Over the last decade, the world has changed at breakneck speed, and digital transformation efforts have been a significant part of that change, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many leaders conducting business and managing teams from a remote environment, old leadership challenges no longer look or feel the same. It’s not just a matter of keeping your team connected to perform work or initiating virtual happy hours to encourage social connection. Leading people in a digital world requires new ways of thinking and leading that many leaders may not be ready for.
A recent report for MIT Sloan Management highlights some of the most significant ways leaders have to adapt to a new digital world.
3 Key Opportunities for Leaders in a Digital World
1. Renew Your Team’s Purpose
Amid a labor shortage and an unprecedented quit rate, leaders aren’t looking at a workforce that only cares about bringing home a paycheck. Instead, the current digital workforce consists mainly of digital natives who are technically savvy and want to create a work arrangement that fits their personal preferences. These workers see flexibility as table stakes—a baseline that all companies should accommodate. To many job seekers and employees, aspects of work such as inclusion, fairness, and social responsibility are deciding factors in whether they’ll take or stay at a job. In addition, they want to feel engaged and connected to the values of the company they work for.
In this new world of tech-savvy workers who expect a connection to work that goes beyond paychecks, leaders have an opportunity to become the servant leaders their teams need and renew the team’s purpose for better relationships across the team and toward the company mission, values, and goals. In addition, with so many people working in hybrid or remote work models, leaders can individual employees become personally fulfilled in their own needs. Renewing a sense of purpose for the new work realities can improve engagement, retention, and connection.
2. Create New Context
As a generation of digital natives matures, they find themselves under increased scrutiny for past online behavior. Most leaders and workers have felt the increasingly blurred lines between business and personal over the last few years. Some leaders have discovered that many old digital interactions don’t age well, and they may need to answer for both business and personal interactions that may have been fine a decade ago but aren’t acceptable today. Couple this blurring of online identities with the collapse of the walls between work, home, and social life, and leaders are understandably struggling to find their footing. Both issues represent a widespread collapse in context.
Balancing these multiple changing factors means more than encouraging teams to have better work-life balance, though work-life balance is undoubtedly part of the digital economy. It means creating new contexts and defining new rules for the modern work environment. Leaders have an opportunity to help team members redefine how work fits into their lives by reprioritizing work and encouraging team members to manage workload holistically. If leaders are open about taking time to attend a child school event during the day, the late-night e-mails may not be out of place.
Finally, leaders have a tremendous opportunity to help humanize team members through intentional connection. When people know each other only as faces on a Zoom call, it can be tough to establish the connections that create a new context for work relationships. Helping your team establish more personal connections can improve retention and team purpose and make everyone feel valued.
3. Develop Yourself and Your Team
Transitioning to a technology-driven work environment represents a massive opportunity for leaders and team members. It can also be intimidating for experienced leaders who may take longer to adapt to new technologies. If you, or one of your team members, is a leader who takes longer to adapt to new tools, consider it an opportunity to create psychological safety for the team by admitting the vulnerability and asking a technically savvy team member to be a mentor.
Digital transformation may represent the end of some old ways of doing business or leading people. Still, by understanding the opportunities inherent in the process, good leaders can transform themselves into great digital leaders who are well-prepared for the future.
Self Check:
- What is my team’s current purpose? Does it need to be updated?
- What is one question I can ask in team meetings to encourage connection?
- Who on my team can I approach teaching the team or me some new skills?
