LD7090 Leadership in a Digital Age Assignment Sample 2024
Introduction
The world is changing rapidly, since everything is becoming digitized gradually, which further has created the need for having different styles of leadership in this digital era to manage the workplaces efficiently. Therefore, in this report, the concept of leadership in the digital age will be discussed critically to comprehend the reason for which it is imperative for individuals to adopt different styles of leadership.
Section 1: Self analysis
1.1 Leadership models and theories in the context of digital leadership
Leadership is defined as the process by which the top level managerial lesions may flow from high level to the lower level, where the direct influence and the guidance usually is directed towards the behaviour of most employees. Leadership is quite a psychological persuasion, it is the act of persuasion which needs an effective emphasis on the nature of the communication style and the enthusiasm that the top leader may hold.
Leadership is usually an interpersonal process whereby the influence and direct management guidance create visionary missions, establish different objectives and design strategies and policies with reference to the business objectives (Khajeh, 2018). There are several traits of a successful leader which may stand out as exceptional also the interaction of different people is influenced by an effective leader.
The ways to empower the employees and improve their overall work performance, is usually defined in the context of creation of a definitive dimension of the employee creativity, and of flexibility and the existence of adequate resources to direct the employees towards a definitive success (Hassi, 2019).
Contingency Theory
Contingency Theory is usually defined as the universal approach towards the changing atmosphere of the changing structure, where different management decisions may be implemented based on the immediate contingencies arising. The situational variable that creates a room for different changing outcomes in a business unit, the managerial design may change accordingly to adapt to the needs of the external environment.
The organizational structure is regarded as being concise as an integrated system, with different the organizational structure treated as a whole unit, and such hung s usually neon as the organizational type (Romero et al., 2018). There are several kinds of theories that surround the core of Contingency Theory, where the stability of the environment may be subjected to a change and later this may be fixed by the applicability of a suitable management decision.
Contingency Theory was mostly developed to meet the uncertainties of the business environment, where the different seasons may change and cause the business environment to be changed rapidly, having a totally different way of organizational management style (Lagstedt and Dahlberg, 2018). Such a deceive approach taken towards the implementation of a specific management style is known as the Environmental Contingency Theory.
In reference to the internal environment, there may arise a significant change in the internal structure of the company too, the internal contingencies may compromise a change in the management style or a change in the total population of the workforce.
Characteristics of Contingency Theory
- This theory facilitates the understanding of the complex organizational structure and the variable nature of the management with reference to the solutions of such great variations. The organization that implements the necessary operations may remain aware that there may occur different levels of contingencies, where the age diversity among the employees has been successful in increasing the firm innovation (Sung and Choi, 2021)
- The Contingency Theory is adaptive in the nature of it, where the structure is formed in such a way that the way changes may not alter the different outcomes that the business organization has aimed to achieve. The theory, when applied, lets the organizational mechanism in a better pragmatic nature, causing a different set of functioning of the leadership
- The management decisions may be tight to be constant over time, as they evolve and change according to the required situation, and such changes are always not anticipated. The multivariable nature of the organizational structure has a distinct variation and the environmental conditions are usually subjected to moderations, requiring a dynamic management style which is set by the application of Contingency Theory
Contingency Vs Digital leadership
- Contingency leadership issue provides the framework to lead the organization in a definitive way were the situations change and repairs itself, were the micro results are usually emphasized and aligned with the management changes, which does not usually come as a fixed set of rules
- Digital leadership is usually the evolution of the different management styles with the help of digital advent and usage of different digital mediums
- Contingency leadership result in the management to be perfectly draw upon the adaptability of the changing patterns of the business, and it makes rooms for different kinds of situation to appear and be fixed within time without much hassle
- Digital leadership is usually more focused on the operations of the different kinds of digital mechanisms that are required to influence sand control the employee performance
Transformational Theory
Transformational leadership is one of the important developments of the internal psychology of different employees, where the leaders are needed to be filled with a passionate approach towards the work, as the enigma of the leaders will affect the employees to a good degree, and the transformation is reflected in the works of the employees.
Transformational leadership mostly focuses on the system of supervision of the employees with the constructional inputs to bring the best out from the employees. The proactive personality of the leader often serves as a good medium in transformational leadership style, where such a leadership strengthens the effect on the identification and engagement (Buil et al., 2019).
Characteristics of Transformational Theory
- The transformational leaders are usually carrying a positive encouragement inside of them which affects the employee capacity of working quite much
- The transformational leader motivate any employee regardless of their work performance, because such motivational factor stimulates the working spirit inside of the employees
- A transformational leader contains the openness to the innovation that arise in the organization, positive or negative be such changes where the different work and shift the minds of different people on the new culture of business daily changing
Transformational Vs Digital leadership
- Transformational leadership is usually concerned more with the different levels of the organization, where the leaders who takes on the transformation of the organization, are risk take and quite visionary about the future outcomes
- Digital leadership is more on the way to create the best outcomes required by the organization in a virtual environment by the employment of different social media influencing techniques. It is quite crucial for an organization to survive in the long run by adapting to the different style of adaptation and transformation (Araujo et al., 2021)
- Transformational leadership usually influences the employees, and most of the influence comes off with the physical interaction rather than virtual communication. The emulation of such leadership style and the demonstration of the ethical conduct to influence without any hazards on the behaviour of the employees
- Digital leadership is more often convinced with the influence of the employees on digital medias, and their leadership is much more in fashion by the use of digital mediums and do not usually contain much of physical interactions
1.2 Technical leadership strengths and Areas for development in the leadership context
The following are the results of the different diagnostic and psychometric test results tabulated to determine my strength and weakness
| Strengths | Weakness |
| 1. Openness to the different management criticisms and about my own performance
2. Motivate others is a direct positive manner to bring the output in the light of increased efficiency 3. Mentor the different employees being descended the level of individualism and car about the different personal opinions that the worker may put forward |
1. Lacking in required communication with a new employee makes things difficult and a more time consuming process to understand a new mind which is needed. The lack of proper communication skills mostly focus on the fact that there may exist negative attitudes and job impulsivity in the employees (Rahman et al., 2021)
2. Having low team collaboration skills and preparing individualistic work approach more to other approaches 3. Lack of time management skills and often spending too much time on irrelevant works |
| 1. Mentoring skills of employees in critical wk condition and imparting of the knowledge that most management lesson may not be able to transfer
2. Motivation skills and the ability of drawing out an employee from any work passivity 3. Skill of being open to work related criticisms and judgments |
1. Lack of communication skills
2. Lack of team collaboration skills causing a good distance between the employee working and my decisive approaches for works 3. Lack of time management skills which lead oten be different layers of works be not be resolved any soon |
| 1. Open-minded
2. Motivating 3. Mentorship and insightful about the work related curriculum |
1. Not organizing and cluttering type
2. Too much individualistic and lack of team spirit type 3. Introverted personality and low profile person which is a suitable as a leader
|
Table 1: Technical leadership strengths and weaknesses
(Source: Self-created)
Section 2: Leadership Capabilities and Behaviours
Organizations, be it a multinational company or a small one, are always operating under an environment that is changing with each passing day and with that grows the need for adopting different forms of leadership styles. In addition to that, owing to the ongoing pandemic most corporations have made remote working the new norm and for that digital literacy and the capabilities of an individual to manage such working conditions is extremely significant. Therefore, finding the most suitable person who is able to manage a geographically dispersed team with utmost efficiency has become the need of the hour.
Geographically dispersed team example
Cognizant is an American multinational company that provides Information and Technology (IT) services and the company help other businesses to modernize the technological aspect to help the organizations stay ahead in the fast changing world.
The company has always been aiming towards making a sustainable future and for that Cognizant has joined United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in order to stay committed in building a more sustainable future (Cognizant.com. 2021). The company has been experiencing significant concern regarding developing necessary software’s in the most efficient manner for the company’s clients with a geographically dispersed team.
Task
Developing web based software with the help of a geographically dispersed team.
Challenges
It needs to be mentioned that in order to build software efficiently, there are a lot of people who are involved in the process and every individual may perform different tasks by collaborating with other team members to finally achieve relevant success. A team may be made up with people from several different backgrounds, however, in the wake of the pandemic and with the remote work culture carrying out such tasks have become challenging as the communication has shifted completely too virtual modes.
Owing to the pandemic, several employees had to shift extremely suddenly to the culture of remote working and that too without any prior training and preparations as well (Galanti et al., 2021). Thus, it has become of extreme significance that companies start to train the leader in the most effective manner in order to ensure that the individuals are capable of showing significant leadership capabilities in the digital age.
Managing geographically dispersed team
The geographically dispersed team refers to the concept of employees working in a virtual environment from different locations and oftentimes, such teams present great difficulty in working effectively, which further affects teamwork and organizational performance.
Thereafter, organizations that are committed in promoting virtual work activities need to provide proper training to the virtual team managers to keep the members engaged in the different phases of the virtual project (Panteli et al., 2019).
Collaborating and influencing
Collaboration within any team project is the most important aspect to make a project a successful one and leaders may need to influence team members to collaborate efficiently in this digital age when the work culture has become virtual itself.
Efficient and effective communication
According to research, geographically dispersed corporations that are dependent upon technology are extremely crucial to maintain social and economical infrastructure globally and for that effective communication is highly imperative (Morrison and Ruiz, 2020).
Routine interaction feedback
Feedback on an individual’s work is considered to be a good practice, however, feedback may be provided to someone through virtual mediums and physical visits for doing such tasks is not mandatory.
2.1 Evaluating examples applied in practice:
In order to thoroughly implement the behaviour and capabilities of leaders in the context of the digital age needs significant research on the topic and along with that, the different characteristics of a geographically distributed team are also required to be known as well. One of the most imperative things regarding managing such teams is having effective communication methods and for those different tools, such as Google meet, Skype and more may be used to communicate virtually.
In addition to these applications, Zoom was chosen by many government agencies, schools, universities and more to communicate with peers during the Covid-19 pandemic and it is an extremely popular collaborative tool for video conferencing and other such activities (Serhan, 2020).
Such an approach will help in mitigating any communication barriers that team members may have, which are also becoming obstacles in the way of achieving superior firm performance. Another example that may be talked about is providing significant training to the team members of a geographically dispersed team, since many employees might have not had the opportunity to work in such a condition before.
Therefore, a leader with relevant capabilities to do so in the digital age will be extremely beneficial for achieving the most fruitful outcome in terms of teamwork as well. On the other hand, keeping the employees up to date with all the relevant information is also quite a task for a geographically dispersed team, since the timings may overlap as many individuals live in different time zones.
2.2 Ethical, social, and legal responsibilities of a digital leader
It needs to be mentioned that in order to become the most effective leader, an individual needs to adhere to all the rules and regulations of the organizations to avoid being involved in any ethical, legal as well as social issues. The ethical, social and legal responsibilities of a leader are described below:-
Ethical responsibility
I want to state that as a digital leader I will maintain all the ethical rules and regulations, such as avoiding any biases, always taking rational decisions and keeping confidential information intact for my organization.
Social responsibility
I will attempt to provide value and importance to the entire employee’s cultural background and also try to make sure that other team members are also respected towards everyone in order to become a socially responsible digital leader.
Legal responsibility
I will always adhere to all the legal obligations that my organization has and help my team members to do so in order to ensure that no one is involved in any legal turbulence.
Section 3: Business Transformation
3.1 Changing Traditional corporate practices to telecommunicating
The moment Covid-19 was declared to be a pandemic, it was decided that most offices will have remote work culture and the complete work culture across the globe saw a drastic change. Thus, working from home became mandatory and the concept of telecommuting came into existence gradually.
Telecommuting
It refers to the concept of people working from home rather than the office.
Remote work
Remote work and telecommuting are basically the same thing and the people who work remotely are able to work from anywhere in the world rather than working in the similar location where the head quarter of the company is situated. According to research, remote working is identified as the concept where employees work within a flexible work environment in locations far from the main offices and the employees only communicate by using technology with one another (Wang et al., 2021).
It needs to be mentioned that with the unprecedented arrival of the pandemic, the majority of the businesses had to dive into making remote working the new normal, including Cognizant.
On the other hand, many companies have even been attempting to create a hybrid work culture in which the employees have the flexibility to work from home and the offices under different circumstances. It is safe to say that the remote work culture has proven to be financially beneficial for every organization, since there are many miscellaneous costs that have been cut down due to this work culture, such as office building maintenance, electricity and more.
Most employees who were working in a different country or city have returned back home and therefore, the teams have become dispersed in terms of geographical locations. Although technological advancements have seen a relevant improvement over the years, there are still some barriers that occur while managing such a team and for performing a task virtually with several team members.
On the other hand, many people had to learn the practices of working from home within an extremely short period of time and it is unknown the way this sudden move, in relation to remote working has affected people’s lives (Rudnicka et al., 2020).
One of the most significant challenges that have been faced by IT companies is that three have relevant delays and challenges in developing software within time. This inconvenience in the work process might have occurred owing to the fact that oftentimes virtual communication is not as effective as face-to-face physical conversation.
Many times technical glitches take place which serve as significant barriers to effective virtual communication and thus, it has become extremely relevant in today’s age that effective leadership capabilities are adopted by people to sustain in the digital age. On the other hand, owing to the barriers in communication several other difficulties may also occur in the workflow, which may only be mitigated with the help of effective leadership.
3.2 Working from Home Using Digital Technologies
- Virtual Environment
The concept of working from home might not have been possible without the advancement of digital tools and technology and most specifically in this time when remote work culture has become the common work culture. The concept of virtual environment refers to the concept of users being able to engage in the individual’s personal work as well as other’s work with the help of the similar computer.
The virtual environment includes different aspects, such as emails, sharing of documents via the internet, chatting and more. However, in today’s age the concept of virtual reality has more additional advancement included in it, such as cloud computing, video chatting with different tools, managing a complete project and different other features.
In order to sum up, virtual reality allows different modes of collaboration and also enables users to work along with each other in the same virtual location irrespective of an individual’s physical location (Hoppe et al., 2018). Virtual reality systems have made remote working significantly easier with its cutting edge features that allow everyone to work in the most utmost manner without being present in a room with other people.
- Virtual Setup
The virtual setup may be defined as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that facilitates organizations to utilize this advancement to work with extreme security, since VPN provides secure network connection and helps to keep all the relevant data safe.
3.3 Digital transformation is essential to remote work
It has been established with the above-mentioned discussion that in order to effectively carry out remote working, the idea of digital transformation is extremely required. Since, the pandemic has drastically altered people’s lives and the work culture all over the world, distant working has been adopted by the majority of the enterprises.
However, this concept of remote or distant working is not able to be a reality, if the digital transformation does not take place in the most effective manner possible. However, many corporations have declared the companies have faced significant challenges in order to navigate remote working efficiently and thereafter, new kinds of leadership is required to handle such issues in this digital age.
Henceforth, leaders need to act as role models, provide importance to cultural values in order to support an attitude that is aimed towards positive change, complement necessary governance and ensure that employees have sufficient knowledge of the digital world (Klus and Müller, 2020).
Section 4: Personal Development Plan
The personal development plan often refers to the journaling of the self reflective account of an individual, where the goals are aligned in reference to the different ways by which they may be achieved. Such developmental plan is created within the circumference of the working structure of the business firm, and the identification of the strengths and weaknesses create a reference framework and identify the areas where the one finds use for improvement.
Part 1-Setting Goals:
| Short term goals (for 8 months)
1. The short term objective of mine is to complete a course in digital leadership management and earn a certificate on it 2. I need to be more proficient in learning the various programming language that are required to be me a digital leader |
| Medium term goals (for 2 years)
1. The medium term objective of mine is to work as an in the industry of science and digital communication d understand the different needs of working the stat from the mastery of various programming languages 2. One of my medium term objectives to have a guidance under the mentorship of a digital leadership mentor and understand the different scopes of knowledge that pertain to the level of the management styles followed in data science management |
| Long term goals (for 6 years)
1. One of the long term goals of mine is to work the site for a real company as a real digital leader with effective leadership style 2. One of my long term goals is to plan and create a supervisor role for myself and mentoring several employees in a real life data science company |
Table 2: Setting goals
(Source: Self-created)
Part 2-Personal Objectives:
| What do I have to learn | How to learn | Support and resources needed | How to measure my success | Target date for review |
| Organize my work and have the learning objectives fixed | Maintain a journaling techniques and create cards to remind me more of the organizational ways by creating virtual alert systems | I need to keep a journal with constant entries being followed up and keep making small micro notes | Keep a definitive record of my journal and see if the micro notes are helping me to become more organized | 20th January 2022 |
| Have the prerequisite knowledge of different programming knowledge as Python, SQL, C++ | Enroll myself in more evaluating tests based on different tie management techniques and have a good understanding if the core concepts of different programming language | Online courses and different evaluation tests related to the subject of learning programming | Testing myself on several online held coding tests and evaluate the marking results | 6th May 2022 |
| Time management techniques and tricks to master to reduce the voluminous workload whir being a digital leader | Set my work goals and to fish such works within a given period of time with constant variation in my schedule | Self evaluation programs found on internet with automatic target time set | Keep regular updating of time covered by me to write only one line of code | 10th February 2022 |
| Developing different mobile and android based applications | Be taught under the mentorship of an advanced level programmer and know the process to start building different software developments | Node Java and Android Development Studio platform | Practice mock application development in a free virtual platform | 15th November 2022
|
Table 3: Personal Objectives
(Source: Self-created)
Conclusion
Finally, it may be concluded that in order to sustain in the digital age, the need for having an effective leadership who has sufficient knowledge of the digital age is extremely imperative. Additionally, managing a geographically dispersed team in order to achieve outstanding organizational performance within the remote work culture also needs to be managed by effective leaders as well.
References
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