Rethinking Leadership Styles: Why Old Patterns Don't Work Anymore
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Game-changing leaders steer contemporary organisations in the right direction.
Photo: Canva
The evolution of hybrid work patterns, the need to digitalise, and the growing importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion are significant forces driving the rethinking of leadership styles.
MIT Sloan stresses the increasing importance for companies to be purpose-driven, performance-focused, and principles-led. Game-changing leaders possess the skills to instil these three elements. The infographic below showcases the profile of game-changing leaders.
Infographic by DecodeHR.
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The rise of the digital leader is one such result of rethinking leadership styles.
What do digital leaders do?
Digital leaders [1]:
Embrace technology
Innovate
Meet customer needs
Build resilient teams
According to the Harvard Business Review, digital leaders build small agile teams who innovate and rapidly share information across the organisation. Culture is key here, as success depends on information-sharing and learning. Such organisations are more resilient to disruptive change [2].
In disruptive change, organisations must stay abreast of industry developments. Hence, the organisation's ability to transform itself, including its people, is one of leadership's core focus. The reality is that when corporations launch transformations, roughly 70% fail [3].
This is because transformations take work. A crucial mistake leaders make is assuming that implementing change will be easy or overestimating the organisation's capabilities [4]. Change requires people – who have other important duties – to invest time and mental energy. The leader should explain why the initiative matters to them and make it personal to employees to make the idea stick [5]. If leaders fail to convince people of the essence of the change, people are less likely to invest time and energy to realise the change.
Photo: Canva
The digital era has had a profound impact on business and leadership
Leaders need to adapt to rapidly changing technologies and digital trends, leading to a greater emphasis on digital fluency and the ability to innovate. Companies rely heavily on technology and data to drive operations, leading to changes in company structure and adopting more flat and decentralised leadership models [6]. Digitalisation also provides more opportunities to engage with customers and gather data to inform business decisions and improve customer experience [7].
The Impact of Digitalisation on the Workforce
Digitalisation is transforming the world of work as we know it. As a job creator and destroyer, it drives a significant restructuring of work requirements. Leaders must invest in employee skill development to support workers as they navigate challenging tasks requiring high cognitive ability levels [8].
Research on CEOs of leading businesses has shown that the organisations that outperform their competitors have leaders who cultivate open, connected and highly collaborative cultures [9]. Future leaders should base their organisations on three pillars [10]:
Assuring a highly connected and open working environment at hierarchical levels and organisational units.
Engaging customers by gathering knowledge about the whole person.
Establishing more integrated and networked relationships with partners and competitors.
Adopting digital technology is essential to growing the company based on these three pillars. It makes way for effective internal organisational procedures and ensures clients receive high-quality service [11].
Standing still and/or leveraging old leadership styles is not an option to survive in today’s tough and ever-changing business environment. It demands that leaders step up and take the baton of becoming digital leaders. How? Coaching is one way to learn new leadership and transformation skills to keep pace and stay ahead of change.
Connect with us to find out more about leadership development and coaching.
