How To Develop the Skills of Successful Strategic Advisors

This article by Valeria Maltoni ‘The 12 Qualities of Extremely Valuable, Highly Paid Strategists’ provides an interesting insight into the skills of strategic advisors.

The skills she mentions are the following:

Know which problem the insight can solveHave a broad and expanding scope of knowledgeUnderstand the psychology of leadersRespect high-value expertsImprove the person, not just the projectBe fluent with languageBe adept with varied tools and techniquesUnderstand the power of wordsKnow how to write and presentPreserve the expert’s voiceWork fastWork well

I find this list quite interesting, and in particular the statement “improve the person, not just the project”. It is something I have always felt, taking a coaching certification to enable this work on the client as a person in addition to working on harder stuff.

Certain skills make a huge difference when advising on strategy. And they are not about being better at strategy! A lot deals with interpersonal skills and asking the right questions.

The post How To Develop the Skills of Successful Strategic Advisors first appeared on The Fourth Revolution Blog.