or we want to move the needle, our immediate thought is what else can I do? What more could I be doing? That's tactical career management, thinking and execution. Strategic career management looks like the opposite of that. So instead of waiting for a role to come up and show up on LinkedIn or even inside your organization, you, when you're being strategic about your career management, what you're doing is you're mapping out where you ultimately want to be in 18 months, in two years. And then you back in from that and start identifying the specific skills or relationships or visibility that you need in order to reach that goal of yours in 18 months, to get the role that you want in 18 months. Strategic career management also looks like you building those things intentionally before the role actually opens up. You're also creating demand for yourself by positioning your work at the enterprise level. So you are thinking about what are the initiatives that are big and sexy and that the company is actually pouring more and more resources into. How can I get myself on one of those projects? What could I contribute to position myself for that work, right? That's what you're thinking about. Strategic career management also looks like you saying no to work that doesn't align with your next level goals. No to busy work, no to, hey, somebody else is better positioned to do that. Just because I'm here and available doesn't mean that I need to be the one. Even if it's high visibility, because it could be high visibility, but still not be what you need to help you achieve your goal, or even be aligned in the vertical that you're responsible for, yet you are still saying yes to it versus saying no. Strategic career management means saying no when it does not align with either what you are responsible for or accountable for, or when it doesn't align with ultimately where you want to take your career. The final thing I will say about strategic career management is it looks like when you stop waiting to be chosen and you start making yourself the obvious choice for others and for your boss and for the company. Now here's the truth. What's happening right now, today, is either one of two things. One is you have not clarified for yourself until you hear until this episode what strategic thinking actually looks like, what being strategic actually looks like. So you're probably, you've been probably walking around thinking that you're being strategic or knowing that you're not being strategic, but trying to pretend as if you are. That's the first group of us. The second group of us who actually have understood what strategic thinking is, we have been applying it, but only to our work life, only to what we contribute to the organization. So you're planning roadmaps, you're solving the company's problems, you are thinking three steps ahead on behalf of the organization. But when it comes to your own career, you're letting it run on autopilot. You're letting things come to you if it's meant to be. That's what I hear often as well. If it's meant to be, it'll come my way. Or I will hear things like if it's God's will, let it be done. And I am all for following the path that God has laid out for us. But I also truly believe that we can't just sit still. We can't just do nothing, right? God works through us. So we we have to be doing something to help the plan along. So if you're just running on autopilot, you're letting your career play out. And in this world, other people are going to be influencing your career while you stand still. So you're in a position then when you're reacting, you're waiting, you're hoping. And that is exactly why so many of our careers plateau. Not because you're not good enough, and not because you don't have executive presence, but because you're not applying the same level of strategic thinking to your own personal career growth that you apply to everyone else's success. So let's bring this full circle.

Three Questions To Break A Plateau

SPEAKER_00 30:27

If you're a director and you've been stuck at this level for more than two or three years, I want you to ask yourself three questions. The first is, am I thinking strategically about my work? Or am I still operating at the solely execution level? If you're still deep in all the details, you're still managing all the tasks instead of shaping direction, and you're still reacting instead of planning, then that's your signal. You do not need to work harder. What you need to do is start zooming out. The second question I want you to ask yourself is am I demonstrating strategic thinking in a way that's visible to other people, to my boss, to other leaders across the organization? Because it's not enough to think strategically. You have to also communicate strategically. And that means you have to frame your work in terms of business impact, not just activity. You have to start asking questions in meetings, even if you don't have the answers yet. And you have to start sharing your insights about trends and patterns and opportunities, not just updates on what got done last week. If the people who make promotions decisions don't see that you are actively thinking strategically, it really doesn't matter how strategic you are. And the third question I need you to ask yourself is am I being strategic about my own career? Or am I waiting for someone else to manage it for me? And this is the hardest one because so many of us have been taught that if we just work hard enough, someone will notice, someone will advocate for us, someone will open the door. But that's not how it works at this level. At the vice president level and above, you have to be the strategist of your own career. You have to know where you're going and you have to build the path, you have to create the demand, your own demand, right? No one else is going to do that for you. So here's what I want you to take away from today's episode. If you've been told to be more strategic, or you know you need to be more strategic, yet you're not quite sure, you haven't been quite sure about what that means, you're not alone. And it's not your fault. But after listening to today's episode, now you know. Strategic thinking is about long-term planning, intentional prioritization, and focusing on impact over activity. Now it may look different at every level of leadership. And the most important place to apply it is to your own career. Because if you don't know where you're going, you'll keep working hard without ever moving forward.

Takeaways And Next Week Preview

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Okay, so here's what's coming next week. It was supposed to come this week, it didn't. It's coming next week, which is I'm going to tell you about the five stages that every black woman has to navigate on the road to executive leadership. And I'm also going to tell you why most women get stuck because they're doing the wrong work for their current stage. If you have been working on executive presence, if you've been working on visibility, if you've been working on talking up in meetings more frequently and all the things, and it's still not translating into a promotion, then next week's episode is going to show you why. If you want to get it early, then make sure you join my newsletter, right? So my newsletter community, we call ourselves the leader lowdown, a little play on words there, but we call ourselves the leader lowdown community. If you're not subscribed to the leader lowdown community and you want to receive the quiz and know the stages and the journey from where you are now to executive leadership, then make sure that you click the link in the show notes so that you can join and get that information, ASAP. All right, lady leader. Until next week, keep leading your introvert way.