Digital leadership is about:

• building understanding of the digital ecosystem,
• motivating people and
• facilitating activities that make the digital vision a reality.

Digital leaders understand the potential of digital. They can identify how digital will contribute to the organisational strategy. 

Technical skills and expertise are solid foundations for leadership. But good digital leadership is about much more. It’s about listening and empathising to build trust. It’s about negotiating and compromising to collaborate constructively.

Digital leaders don’t need to understand the intricacies of how technology works to lead change. They can draw on coaching techniques and the advice and expertise of colleagues. As coaching pioneer John Whitmore writes, if a leader is a good coach “they should have no difficulty creating a high-performance culture, whether they have technical depth or not. As soon as they do this, any credibility gap that may exist in the minds of some of their employees will disappear.”

Things to think about

• Who is leading digital in your organisation? Is it your digital person or team, your senior leadership team or your chief executive?
• Are people with digital expertise consulted and involved in decision-making around digital projects and products?
• Does your organisation understand that it needs to embed digital at all levels of what it does?