3 Tips for Improving Your Digital Leadership Skills

Writing business plans, finding investors, hiring your first employees – setting up a business from scratch is a huge investment of money and time. Especially in times of digital transformation. You need digital leadership skills to lead startups. Are you ready to (re)learn it?

What does good leadership mean?

“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." (Harvard Business School definition of leadership). It is an open secret that people excel in their natural habitat. Job roles need to challenge and unleash the individual strengths of your employees. Transformational changes challenge everyday leaders. To lead startups, change management becomes as important as digital leadership skills.

What is Transformational Change?

Transformational change is defined as second-order, frame-breaking change, that alters your current operating structure. As the word implies the change is transforming the company and the way it works. Continuous change is part of our everyday life – in business and in private spheres. Change management in start-ups is like a muscle you and your employees need to constantly train to succeed.

Example of transformational change

A transformational change could be the implementation of agile teams structures in your startup. If your employees come from companies with more hierarchical structures, this new way of working together will challenge them and put them out of their comfort zone. Leaders are required to get everyone on the same page and into an agile mindset. And employees who join startups are usually up for challenges and seek a change in their career development – a good prerequisite for effective change management.

 

3 Digital Transformation tips

One of the most significant reasons for change is digital transformation. In order to keep up, leaders need to establish efficient and effective change management in startups. We at Dimpact have the following digital transformation tips for you:

Focus on business-relevant innovations:

Don’t try to keep up with every technology out there. Always ask yourself, is this technology for us? Will hit help or hinder my mission, vision, and goals?

Envision the future:

The trickiest part of innovations is seeing them coming. Only doing what others are already doing will not give you the competitive advantage you seek. Try to be the first to implement a new technology or management strategy. Ask yourself: What innovations could be happening in my industry within the next couple of years?

Continuous employee training and education:

Give your employees the chance to keep changing. Don’t even let them settle in a comfort zone. Continuous training and education will foster personal development and the routine of changing.

Digital leadership skills to lead startups

A natural consequence is a need for digital leadership skills to lead startups successfully. It can help your startup to improve change management skills. 

 

Required skillsets include:

1. High communication skills

2. Emotional intelligence

3. Strategic thinking

4. Revenue-oriented thinking

5. Good organizational skills

    

    

Change management in start-ups  

It is critical to remember that change is not a sprint. Although we live in a world of fast-paced changes in all aspects of the business – technology, leadership skills, HR – a change should never happen in a hurry. Whenever you see a trend in your industry, question the trend first. If you decide to go with the trend communicate your action plan to your team.  

With innovations and digital transformation happening constantly, leaders need to develop digital leadership skills to lead start-ups successfully. To succeed in a world of transformational change, your startup needs to manage change equally well. 

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