LD7090 Leadership in a Digital Age Assignment Sample 2023
Introduction
The modern age is experiencing the engagement of digital interfaces to communicate and socialize more commonly for various purposes of time efficient and effective management to coordinate everyday life. In this report, the details of leadership model and theory compatible with digital transformation of the organization with behaviours and capabilities with pacific strength and area of development will be discussed briefly.
Section 1: Leadership & Self Analysis
1.1 Models and theories for Digital leadership
Contingent theory
The contingency theory of leadership is based on the leadership orientation with certain skills and behavioural tactics which may find the best match for the situation to lead effectively and manage the organizational operation. It deals with the leadership communication competence to meet the situation and effectively influence the cost leadership strategy in the way of target costing techniques in order to withstand the current market need (Rasit and Ismail, 2017). However, it allows the leadership to exercise the skills in a certain time and condition to accommodate the needs of the team corresponding to organizational goals and objectives.
Characteristics of contingency theory
- The theory of contingency leadership is based on the situational outcome of the conditions where the leadership skills match the specific conditions which allow exercising the particular skills fit for the situation.
- There is no best way for doing the thing right is the intricate nature of the contingency theory where leadership determination and confidence will enlighten the follower to be participative and active for productivity and growth.
- This approach follows the approach of ‘if’ and ‘then’ to allow leadership to contribute on the organizational cause with contingent effort and more freedom in work culture
Contingency theory Vs Digital leadership
- Contingency theory is the adaptation of short term goal rather than long term needs
- Digital leadership is focused on the long term approach which may reassure the employee about the future directions of organizational practices and specific development needs
- Contingency theory may approve or disapprove the leadership trait and skills based on the outcome of certain situation where the offered flexibility may harm the efficiency in a task oriented job
- Digital leadership is enriched with creative thinking, innovation, collaboration, experimental and networking skills with the ability to remain relevant in rapid changing market competition
Transformational theory
The transformational theory of leadership enables the leader to enhance the motivation and morale of the employee to flourish productivity with efficient effort and increased range of engagement. It may be stated that, the transformational leadership theory is focused on the growth of the individual in both personal and professional level irrespective of any kind of discrimination. More specifically, the high emotional intelligence of leadership to help individuals psychologically with empathy influences the employee engagement with trust and loyalty towards leadership may establish the brand value with enhanced population (Sahu et al., 2017).
Characteristics of Transformational leader
- Transformational leadership is well known for the foresightedness, prudence and visionary which propel the organization success in a convenient way
- Creativity and autonomy is the important characteristics of the leaders which may intellectually stimulate the employee for dealing with existing process and inspire for the innovation
- Resilience and empathy of the leadership define the functionary more attractive through idealized influence, motivation and individual consideration
- The transformational leadership has focused on the trust, team work, individual growth to influence the employee with positive vibe for organizational culture (Hamdani, 2018)
Transformational leadership Vs Digital leadership
- The transformational leadership is the strategy to influence the employees for better participation and skill development to prosper the organizational goal more effectively
- Digital leadership encompasses the organizational modernization with implementation of tool and technique to improvise the business approach with satisfying consumer involvement
- Transformational leadership will allow the creativity, innovation and team performance with increase reliability of employee over the management to align the business objective with employee goals
- Digital leadership has respectively engaged with the operating procedures to allow the consumer interaction with the business process in a simple and technical way
Trait theory
The trait theory is based upon the personal traits of the leadership reflecting the person’s characteristic to deal with thought, feelings and behaviours. It emphasizes the basic trait dimension of individuals with strength and intensity which are innate or inborn qualities to lead the team in an effective way with personal charisma, intellects, fluency and extravert to passionately articulate the visionary among the followers. Moreover, the skills of strategic thinking, time management, decision making, conflict resolution and strategies for enhancing the performance will satisfy the organizational need more fluently (Pidgeon, 2018).
Characteristics of Trait theory
- The innate characteristics of the leaders support the ability to mobilize the follower towards a shared vision
- Adaptability and flexibility of the theory has immense support to become assertive and garner trustworthiness
- In this theory leadership eagerness to take responsibility and ownership enable the leadership to stand by the decision with accountability and transparency
- The social cognitive mechanisms and density distribution of personality trait may alter the personality in different contexts (McCabe, 2020)
Trait theory Vs Digital leadership
- Personal traits of the leadership is responsible to evaluate the current strategies for the change management and drive the organization for change management
- Creativity and innovations widen the change management strategy of the organization with the help of modern tools and technology
- Trait theory are innate leadership qualities which drives the organizational practice for market competitiveness
- Digital leadership is the consolidated skill set and technological approach to enhance the decision making with data driven information
1.2 strengths and areas of development for digital leadership with technical skills
| Strengths | Areas of development |
| 1. Comprehensive knowledge of modern technology and tool to coordinate the employee from different work perspectives
2. High emotional intelligence let me engage with the employee frequently to assess and support employee both physical and mentally 3. Multicultural competence allows me to respect the individual dignity and cooperate individual on personal and professional growth 4. The nature of task-orientedness help me to guide the subordinates effectively to achieve the shared goal |
1. Lack of efficiency in the time management has delayed my routine work structure adversely
2. Lack of motivational skill has left me unuttered for employee performance and remain intangible in organizational practice 3. Lack of strong analytical skill has degraded my decision making process for the organizational need 4.The lack of negotiation and conflict resolution skills sometimes crippled the organizational procedures |
| 1. Communication skill
2. Interpersonal skill 3. Empathy 4. Multicultural competence |
1. Lack of time management
2. Lack of relationship management skill 3. Lack of analytical skills 4. Lack of organizational orientation |
| 1. Open minded
2. Creative 3. Visionary 4. Focused on individual development |
1. Limited self control
2. Perfectionist behaviour 3. Inward thinking |
Table 1: Strength and areas of development
(Source: Self-created)
The role and responsibilities of the digital leadership qualities and potential skills with areas of development are structured in the above table where my comprehensive knowledge of technology and various tools improved my credibility in the organizational context. It allows me to successfully coordinate and collaborate with the employee with a diverse work structure to accomplish the target in a simplistic way. Other than that, the ability of communication and multicultural competence enhances my interoperability to influence the employee strength to become open minded and entangle with each other more casually. On the other hand, the lack of time management, lack of motivation has limited my digital leadership behaviour to effectively lead the team more successfully. The shyness during the conflict resolution and negotiation skills has tempered the organizational procedures sometimes which need to be concurrent and straightforward to deal with awkward situations. Digital leadership is effective to make the organizational process more simple and authentic with innovation and creative thinking that are my qualitative skills to lead the path towards a successful leader (Mihardjo et al., 2019). The focus on strategic management along with individual development will widen the way of opportunity for both personal and professional achievements to tactically align the organizational mission with individual dream.
Section 2: Capability and behaviour of leadership
Enterprises are evolving rapidly with the changes in technology and modern trends according to market behaviour of demand and supply to maintain the cash flow for business compatibility and competitiveness. Advanced technology of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with integrated digital tools are incorporated into the business operation to support the trend of remote working and help to operate systematically to produce desired results. The behaviour and skills of the digital leadership is important to bind the team in a single thread working in geographically separate areas where leadership are busy to build strategic alliances to develop dynamic capabilities (Mihardjo and Alamsjah, 2019).
Geographically Dispersed Team Example
Shopify is a Canada based technology company offering a web based solution of Electronic-Commerce (E-Commerce) platform with cross flexibility of online store. It is a multinational technology firm working with cloud based multi channel ecommerce platform for the small and medium sized businesses worldwide which took the remote first hybrid setup for the employees to accustom the current normal due to pandemic (Shopify. 2021). Leaderships are smartly managing the balance among the team work with dispersed location and cooperating with each other to fulfil the project responsibility and others through the dedicated tools and services of technological up gradation.
Task
E-commerce platform with cloud based solutions for developing own online stores accommodating the remote based developer’s contribution with reliability, security, integrating third party services, reporting an analytics to optimize the return on investment in a successful way with live monitor and support.
Challenges
The employees of the Shopify are primarily individuals working as the software developer to develop an interactive and competent online store for small and medium sized businesses with specific modification of custom and themes for defined benchmarks of the business. In addition to that, the employees are of different backgrounds and cultures used to develop the online stores for the client without any local development environment where operations are done either on staging or in production (Ford et al., 2020). The productivity of the team is the growing concern to accommodate and coordinate each individual developer where a simple mistake in the production might crash the whole App. Apart from that, it ensured the seamless connection of marketing tools, platform Application Process Interfaces (API) with secure payment gateway through collaboration of the user experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) team for exclusive front end experience.
Managing Geographically Dispersed Teams (GDTs)
It may be opined that the key challenges are within the management of a geographically dispersed team which is essential for efficient and qualitative task performance and develop the interpersonal relationship among the team members to achieve the concurrency. The members are delivering the customized online store to the client by collaborating with each other from a distance and different time zones (Ferguson et al., 2021). It is necessary to handle the issues of interaction with technology and effective communication to cut the barrier of distance and manage the GDT team proficiently.
Team collaboration and influence
It needs to be suggested that the improvement and influence to the team collaboration are dependent upon the adaptability, respect, trust, accountability and transparency from both sides which will mediate the smooth transition of project activity.
Weekly interaction feedback
Feedback allows oneself to analyze and improve the work quality and capability through the phone, mail, video conferencing to connect each other and perceive the ideas and direction from the leaders and team mates to improve necessary requirements more easily.
Effective virtual communication
The team leader or management needs to be effective and efficient to communicate with the team member in the virtual media with more care and responsibility with empathy to assess and support the member both physical and psychological issues.
2.1 Evaluating examples applied in practice
The initiative of leadership behaviour and capabilities comprises the general assessment of the organizational characteristics of the GDT where the implementation of advanced tools and communication channels for the successful business operation of the company. The use of advanced technology for seamless and interactive communication through phone, chat, mail with social media interaction, zoom meetings, Skype, Facebook, Whatsapp and several other video conferencing tools will enhance the communication within the GDT team and effectively address the operational issues. On a brief note, the leadership will allow the data driven information to make effective decisions based on the information where the data, analytics, intelligence, automation, physical conversion, human- machine interaction are some of the digital dimensions that need to be incorporated in the organizational functions (Oberer and Erkollar, 2018). The leadership‘s dynamic capability of adaptively enables it to cultivate an organizational culture with necessary measurements to create, modify and extend the resource capabilities of the organization (Tech, 2019). As a leader of the project I will be responsible to devise concrete plans to enhance the skills of the team corresponding to the project with motivation and dedicated training to gain the success with increased participation and interaction of employees without technical difficulties.
2.2 Ethical, social, and legal responsibilities of a digital leader
Ethical
Ethical consideration is significant in the context of digital leadership where the motivation and mentoring of employees and specific alignment of organizational activity mediates the foundation of mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual interest (Lin et al., 2020). Additionally, as a digital leader I will be responsible to maintain the value of ethics more tangibly to keep and influence the trust, fairness, honesty, security of data, with high degree of transparency and accountability.
Social
It is the core responsibility of the leaders to act according to social benefit where the corporate social responsibility and organizational culture need to be practiced precisely to deliver the society in need. I will participate actively to alleviate the needy and poor with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of eliminating hunger, education for all and sharing basic resources for all individuals.
Legal
It is my duty to be accustomed to the business function with the law, regulation and policy of the land and comply with all legal requirements for health, safety and transactions regularity. The organizational productivity and reputation depends on the organizational policy to defend employees from any kind of risks in organizational behaviour and pave the way for regular development to meet the safety and hygiene of the organization in a regular manner.
Section 3: Business transformation
3.1 Changing aspects of traditional corporate practices for working in hybrid and remote setup
The pandemic Covid-19 has forced the global leaders to take strict lockdown measurements in almost every country where business organizations quickly responded to the change with adaptability and technological assistance. It needs to mention that the social shift towards digital technology has embraced the new turn of getting goods and services from the home with remote working to support and monitor the consumer preference with cross functionality over the national borders. It has influenced the degree of participation with highly sophisticated tools to engage and discuss more elaborately about the project aim and objectives with necessary development plans. Remote working has become a new normal of corporate behaviour where physical workplace or offices lose the employee’s interest with increased rate of telecommuting and remote cooperation. On a contradictory note, the agile development methodology has enhanced the organizational productivity through new tools of sprints, scrums, burn down charts and backlog for the adaptive response to the changing need of the consumer. In addition to that, the integration of customer voice, effective communication, efficient product development and quick movement to the market are the perfect collaboration of interdisciplinary processes to allow market operation unified for employee to manage the digital self-control, maintain productivity and work life balance (Rudnicka et al., 2020).
More or less every business organization primarily faced the lockdown mandate as the new opportunity to change the directives more comprehensive for the time being to provide an essential framework for exploring the capabilities with a set of new regulations and guidelines to follow the culture dimension in the organizational process. It needs to be mentioned that the organizations develop an evolving mindset of the employee to foster the work from home model with an effective process of patchwork. More pragmatically, the specific transformation to a digital custom in the organizational procedure with the necessary set of policy, regulation and technological solutions will ease up the everyday practice of the organizational goal to help in achieving the goal more progressively. However, working from home needs some essential support of internet availability, power supply and necessary computing skills for improving the work quality in the virtual environment. Virtual environment used to be the environment without physical existence introduced by computing technology with the existence of human machine interfaces and communication media of email, chat, video meetings, and web based computer solution to widen the application of technological transformation in several needs.
Moreover, asset management programs, project management, cloud computing, web services and solutions help individual employees to incorporate the business needs with many other tools and services that form the characteristics of virtual reality to withstand the market trend and competition (Nash et al., 2018). It may be noted that the integration of all technological advancements with state of the art tools and services make the process simple, robust, and cost effective where many companies are enabling the work from home opportunity for the employees for better sustainability. The use of automation, Machine Learning (ML), big data, analytics, Artificial intelligence (AI), Virtual Private Network (VPN) has changed the course of business function to accommodate the time and productivity more proportionate with security and intelligence for the growing market need.
3.2 Essential business transformation for new culture of remote work
The Covid-19 outbreak has adversely impacted the global business with specific witness of ruining the supply chain to offer essential service to the population which has altered the way of living and doing business. On the other hand, the emerging technological features came as saviour of the situation to continue the business function with the positive contribution of employees working from anywhere in the world without the existence of differences in time zones and location. The new working manuals are distributed with virtual working, tele-working, work from home, working from office or hybrid set up, e-commuting, freelancing with better suitability and flexibility contributing to the digital transformation of the organization. It has been observed that coordinating and navigating the distant work models are becoming difficult without the digital and collaborative solutions in the business paradigm. In this context digital leadership emerges as the key moderation of work functionality to maintain the flow of business more authentically with deliberate support on fixing the technical challenges, concern of employee well-being of both physical and psychological terms.
It may be noted that the clear visionary, frequent communication, mutual respect and setting up attainable objectives for the team to satisfy the customer are the lead role and responsibility of the digital leader (Contreras et al., 2020). More concisely, the integration of technological tools across all the departments ease up the coordination of everything from sales, marketing, customer services and product research and analysis to boost the organizational growth and revenue (Daugherty and Wilson, 2018). It may be stated that in depth technological knowledge, creativity, global visionary, collaboration are some of the characteristics of the digital leader who is concerned about the people and process to deliver significant results to climb up the objectives of the organizational goal. More interestingly, the integration, building and configuring through sensing, seizing and transforming with digital, strategic, innovation and management capabilities. The collaboration of team members through virtual reality and environment will vividly operationalize the creativity and through process of the digital leadership with the technological competence and interpersonal skills. It responsibly allows the leadership to communicate and convey the project vision and need to the subordinate more appropriately to focus on customer requirements and essentials.
On a specific note, the digital leadership will flag up the organizational culture and behavioural practice in the new norms of work from home through frequent communication for the wellbeing of mental and physical terms, work ethics and specific presentation (Yang et al., 2021). The project development assessment and monitoring for the qualitative measures and definition to allow the creativity and innovation along with the use of motivational and inspirational tactics will allow the employee to deliver the best result for the organizational growth.
Section 4: Personal development plan
The personal development plan is essential to grow with the rhythm of the market trend and public choice to get the standard potential to attain competitive success in personal and professional level. It will be helpful to self analyze the strength and weakness of my skill, qualities and behavioural traits to successfully lead a digital team and gain business perspective to enlighten my personal and professional goals systematically. More relevantly, the cognitive skills, interpersonal skills, business skills and strategic skills are important leadership abilities of digital leadership to effectively manage everyday activities in a digital atmosphere (Guzmán et al., 2020). Additionally, it will help to acknowledge the lack of skills and mode of improvement to become a successful digital leader effectively in the coming future. For instance, the skills of communication, technical, cultural competence, decision making, leadership abilities, emotional intelligence, critical analysis, conflict resolution and other essential dynamics have to be impoverished for my employability.
Part-1: Setting Goals
Short term goals (6 months)
- My short term goal is to successfully complete an internship program on big data analytics with development of necessary skills in a proficient manner within the next six months.
- I need to complete the machine learning course with the help of online tutorials such as Udemy and Khan Academy to develop my technical skill as per the market requirements within this year.
- I need to garner the skills to discover the usability and flexibility of cloud computing, web services to accommodate the business function more compatible with market behaviour within this year.
Mid Term goals (1 year)
- My midterm objective is to secure the job of Quality Analyst (QA) in a reputed organization where I may exercise the gained knowledge with competitive salary and benefits to influence the life standard more pragmatically.
- I would aim to develop strong command and skills in the various branches of software developing programs and coding skills to efficiently integrate and help to improve cross functionality of software’s with responsiveness. It may help me to accomplish my goal to become a project manager in a reputed and top rated company.
Long term goals (5 years)
- My long term goal is to work as a project manager at Microsoft which will allow me to devise strategic planning for business development along with supervising many ongoing projects to successfully accomplish the business directives.
Part-2: Personal objectives
| Areas of development | Ways to achieve goals | Required resources | Development measurement | Required time |
| Time management | Engage in time bounded eerie as of appear for the exams, puzzle solving with increased concentration and self efficacy | Human resource | Up to date my to do list and the time specifications are pre calculated to watch my efficiency in managing time | 3 month |
| Strong analytical skills | Participate in analytical hurdles to understand the pattern and relation among the data et and analytical represent for the specific needs | Human and financial resource | Solving analytical problem in online platform and exercising issues in everyday practice | 4 month |
| Developing programming skill set as python, Scala, Swift, Cotlin, Go, Javascript and others | Rigorous effort on practice daily basis with at least 2 hour per day | Online resources
And offline guidance from senior and friends |
Solving the coding problem in the online platform such as HackerEarth, Stack overflow | 6 months |
| Building leadership capabilities through effective decision making and conflict resolution | Follow the world leaders and thoroughly research the organizational effectively through leadership behaviour and quick learning and adaptation of mannerism and qualities | Online resources and financial resources | Judging my decision making by the colleague and mentors | 7 month |
| Android application development | Use online tutorial and Youtube videos to effectively develop a android application | Computer with market standard specification to support the android application development practice with knowledge development of different technical interface | The interactive one of the android app with moth functioning of whole frontend and back end operation | One year |
Table 2: Personal development plan
(Source: Self-created)
References
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