A Digital Leader's Behavioral Traits

Many training initiatives assume that the same group of skills or leadership styles are suitable without considering the strategy or organizational culture of a company.

An excellent leader in one situation does not necessarily perform well in another. Focusing on context means equipping leaders with two or three competencies that will make a distinction to performance, rather than a list of leadership standards that is of no specific benefit.

Companies face a challenge when it comes to planning the program's curriculum.  Adults typically retain only 10 percent of what they hear in classroom lectures, but nearly two-thirds when they learn by doing. 

The answer seems straightforward: tie leadership development to real on-the-job projects. While it is not easy to create opportunities that simultaneously address high-priority needs, companies should strive to make every major business project a leadership-development opportunity as well.

Sudden changes in the industry can disrupt the status quo, potentially derailing the success of your organization. In these situations a leader must remain flexible and adaptable, ready to make the quick decisions that can keep the company on track with minimal negative impact.

Putting speed and innovation ahead of tried-and-tested business practices often makes leaders cautious. However, in a fast-changing world, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

For a start-up, the risks can be even greater but innovation is impossible without risk. And if you can’t take risks, you may not be cut out to be a digital leader.

The pace and scale that technology disrupts is a social, political and business challenge.
Employers are best placed to make a positive societal impact, for example, by upgrading the abilities of their employees and equipping them with new skills. Employers will also reap the greatest benefit if they can successfully transform the workforce in this way.

Talent is the largest barrier to the successful implementation of new strategies.

Many leading businesses realize that it is quicker and more financially prudent to look internally and develop the talent they already have. Yet only a third of global executives report that their organizations have launched any new reskilling programs.

The best leaders with the most impact almost always use six classic fundamental practices:

• Uniting people around an exciting, aspirational vision;
• Building a strategy for achieving the vision by making choices about what to do and what not to do;
• Drawing and developing the best possible talent to implement the strategy;
• Relentlessly focusing on results in the context of the strategy;
• Creating ongoing innovation that will help reinvent the vision and strategy;
• Growing yourself so that you can most effectively lead others.

A leadership signature: Who you are as a leader and how you view and approach the job. 

• Discover your leadership signature by asking how you lead day by day. Are you task or people focussed? 
• Ask people who work with you how they would describe your leadership.
• Consider the impact you have. Are you changing the culture? Driving results?

Sensemaking refers to the process of creating meaning out of the chaotic world around us.

We need to make sense when something in our environment seems to have changed. We collect data, learn from others, look for patterns to create a new map of the landscape. Then we experiment with new solutions to see how it will respond to this new environment.

A growth mindset is a belief that anyone can change their talents, abilities, and intelligence. Those with a growth mindset:

• take on challenges
• take advantage of feedback
• use the most effective problem-solving strategies
• provide developmental feedback
• is persistent in accomplishing goals

Conversely, those with a fixed mindset believe that talents, abilities and intelligence can't be improved.

Leaders with a learning mindset are motivated to increase their competence and master something new.

A performance mindset desires to gain favorable judgments about competence and avoid negative judgements.

It provides a framework for a group to arrive at a shared decision around one direction. 

While many resources offer frameworks for brainstorming, divergence of thinking, and effectively whiteboarding, this is a framework and a method to make decision-making, and tough choices with a team, so that convergence happens.

The surveys provide the input you need to plan and manage your change initiatives, your cultural transformation programs, your diversity interventions, your talent management and leadership development initiatives, and your customer feedback. 

Problem-solving - when information is gathered, analyzed, and considered. 

Difficult to get right, yet this process is a key input into decision making, for both major issues and daily ones.

Leaders with a strong results orientation tend to emphasize the importance of efficiency and productivity and to prioritize the highest-value work.

Extensive Data studies have found a link between the health of an organization and its performance.

Robust health is crucial to an organization's long term success.

Companies aligned with one of these four organizational recipes are more likely to be healthy and to deliver strong, sustained performance than those following random management styles:

• Leader Driven
• Market Focused
• Execution Expertise
• Talent and Knowledge-based