Six traits all good digital leaders possess
Photo by Wynand Uys on Unsplash.
Anyone can become a good digital leader. These traits aren’t innate, they’re aspects of everybody’s personality that can be honed and refined.
1. Humility
“If leadership has a secret sauce, it may well be humility,” writes the Economist. Humility, or the art of being humble, is a trait that’s supremely underrated in the workplace.
Having the humility to ask for input or advice before you make important decisions is a more efficient way to solve problems. It also builds trust in your leadership, makes your colleagues feel valued, and gets better results for your users.
Imagine you’re a factory manager who is tasked with making improvements to the performance of a production line. Would you sit alone in your office, squinting at data from the performance analysis and scratching your head? Or would you go and speak to the person whose job it is to actually assemble the goods on the factory floor? A good digital leader does both.
I once asked a senior leadership team to list the skills they need to be successful in a digital transformation programme. They told me that they needed to “better understand how digital tools like Trello and Facebook work”. This was an unexpected response, but not that surprising – many leaders feel that they should know everything in their area in order to lead it. And they would rather make a decision themselves than ask people around them for support.
Humility is about knowing when to ask, who to ask and how to listen to the answer with curiosity.
2. Empathy
Empathy is the ability to step into someone else’s shoes. It has a proven impact on productivity and engagement at work.
In fact, a survey in the States found that 77% of workers said they would be willing to work more hours in a more empathetic workplace. Empathy is also good for staff retention, which is great for your organisation, financially and culturally.
Good digital leaders find ways to practice empathy every day – for example, by giving constructive feedback with good intent. However, in a busy role with competing priorities, a one-to-one meeting can feel like a blame game or deep dig into the core of someone’s personality.
It’s important to remember that feedback is given for the benefit of the receiver not the release of the giver. Constructive feedback is truthful and factual – supported by evidence and without judgment. “Well done” is nice, but not constructive because people won’t know specifically what it is about what they did that you liked. Similarly, “you were disrespectful in that meeting” is unhelpful because it’s just your judgment. Saying instead: “you spoke over that person” is stating a fact and can be invaluable feedback as the person may not have been aware of their actions.
3. Generosity
Imparting your knowledge, experience and expertise; developing people and processes to function without you. Those are acts of remarkable generosity.
Good digital leaders are not primarily self-interested. They aren’t focusing on achieving absolute control over all things digital, but support their colleagues to spread their digital wings, jump off and take on digital responsibilities. Their decisions are led by what’s beneficial for their organisation, colleagues and users.
Kim Goodwin, author of Designing for the Digital Age, tweeted recently: “It can be addictive to feel needed when you are fighting fires, but your ultimate job as a manager is to make yourself obsolete”.
4. Tenacity
Charities can be slow to evolve, so being a digital leader in the third sector can feel like an uphill struggle. That’s where tenacity – or persistence of purpose – comes in.
Digital transformation is challenging for many people, so you need to keep plugging away. This can be tiring and lonely. It’s a long game. You need to be resilient, and you need to give as good as you get, in order to keep going towards your end goal.
Being able to work out which things you have control over and which you don’t helps you decide where to put your energy and stops you from burning out.
5. Courage
Tenacity and courage go hand in hand. People are scared of challenge, especially in the charity sector. But you sometimes you need to have the courage to disrupt the status quo.
The authors of Challenging Coaching ask: “Where were all the coaches when the banks went down?”
Coaches exist to help individuals improve themselves. But being complacent with the financial system that destroyed the lives of so many people is behaviour not expected from an enlightened individual. So, something went wrong there. In conclusion, the authors suggest, coaches need to be more challenging and represent the organisation and wider system in the relationship with a coachee.
Being more challenging doesn’t mean being aggressive or angry. It can be done gently, with empathy. That’s why preparing to give constructive feedback with good intent is so important.
6. Integrity
If you work for a charity or a purpose-driven company, the values associated with your organisational brand matter a great deal to your staff, supporters and the wider community. If organisations fall short of the mark, which has happened in the past, there can be a real sense of betrayal.
Good leaders demonstrate how they live organisational values in their behaviour, setting a good example.
For example, a charity will often state that is “person-centred”. This can mean many things. But as a digital leader, you might decide that being person-centred means putting audience research and user journeys at the heart of a new digital strategy or service.
Many charities say that they are inclusive and compassionate. A leader may live this value by actively listening to their staff and involving them in making decisions.
If you’re keen to recognise your strengths and learn how to make the most of them, and develop these traits as part of your leadership toolbox, come to my next Refresher for digital leads on 31 January 2020.
