To be successful in any organization, everyone in charge needs to know how to exercise good leadership skills. In order for any company to become an efficient, productive organization with great potential, it is necessary to know and understand how the market in which it operates moves, a market that if before the advent of new technologies was very unstable, now it is such. more in the digital age.
The current business context is volatile, unstable, complex, and uncertain. Leaders and leaders of organizations often face unknown situations, many of which cause great confusion and fear, a natural fear, but if they do not know how to deal with it, it means ruin. For this reason, those who are at the forefront of any company must consider the following leadership skills in the digital age.
- Good communication
The leader in the digital age must have good communication skills, clear, direct and effective. Whether he is an executive director, head of department or some high position, the leader must act as a kind of communications director whose goal is to communicate messages and directives within the organization in a complete way, reaching clearly and unambiguously to the teams that make up. A clear and well-delivered message allows other professionals to know what is required of them and what the goals are to be achieved.
- Control of the feeling of urgency
In the digital age, process execution time is shortened due to fewer steps required. This in turn has led to previously required final results, as if a faster method is available, they do not need to take as long as before. However, when setting out the company’s goals and needs, it should be clear what the priorities are and what needs to be done urgently.
The sense of urgency must be logical and well-measured and is an aspect that must be taken into account when making decisions. There will be things that will need to be done as soon as possible, while others, while important, can wait. The leader must have good control over the sense of urgency, which must also be flexible, because more than once what was not considered urgent can become something that needs to be done now, with changes to the priority list.
- Authenticity and authenticity
A good leadership skill is showing that you are credible and consistent with what you say and what you do. You need to be honest with the message you are sending and your integrity in making decisions. You need to stay true to your own identity and experiences, including the values, beliefs, emotions, needs, and goals that characterize you as the person above all else. And this should be reflected in your digital identity, taking into account which are the main nodes for issuing messages and where a person is most exposed to public opinion. - Courage in decision making
As we can well imagine and not one has lived, the business world is not a bed of roses. More than once there will be difficult times in which risky and difficult decisions will have to be made, but this is what it takes to have good leadership skills.
Although urgent, these decisions should not be made desperately. There must always be an in-depth process of reflection and the pros and cons must be taken into account in accordance with the following.
- Empathy
The leader is not a cold and calculating robot who only thinks that the company works like a machine. The leader must have empathy, taking into account what workers feel and think, because their effectiveness depends a lot on their mood.
Frustration, frustration, and fear are feelings that can prevent a large project that is entirely possible from moving forward. As leaders, we need to know how to recognize these feelings and know how to redirect the situation to transform these doubts and fears into hope, motivation, enthusiasm, and concentration toward resolving the goal.
- Contextual intelligence
A leader must understand the specific environment in which the organization or working group is located, that is, they have contextual intelligence. Three main components are considered in this skill:
First, we have a retrospective understanding that suggests taking advantage of and adding value to what has been learned throughout the organization’s history and that is considered to be useful for improving your future leadership skills.
Second, we have foresight related to the ability to accomplish what is desired and to articulate the actions that must be taken to achieve it.
Finally, we have the convergence that allows for the adequate integration of the two previous aspects, using them to identify and define the desired future.
- Strategic intelligence
In this context, we can define strategic intelligence as the ability to anticipate market trends and changes, a market that in its digital aspect is very unstable and uncertain. In addition to market changes, the leader must take into account the value chain of the organization itself and guide the transformation into the desired digital field. This is the ability to visualize how the future may affect the company’s results. - Adaptability and speed of learning
The leader must have high adaptability and flexible learning capacity, must be very flexible with the changes that are happening in the market. It is fundamentally quick to learn from the experience of a certain market behavior and to be able to apply it immediately in any new context. This flexible learning capacity allows us to face the ambiguity and uncertainty that many companies face today, because with so many market changes, managers may be undecided on which new strategy to implement.
- Creative and innovative thinking
Creative thinking is one of the main skills in the field of business and in fact it is considered that this will be key for 2020. Taking a strategic perspective, the leader must position himself as a source and engine of innovation in two ways. This makes a difference especially in a historical context in which the Internet and the development of new technologies allow the rapid development of tools and inventions of all kinds and have a wide range.
On the one hand, the leader must act by creating a working environment focused on the creation and innovation of new methods, and on the other hand, it must serve as a means to achieve competitiveness in the face of change and the environment he faces.
