Leadership in Digital Age

This report explores the role of leadership in the digital age and its impact on business performance. It discusses leadership theories, capabilities, and behaviors for future digital leaders in the retail industry. It also examines how digital technical leadership can enhance business transformation and overcome contemporary issues. The report concludes with a professional development plan for enhancing digital leadership qualities.

Leadership in Digital Age

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Section 1...........................................................................................................................................1
Leadership theories and relationship between digital technical leadership and enhanced
performance of business..............................................................................................................1
Self-analysis to identify strengths and areas of development......................................................3
Section 2...........................................................................................................................................3
Leadership capabilities and behaviour that can be applied on future role of digital leader
within retail industry....................................................................................................................3
Section 3...........................................................................................................................................6
A contemporary issue within professional practice of leadership...............................................6
The way digital technical leadership can enhance business transformation and performance of
contemporary issue......................................................................................................................6
Section 4...........................................................................................................................................8
A professional development plan to set objectives of future approach to leadership with a
range of learning objectives, success criteria and timescales......................................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Leadership in digital age, is all about empowering others for leading and creating a self-
organized teams. This would help in optimising the day-to-day operations, where leaders require
participation, involvement as well as contribution of all. Today, due to Fourth Industrial
Revolution, which is driven via advent of latest technologies, leaders are needed to deal with
unprecedented changes and a challenging or unpredictable. In coping up with changes in
business due to digitalisation, leadership plays a bigger role that helps in developing a way for
influencing people towards objective goals. The present report is going to evaluate the role of
leadership in present age of digitalisation, through a number of models. The main aim behind
this is to demonstrate relationship between technical leadership and increased performance of a
business. In this regard, as a digital leader I will identify major strengths and areas of
development through diagnostic tools, to evaluate leadership capabilities that can be applied in
retail industry. Furthermore, a contemporary issue will also be identified, to analyse how this
concept helps in overcoming from same. At last, professional development plan for enhancing
digital technical leadership qualities is also made.
Section 1
Leadership theories and relationship between digital technical leadership and enhanced
performance of business
Today, with advancement of technology, it becomes possible for every organisation to run
its business more effectively. Concept of digitalisation help in increasing customer collaboration
and interaction, with company’s products and services. In reshaping the customer value
proposition, transformation of whole business operations into digitalised panel, has become
essential for organisations. In this regard, to implement and transform business, leaders play an
important role in digital age. They help in influencing people to give their more contribution in
digital transformation, so that performance of business can be improved. Digital leadership in
this context, can be defined as strategical use of digital assets of company, to achieve goals in
desired manner. This concept can be addressed both at individual and organisational level, for
enhancing the performance of business. Hereby, digital leaders are generally willing to explore
how information technology can be used to enable a firm in becoming more responsive, towards
needs of customers and changes in business requirements.
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New digital technologies that has completely changes the way of operating a business
includes Cloud, Social Media, Mobile or Smartphone applications, Big Data, Internet of Things
(IoT) and more. These technologies have provided the new sources of value to improve
economics, in terms of reducing the marginal costs, with increasing loyalty, profit margins,
revenue growth and more. To implement such system, a company has to change its business
models, hire talented workers and provide training to existing ones and new recruiters, so that
they can learn how to work in digital age. However, these procedures arise a number of issue in
business transformation like mismanagement, conflicts among workers, employee
disengagement and more. Therefore, to cope up such issues, a leader or a manager needs to
adopts the new style of leadership like participative, transformative and more. Leaders in digital
age are required to possess some universal characteristics like personal charisma, personal level
of leadership and flexible as per changes in business environment. Hereby, a charismatic leader
normally possesses a rare gift to influence subordinates easily while inspiring loyalty and
obedience.
Figure 1How to be a leader in the digital age?, 2016.
For this purpose, a number of leadership theories that can be used to demonstrate the
relationship between digital leadership and its role in enhancing business performance can be
elaborated. With respect to leadership theoretical frameworks, two main theories are used –
Contingency and Universal. Hereby, first one argues that to become an effective leader in digital
age, it is essential to adopt a perfect style of leadership, which matches with current situation of
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business. While later one i.e. Universal theory stated that due to a generic set of characteristics,
traits and behaviours, roles of leaders in an organisation is different from others. Therefore, to
handle business problems that may arise due to digital transformation like employee
disengagement, following leadership theories can be adopted –
Transactional leadership theory – This theory mainly emphasises on leaders, who
works in a well-organised manner, to handle a situation. As due to technological revolution like
industry 4.0, digitalisation has completely changes the business environment. Therefore,
transactional leadership theory focuses on the concept of reward exchange for influencing
behaviour of subordinates, to gain their participation and contribution in digital transformation. It
does not concern on individual need for enhancing the performance of business, whereby to
achieve goals, leaders use the corporate processes as – reward system, policies and more.
Transformational Leadership theory – As comparison with transactional leadership,
this theory identifies the individual needs first, to lead digital transformation and enhance
business performance. Leaders are hereby, empower motivation through technology, by
clarifying the main aim behind digital transformation to workers, so that higher cooperation of
them can be gained.
Situational Leadership Theory – To ensure success of business in digital age, this
theory fits the best on every situational context. It states that successful leaders in an
organisation, have the ability to look at every situation to resolve with different perspectives.
They assess the situation by determining the type of leadership approach, that can be used to get
optimum result. Therefore, in today’s complex environment of business, using situational
leadership approaches, leaders can control entire possible outcomes, boost employee motivation
to get their engagement in digital transformation and more.
Self-analysis to identify strengths and areas of development
Section 2
Leadership capabilities and behaviour that can be applied on future role of digital leader within
retail industry
Digital leadership in today’s dynamic environment of business, can be defined by
contribution of a leader in successful transformation. They have the ability to keep up business
with ongoing global revolution and helps subordinates in understanding the same, to work
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thoroughly. Leadership for revolutionary changes in business, must be driven through an attitude
of openness and must understand the impact of breakthrough technologies. Along with this,
leaders also need to possess the skills to identify the technological trends in different sectors,
such as cloud computing, big data, IoT, automation and robotics. Moreover, first and foremost
ability that they should have is sufficient knowledge, with proper vision to use digital assets of
business most effectively. For this purpose, in order to become an effective leader in digital age,
every individual requires to identity strengths and areas of development, that requires for digital
transformation of business. It has been evaluated that with revolution of technology,
organisations have gained opportunity to run their business more effectively. Digital
transformation has given opportunity to firms, in enhancing their business performance and gain
loyalty of customers to generate high profitability. In context with retail sectors, it has been
identified that most of the large retailers like Apple, Google, J.P. Morgan and more, focuses
more on – Creation of Digital Communities.
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Figure 2The Platform Economy. 2019
As per the above figure, it has been illustrated the companies that use digital technologies
to grab market share significantly. It represents a big change in their revenue due to revolution of
technologies. To gain high competitive advantages in business, behaviour and capabilities that
can be applied on future digital leader, are described as below –
Agile leaders must have clear purpose – When leading a business or digital change, leaders
must have clear purpose and goal, that they can be share with subordinates for further
achievement. Having a purpose, make leaders able to implement changes in business and bring
competitive advantages as well.
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Forward thinking opportunists – To look beyond and enhance thinking abilities, leaders
provide opportunities and open place to subordinates, where they can make innovation. They
praise employees in retail sector to learn from failures and contribute more efforts in
transforming the digitalisation into business.
Risk takers – Having this ability, a leader can establish opportunity to create innovation in
business. They always prepare themselves to actions when there is a risk of failure in business,
so that success can be achieved.
Section 3
A contemporary issue within professional practice of leadership
Leadership is termed as a process to influence behaviour of individuals and subordinates in
an organisation in order to lead them towards accomplishment of goals in effective manner.
Leadership can also define as a formative relationship in between leaders and their followers.
There are certain issues and challenges that leaders face while accomplishing their roles some of
that issue include dealing with change and uncertainty, quick decision making, globalisation,
ethical behaviour and recruiting and retaining quality workers. In addition to this, High staff
turnover, little opportunities for employee training and development and time management issues
such as poor time keeping and missing project deadlines by the employees are evident
throughout the company are also some of the certain issue that further impact of overall
functioning of an organization. All these contemporary issues affect leadership process that
further impact on overall productivity and profitability of organisation. Thus, it becomes the
most essential responsibilities of leaders to overcome these issues in order to initiate
organisational growth and further assure qualitative performance by subordinates and followers.
The way digital technical leadership can enhance business transformation and performance of
contemporary issue
Digital technical leadership can be undertaken by leaders as to evaluate digital assets that
include email as well as electronic documents. There are many certain contemporary issues that
can be effectively solved with the help of digital technical leadership. With the help of this form
of leadership leaders can adopt problem solving model with the help of which they can fulfil gap
within communication with the help of which work pressure can be reduced which is the main
reason of employee turnover. Moreover, with the implementation of proper motivational theories
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such as Herzberg and Maslow leaders can effectively able to motivate their employees. Further
in order to increase performance of employee’s proper communication as well as training session
is required to be adopted by leaders. It has been further identified that training sessions and
communication can be undertaken by leader via digital mode with the help of this they can
motivate subordinates and employees towards high performance. With the adoption of proper
strategies more effective solutions can be acquired by leaders as to increase overall productivity
and profitability of organisation. With the help of digital technical leadership leaders can
effectively able to set smart scale objectives through which they can accomplish each and every
objective as per according to perfect time frame. In this it is essential for leaders to communicate
staff with the organisation objectives on the basis of specific, measurable, accurate and realistic
along with proper time specification. All these policies can be strictly monitored with the help of
digital technical leadership.
With the help of digital technical leadership leaders can take successful advantage of
exploring Information Technology as to response customers with satisfactory services. It has
been evaluated that it is essential for a leader to value digital leadership as with the help of this
they can effectively facilitate proper communication, creativity and can further initiate
willingness in order to explore new ways through which Digital information and technology can
be used in order to offer more successful outcomes. With the help of digital leadership leaders
can effectively able to create a business process with the help of which they can allow new
applications as well as products and services in a quick manner. Digital technical leadership
allow leaders to overcome certain issues with reliability and authenticity. This form of leadership
also facilitates quick decision making and can further able to accomplish organisational goals in
well define manner.
Thus, it is essential for leaders to take advantage of digital technical leadership in order to
effectively handle business transformation and further overcome issue as to assure qualitative
performance by employees. It also allows leaders to overcome contemporary issues and offer
more productive outcomes to organisation. With the help of this form of leadership organisation
can effectively able to identify the requirement of new technologies in order to operate their
operation in more efficient and effective manner. As with the implementation of modern
technology advancements business organisation can able to significantly increase their
productivity and productivity and can further offer highest qualitative services to customers.
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Each and every organisation require a leader those who can formulate decisions in best effective
manner and can embrace digital importance as to strengthen their brand image in Marketplace.
This can be effectively achieved with the help of digital technical leadership as it allow leaders to
use the digital assets such as Educational videos, websites, email and whitepapers as to
successfully achieve objectives of business. With the help of this leaders can effectively able to
solve customer service challenges, acquisition and sales challenges in best effective manner.
With the help of digital technical relationship leaders can effectively able to monitor the manner
in which employees interact with their customers and can further record data for future
evaluation. With the help of this they can further offer training to employees that are required by
them to increase their work performance.
Section 4
A professional development plan to set objectives of future approach to leadership with a range
of learning objectives, success criteria and timescales
Learning Objectives Success Criteria Timescales
Verbal reasoning skills  It can be measured in
number of ways which
include solving
reasoning questions by
allotting the time for
each such questions.
 Feedback from the
employees who are in
my team can help in
providing the honest
answers for my success
rate in providing the
solution to the queries.
In this way, my
individual performance
can be judged for this
The time limit for enhancing
this skills is decided for about
4 months from the date of
implementation.
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skills.
Communication skills  This can be achieved
through various
sessions within the
organisation
comprising the
employees wherein
ideas and views of all
the individuals will be
explained so that I as a
leader can get a chance
to communicate with
them.
 Also, there are online
classes which can help
in teaching number of
rules that I should
follow after becoming
a leader.
Communication skills is
important for which a good
amount of time has been
decided and it has been
decided for approx 2 months.
Time management skills  This skill helps in
managing the time by
which proper allocation
can be made for each
activity. It can be
attained by making
schedule for all the
work that I will have as
a leader.
 Furthermore, the time
taken in completing the
It is a lengthy process which
need time to change the
current skill and build this one.
Hence, a time scale of 7
months has been determined
which can help in analysing
the current situation and make
strategies for implementing
them within the organisation.
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work is to be taken
from the past record in
order to measure and
compare it with the
current time. It also
helps in determining
the areas in which
more focus is to be
given so that efficiency
can be increased.
Analytical skill  This skill helps a leader
in having the quality
and knowledge of
various methods and
techniques by which
problems containing
numbers can be
resolved.
 It is useful in making
decisions which are
related to strategies that
can be implemented
within the organisation.
It is that skill which requires a
lot of efforts and the level of
complexities are huge which
may take number of months
hence, the time for this
purpose is also 7 months.
Technical skills  It is imperative for a
leader to have at least
basic knowledge of
computer and internet
so that digitalisation
can be used within the
organisation by which
It is a critical manner which is
based on practical knowledge
all the technical areas that are
there in the organisation,
therefore, it can take long time
due to which 3 months is
decided for this purpose.
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goals and objectives
can be achieved. It can
be achieved by
attending online classes
for the same which can
help building technical
skills.
 There are frequent
modifications which
help in bringing new
technologies in the
business world.
Therefore, the leader is
required to have skills
and knowledge about
such transformation. It
can be done so by
taking practical classes
for the same.
From the above personal development plan, it can be justified that skills are required in a
person to become a good and effective leader. There should be more than one skill present in the
leaders by using which sub-ordinates can be governed and directed for achieving the goals and
objectives.
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Verbal Reasoning Test
I have realised that verbal reasoning is important to determine the actual logic behind any
issue. It is beneficial I presenting the number of factors which may impact the decisions of a
leader. The marks obtained by me in this test for skill is between 60 to 70 which should be
improved with the time. The time taken by me for answering every question should be lower
down with the practices more frequently. It is reflects the number for verbal reasoning which
provides the skills of resolving questions by discussing the things.
Numeric Reasoning Test
This skill is useful is increasing the capabilities of individuals for solving questions
which involve numbers or numerical data for obtaining results. In the test conducted, I got 90
marks which is quite a good score and therefore, I should focus on polishing the skills by which I
can resolve such problems without much difficulties. Furthermore, there should be exercises for
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this purpose which help in gaining the path or basis for digital era. The another skills being time
management skill which is significant in carrying each activity in timely manner so that
employees can be motivated to achieve their tasks within the deadline provided by me as a
leader. It helps in reducing wastage of time which can be utilised in more profitable and
productive work. Communication skills is required for transferring the information from one
person to another. Without this skill, it is not possible to interact with the people that are there in
the team. I being a leader should know to use various digital platforms for connecting with the
employees living in different locations. It is useful in maintaining co-ordination among them.
Also, it helps in resolving conflicts through digital mode wherein the gathering can be held on
one digital platform which can be accessed by all the sub-ordinates. Analytical skills is about
analysing the data or information so obtained in order to make decisions. It makes a leader
competent to solve difficult situations for making strategies which may help the entity achieve its
objectives and goals. According to me, I have the capabilities of understanding different kinds of
situations which are related to the organisation or may impact their survival in the competition.
Similarly, all the above skills are important for transforming a person into an effective
leader. Also, there should be regular classes and seminars for enhancing the skills and add more
competencies. In this way, I can achieve stability and make my sub-ordinates to work in an
appropriate manner and give their efforts for replacing old leaders. In Digital Age, the role of
leaders has become important because the competition has increased. I as a leader will provide
classes to my team which can help them become effective and work efficiently. The role of team
leader is to provide directions to all the employees by making them focus on achieving overall
objectives. From my personal experience, I have realised that a leader should treat his sub-
ordinates important from the organisational context. It is the responsibility of leader to provide
training to the team members for making them aware about digitalisation and its usage in
organisation. It can be done by conducting training sessions in which two way communication
can be held between the employees and leader for asking the queries with the intention to resolve
them.
Furthermore, there should be constant exercise for ascertaining the additional needs and
requirement which are relevant for the organisation. In this perspective, it can be said that I being
a leader will be providing important information about relevant laws and rules which are
applicable on digital aspect of the organisation. This is to avoid any legal consequences and save
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the entity from financial burden. Furthermore, leader should also conduct tests for examining the
skills of employees. Together with this, leader should have take feedback from the subordinates
to ascertain the working and whether all their doubts are getting resolved. With this use of such
information, I after becoming a leader can make improvements which will ultimately help me
become a good and effective leader.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been concluded that leadership is significant in a business
organisation which helps the employees in getting directions. It is beneficial in achieving the
goals and objectives at organisational level. In the digital era, a leader should have the
knowledge about various concepts and use of digitalisation and for this purpose, it is important
for the employees to have the adequate knowledge. Therefore, digital era has a significant place
for leaders in the entities who have the skills and competencies to achieve the tasks.
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