Leadership Traits Decoded
Leadership is shifting - and so are the demands on today’s leaders.
Join Cynthia Kyriazis and Andrea Martin as they spotlight a core leadership trait, exploring how it meets the evolving challenges of today’s workplace.
Through candid, practical conversations, they unpack how each trait influences culture, drives development, and creates the conditions for growth and performance in modern organizations.
Learn more at www.plllab.com.
Leadership Traits Decoded
Strategic Perspective - Seeing Today’s Actions Through Tomorrow’s Lens
Is strategic thinking something you’re born with or can it be developed over time?
In this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded, Cynthia Kiriazis and Drea Martin explore the leadership trait of strategic perspective - the ability to connect individual actions to long-term goals and make decisions with future impact in mind.
They discuss how this skill shows up differently across leaders, from those who seem naturally wired to “see the whole board” to those who develop their strategic muscles through intentional practice and reflection.
Drawing on real experiences and data-driven insights, they explore:
- Why strategic perspective is more than just “big picture” thinking
- How downtime and reflection create space for strategic connections
- Ways leaders can practice by integrating strategy discussions into team meetings
- How to balance high-level vision with day-to-day execution
- Development tactics for both under- and over-strategizing leaders.
The conversation also addresses a common leadership challenge: finding the right rhythm between generating new ideas and completing existing initiatives without overwhelming the team.
Whether you’re in the C-suite or building your leadership capacity, this episode offers practical ways to strengthen your strategic perspective and help others do the same.
Ready to explore your leadership traits? Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit www.plllab.com to see how we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.
Welcome to Leadership Traits Decoded. I'm Cynthia Kiriazis, Chief Experience Officer at the Culture Think Tank.
Drea Martin:And I'm Drea Martin, Product Owner of the Crucible. We are collaborative partners at Performance Leadership Learning Lab, where we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.
Cynthia Kyriazis:Today, we're unpacking the leadership traits essential for building, investing in and scaling successful companies. Our insights come directly from data-driven metrics within our platform's solution. So let's dive in. Hey, Drea, how are you today? Hey, doing well. How are you Cynthia? I'm good, I'm good. We still seem to be in something of a heat wave, but we'll be getting over that pretty soon, I think. So I had a thought today about our topic, because I have a little story about it, but I thought maybe we could talk about strategic perspective.
Drea Martin:Love it. Great follow-up on last week's or two weeks ago's pattern recognition, so that sounds great.
Cynthia Kyriazis:I thought we mentioned it during the pattern recognition session and I thought, yeah, strategic, that used to be kind of like a word I couldn't identify with because I tend to be very process and operationally oriented. When I began my own business, long before I joined the Culture Think Tank, I said maybe I need to go get some training. Oh, what a thought. Some sales training, right? So I joined an organization and I went through my sales training and the one thing and I would practice, practice, practice and so on and so forth.
Cynthia Kyriazis:But I remember the guy leading the class I'd been going for a while said something to me and I said well, you know, I'm just not strategic. I can see a pattern, I can see this, I can do that, I can process this, but I'm just not very strategic. And he turned around and looked at me and he said you're far more strategic than you think you are. And that was the first time anybody had said that to me. So I said tell me more in my sales voice, right, tell me more. And he did. He started to outline for me what strategic means and can mean. It doesn't always mean you are this great big picture thinker. Many people believe that is what it means. That was my experience many, many years ago, and what I would love to know is, from your viewpoint, how strategic perspective plays out in the traits world of the people metrics that we do.
Drea Martin:Yeah, definitely, and I'm curious. I think it's interesting because strategic perspective is so often defined right as the ability to see the big picture, which is an important aspect of being a strategic thinker, but it's more about understanding how individual actions connect to that broader goal. Exactly so, and I wish they could see us Cynthia's putting her hands together, kind of like how would you describe this? Like praying? Yeah, exactly, and it's just. It's making decisions with more of a perspective of long-term impact in mind. So even the ability to think beyond just the day-to-day and prioritize what will matter not only today but potentially tomorrow and in the future, even when things aren't yet urgent or maybe don't have that kind of aspect of them that so many of our day-to-day tasks do, is a sign of being a more strategic thinker. How does that sound? Does that resonate with the definition that you were taught when you were kind of informed that this is something you have more of than you anticipated?
Cynthia Kyriazis:Yes, you know, dan was the name of the man who gave me some feedback and he touched on points that I had never thought of. I can't tell you how surprised I was by it. Now, when I speak to leaders or I meet someone and we're having a conversation and I'm looking at them, I'm actually thinking about does this person have a strategic perspective? And if so, what is it? And I know I was speaking to somebody in our organization and I said when you see that, what do you see In your mind's eye, what do you see? And he immediately said well, I see, when you see that, what do you see in your mind's eye, what do you see? And he immediately said well, I see, this is connected to that which is connected to the other thing over there, and then those two are connected to the three over there.
Cynthia Kyriazis:That's just how his mind naturally worked. I don't even think you mean to say he had a strategic perspective. That was how he did everything. Everything was a connection to something else. And I thought whoa, he was born that way. I think that's awesome. I had to learn it and there was some natural propensity to it. Yes, but is it something someone can learn?
Drea Martin:Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Drea Martin:I mean you're a great example of maybe it's less about learning it and more about recognizing what aspects of strategy do you already bring and then which ones maybe do you need to put more time into if you're so focused on short-term wins, for example, and you need to figure out a little bit more about long-term value creation.
Drea Martin:Recognizing when there's lulls, maybe in the day-to-day, just needs of client wants, this. We address this directly by doing that when there's a lull and there's more time to kind of sit back and think, prioritizing in those moments that pause between the day-to-day wins, to then have those conversations and look at how do all these pieces fit together? Where do we need to go to be where I want to be two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now with this business? That's a way that you can kind of implement it more so than learn it, because that's where people who are less strategically inclined fall into traps is that they just go through the day-to-day and don't take that time. So implement that time and watch how that changes things.
Cynthia Kyriazis:Okay. So that's a really, really awesome point, because in the early stages, when I was trying to learn sales, I was always in a hustle. I was always moving, I was doing something and of course, the older I get and now that I'm ancient, things come to me much easier because I've been through them. But what I did do is I recognized that the more successful I became, the more time I had not to go seeking things to do, seeking sales, the more reflective I became and the more I protected my downtime. Because the downtime was when I saw this dot relates to this dot which connects to that dot. Step back from the day-to-day and the move forward into the future. That's really what helped me recognize the importance of developing that.
Cynthia Kyriazis:The comments that you made, at least for me, resonated for me quite a bit, because it's not something you're going to learn in a class. It's going to learn something that you do over and over and over again when you have the time and the intent to block out the noise, because we all know there's more than enough noise in the world to prevent us from thinking about too much of anything, because we're pretty tired at the end of the day. I think great thinkers were individuals who had huge amounts of time to sit back and reflect Right. Sounds like strategic perspective. Lives in that kind of space.
Drea Martin:Definitely.
Drea Martin:And it's one of those things where and I think it's important in an organization of any level to implement that by having, for example, whenever we're developing a new product with the Crucible, one of the main things that I prioritize, because I know what my brain needs to think is I can't, on a day when it's packed with meetings, none of that thinking, none of that ideation is going to happen.
Drea Martin:I choose a day where I can block out a couple hours. I can go for a walk and think, or I can sit down with just a blank document or a sheet of paper in front of me and just put down what I know, put down what I want to think about, put down where, maybe, and let the dots connect themselves in front of me. It's putting that time aside and I love anytime, kind of I have a big decision or things kind of come up. I love this notion of like take a walk, like give yourself that movement, that time to think in an environment that's not controlled, not in front of a screen, for example, and give yourself kind of that space and that can be so important to implement.
Cynthia Kyriazis:Oh, that is also another golden nugget from Andrea, in that if a CEO recognizes that somebody on the leadership team has the capacity but doesn't have the tools, is not aware of the tools, let's say, to move forward, to maybe think about encouraging that employee to go for a walk, encouraging that employee to turn off the phone every day for 10 minutes, or whatever approach is giving them, so to speak, verbal permission to develop that skill. So it's part of that development effort, right?
Drea Martin:Exactly Cool. What about the flip? That's one thing that I've also seen for strategic perspective and I know it's a tough one, but I definitely have run into this with leaders where they're so strategic and so big idea that it's so hard to get them to actually tangibly sit down and get some of these. And I know we talked about detail orientation usually a flow detail orientation, but actually sitting down and getting it done and, yes, having a team to help facilitate some of that. Like, you need someone who has the big vision and then, if you have a team who can make it real and ask the questions of like, how are we going to make this happen? And let's actually put the pieces together. What would you advise to someone who's particularly challenged, maybe by having way too much strategic perspective and maybe getting lost in some of these thinking beyond the day to day, so much that the day to day doesn't happen?
Cynthia Kyriazis:Okay, I kind of know a person like that. The day to day still happens, but there's always a new project and a new project and a new project and a new. Like that, the day-to-day still happens, but there's always a new project and it's a new project and a new project and a new project. That can just stress out the team beyond words. And have we completed the project before, or gotten it off to a good start, and now? Has it paid off? What's the goal? Did we hit the goal Right?
Cynthia Kyriazis:Okay, so here's a thought.
Cynthia Kyriazis:Let's say we have a leader team of five people and every so often, or once a month or whatever, the CEO presents something that they're working on or are thinking about working on, and he asks each member of the team to give a strategic approach to that issue.
Cynthia Kyriazis:Oh, I like that. Either you could do it two ways. Each person gives a strategic thought around it, depending on where they're sitting in the room with their role, or one person leads it with the strategic ideas they have and then sees if people gets feedback from people on it. They could even talk about the strategic perspective they have for their own team their own team or the entire organization, or the entire organization, just some way to share information and improve your strategic chops, so to speak, your strategic perspective chops, and share information to learn from each other around that, because I suspect that anybody sitting in the seat in the leadership team needs some level of that and it gives them permission to set 10 minutes aside if somebody hasn't said that they're preparing for the meeting. It gives them a little something to look forward to and something to learn from.
Drea Martin:Right, yeah, and then vice versa. You also then have the perspective of the whole leadership team saying slow down, can't jump to the next idea yet. We have to tackle what's at hand, finish this, wrap this up before we dive into this. So the checks and balances on that. Yeah, it's interesting.
Cynthia Kyriazis:Or even perhaps having a project that exists, that they've all said yes. And speaking to some of the strategic challenges or new strategic or a different strategy to go to, I don't know, there's a lot of ways you could go with it, yeah.
Drea Martin:Definitely Interesting. I like that. Thank you Cool insight.
Cynthia Kyriazis:Thank you for all of your insights. They're also always so awesome. I think, as a takeaway, the thing that I got from this and then I'd like to know your thoughts as well is give people the time and the support to have them practice this new thing or this thing that they may be challenged from. And if it's a group effort, fine. If it's an individual effort, fine, but give them the permission to do that if it's something that they kind of want to go off to their room and think about it.
Drea Martin:Right, take that time, takes time. Yeah, definitely what about you. I like that. I like this idea of sometimes learning is as simple as implementing. Yes, is as simple as implementing Just putting something into action instead of waiting to learn or develop or build up. It's recognizing what you might already have, that you just haven't given enough time to.
Cynthia Kyriazis:That's a good one. Yes, because you know I'm always reflecting, so that's good. That's a great note to end this session on. Thank you so much as always for your expert opinion and your lovely smile and voice, which you guys can't always see the smile, but believe me, it's there and we'll see you guys next time on the next episode of Leadership Traits Developed. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded. You'll be able to find all our episodes on the Performance Leadership Learning Lab website at wwwplllabcom or you can listen on your favorite streaming platform.
Drea Martin:We'll be back soon to explore the next essential trait. Until then, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn if you have any questions or ideas.
