Leadership competences for the excellence of municipalities’ strategic management

Specifics of leadership in municipalities is significantly influenced by the complexity of municipal management, which is happening in multi-layer administration environment, with various interested parties and administrative actors involved at the same time. Formalized strategic planning system in Lithuanian municipalities assures the implementation of governmental and regional strategies, however, certain inner strategic problems of the municipalities remain unsolved. The purpose of this article is to reveal the peculiarities of strategic management in Lithuanian municipalities and to define leadership competences in strategic management processes. Benchmarking, generalisation and synthesis are used as the research methods here. The model of leadership competences suggested by the authors can be used by Lithuanian municipalities seeking to establish more transparent selection of candidates for municipal posts, more objective evaluation of their activities, accurate identification of personnel professional development needs. The most important result of proper leadership application is more efficient and effective functioning of strategic planning processes at the municipal level as leadership enables filling in the gaps between formalized structures and procedures, it also opens new opportunities for strategic planning.