The Role of Leadership in Strategy Formulation and Implementation

Leadership has significant impact on strategic management process. Especially it helps to determine the vision and mission of the organization. Further, it facilitates the organization to execute effective strategies to achieve that vision. The purpose of this paper is to find out the role of leadership in strategy formulation and implementation by reviewing the existing literature. The study reveals that leadership serves as a link between the soul and the body of an organization. For the successful implementation of strategies, the challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude, be kind but not weak, be bold but not bully, be thoughtful but not lazy, be humble but not timid, be proud but not arrogant, have humor but without folly. (Jim Rohm). During the strategic management process leadership performs the various roles such as innovator, strategist, care taker, analyst, guide, organizer, motivator, developer, change enabler or change driver, decision maker, collaborator, risk manager, debtor, and evaluator. In the recipe of strategic management process the most important ingredients are leader’s responsibility, loyalty, power, motivation, awareness, articulacy (clarity), consistency and reliability.