Change Management - Decoding leadership skills & styles for driving digital transformation by Poonam Garg

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Decoding Leadership Skills and Styles for Driving Digital Transformation

Hello, everyone. This blog is about change management — specifically, understanding the necessary leadership skills and styles to drive digital transformation. Everything I'll be sharing is based on my experience and observations.

Who Am I?

I'm PG, currently acting as a vice president in a US-based bank. My passion lies in leveraging technology to solve customer problems, and empowering future generations, especially women, to become part of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). I have accounts on Medium, Community, and LinkedIn, where you're welcome to connect with me personally.

The Challenge of Change Management

In this rapidly evolving world of technology, the digital journey of the customer is constantly putting organizations and leaders under pressure. It begs the question — what should the effective leadership skills look like in middle management to drive change rapidly and effectively?

Unfortunately, organizations often make the mistake of hiring change leaders from the outside, rather than nurturing their middle managers to be effective leaders. This often results in an unhealthy culture and a loss of trust among employees.
So, what's the solution? Let's decode the secret recipe I've learned for effective leadership which assists us in a bringing fruitful strategic change.

The Effective Leadership Attributes

Here are some of the effective leadership attributes, gleaned from my experience and the McKenzie framework. They include communication, motivation, positive attitude, job knowledge, flexibility, fairness, and confidence. Of course, these are not all the attributes; leaders also need social skills, the ability to coach, and a capacity to be a team player — each of these are critical to successfully driving the change management strategy.

Case Study: Managing Change in Mainframe Application Migration

Let's take a real-world example — say, migrating a mainframe application to a modern tool. As a middle management leader, you need to create an urgency for change, provide both external and internal training, socialize with the team, validate team alignment, communicate effectively, and demonstrate flexibility.

Lessons Learned and Strategies

From my experience in driving digital transformation, I have learned the importance of genuine leadership. Genuine leaders focus on nurturing the strongest staff without compromising the quality of the crop. Conversely, a leader who is unwilling to learn is likely to make grave mistakes and set a poor example for others, leading to an unhealthy work environment.

Therefore, in order to truly drive digital transformation, middle management leaders need to fundamentally possess certain strengths, such as communication skills, motivation, a positive attitude, and more. They also need to develop their social skills, coaching abilities, and work towards being good team players.

Conclusion

To conclude, effective leadership skills in middle management not only achieve targeted business goals, but they are also critical components in driving change management strategies. Organizations must rethink their approach; instead of hiring change leaders from the outside, they should focus on upskilling their middle managers to build strong leadership skills as a part of their core competencies. This approach not only improves the organizational climate, but also leads to more effective and successful transformation initiatives.


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