- 18 Apr 2024| By Catherine Cote (LINK)
3 Tips to Help You Lead in the Digital World
As the world becomes more technologically advanced, business roles evolve. It’s your job as a leader to guide your team through digital transformation and uncertainty and inspire them to innovate.
While digital and technological savviness are helpful, Harvard Business School Professor Linda Hill—who teaches Leading in the Digital World, one of seven courses in the Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)—says digital leadership is about empowering your team.
"What does it mean to be an effective leader when you have digital tools and data to enable you to be able to innovate and meet the needs of your customer?" Hill asks in an episode of The Parlor Room podcast.
Regardless of whether you have formal authority, Hill says you can inspire innovation.
Regardless of whether you have formal authority, Hill says you can inspire innovation.
“It's not so much about coming up with a vision and following the leader to the future,” she continues. “It's really about how you create the kind of culture and capabilities necessary for [the team] to be willing and able to co-create that future together.”
Watch the full podcast episode on YouTube
Watch the full podcast episode on YouTube
To help you harness your leadership skills in the digital age, here’s a primer on digital leadership’s challenges, the roles you must play, and three tips to remember for success.
What Is Digital Leadership?
Digital leadership is a type of leadership characterized by a willingness to engage with, leverage, and navigate the uncertainty of emerging technologies, digital tools, and data.
In today’s business world, considering the implications and opportunities that come with new, disruptive technology is critical. Yet, many find it daunting—and for good reason.
— Digital leadership’s common challenges include:
- Adapting to leading virtual or hybrid teams
- Auditing, selecting, and implementing new tools and processes and inspiring employee buy-in
- Mitigating the overwhelm associated with accessing large amounts of data
- Navigating and leading others through constant change
One way to conceptualize your role as a leader is by using a framework called “the ABCs of leadership.” Drawing from Hill’s research in the Harvard Business Review, here’s a breakdown of each of the three leadership roles you must play in the digital world.
A Leader’s 3 Roles in the Digital World
Your architectural leadership responsibilities involve shaping your team or organization’s culture and capabilities. Your goal is to create an environment in which employees can experiment, collaborate, and learn.
“The idea here is that everyone in your organization has a slice of genius,” Hill says in a video for the Harvard Business Review.
“Everyone has talents, everyone has passions. Your role as a leader is to unleash the diverse slices of genius in your organization and then leverage and harness them for the collective good.”
“The idea here is that everyone in your organization has a slice of genius,” Hill says in a video for the Harvard Business Review.
“Everyone has talents, everyone has passions. Your role as a leader is to unleash the diverse slices of genius in your organization and then leverage and harness them for the collective good.”
Next, you need to act as a bridge between your team and external resources. That can mean connecting with internal teams or other organizations to reach mutual goals.
Because each person, team, and company has a specific set of talents, expertise, and resources, your employees will likely require some outside collaboration to innovate effectively. It’s your job to bridge those gaps to empower them.
Making connections also requires forging trust and a shared vision with “outsiders” and influencing those you don’t have formal authority over.
Because each person, team, and company has a specific set of talents, expertise, and resources, your employees will likely require some outside collaboration to innovate effectively. It’s your job to bridge those gaps to empower them.
Making connections also requires forging trust and a shared vision with “outsiders” and influencing those you don’t have formal authority over.
The third role you must play is catalyst, which draws on the fact that your team and organization are part of a much larger ecosystem centered on leveraging technology to drive innovation.
Not only must you create conditions for success within your team (architect) and form connections with external groups (bridger) but do the same with external groups. Catalysts understand the intricate interdependencies between companies, governments, and individuals and support third parties that will help others succeed.
For instance, if you partner with a firm with an outdated, inefficient project management system, you may act as a catalyst and help revamp it—in turn, increasing the firm’s productivity and benefiting your organization.
Not only must you create conditions for success within your team (architect) and form connections with external groups (bridger) but do the same with external groups. Catalysts understand the intricate interdependencies between companies, governments, and individuals and support third parties that will help others succeed.
For instance, if you partner with a firm with an outdated, inefficient project management system, you may act as a catalyst and help revamp it—in turn, increasing the firm’s productivity and benefiting your organization.
3 Tips for Leading in the Digital World
1. Maintain a Human-Centered Focus
While digital transformation often focuses on emerging technology, keep your leadership human-focused.
Ask yourself:
- How can I create the environment for my employees to succeed?
- How can I tap into my team’s individual strengths?
- What resources do they need that I can link them to?
- What opportunities exist for collaboration that we aren’t taking advantage of?
2. Drive Innovation Through Psychological Safety
When acting in the “architect” role, you must create an environment in which employees feel comfortable offering opinions, suggesting ideas, asking questions, raising concerns, speaking up, and admitting mistakes without fearing negative consequences.
You can achieve that through a phenomenon called psychological safety, which allows and sparks interpersonal risk-taking within teams.
In Dynamic Teaming—another CLIMB course—HBS Professor Amy Edmondson explains that while diversity and an inclusive leadership style are vital to teams’ success, psychological safety is the underlying factor. Without it, diverse teams can underperform compared to their homogenous counterparts.
Without psychological safety, your team’s diverse “slices of genius” that drive innovation might never be unlocked—so make it a point to foster it.
In Dynamic Teaming—another CLIMB course—HBS Professor Amy Edmondson explains that while diversity and an inclusive leadership style are vital to teams’ success, psychological safety is the underlying factor. Without it, diverse teams can underperform compared to their homogenous counterparts.
Without psychological safety, your team’s diverse “slices of genius” that drive innovation might never be unlocked—so make it a point to foster it.
3. Spark Commitment, Not Compliance
Where outdated leadership styles emphasize compliance, modern leadership values commitment. Rather than simply telling your team to come up with and execute innovative ideas, inspire them to care about the outcome so they feel committed to generating one they’re proud of.
You can do that by aligning all involved parties on purpose. Why are you all working on this? What impact do you aim to have? Why was this specific team selected?
Hill stresses that relying on formal authority is a thing of the past and won’t get you innovative solutions unless you think outside the box.
“In leading innovation, formal authority is a very limited source of power, because innovation is a voluntary act,” Hill writes in the Harvard Business Review. “Command-and-control—even as the big boss—doesn’t work; leaders must invite people to innovate and give them the space to do so.”
Catherine Cote
Catherine Cote is a marketing coordinator at Harvard Business School Online. Prior to joining HBS Online, she worked at an early-stage SaaS startup where she found her passion for writing content, and at a digital consulting agency, where she specialized in SEO. Catherine holds a B.A. from Holy Cross, where she studied psychology, education, and Mandarin Chinese. When not at work, you can find her hiking, performing or watching theatre, or hunting for the best burger in Boston.