Leadership has always been defined as the act of influencing, guiding, and managing individuals or groups. In organizations, corporate leadership sits at the top of the hierarchy. It is tasked with leading its teams through everyday operational storms and navigating the future to ensure continuity and profitability.

However, this definition merely scratches the surface of what leadership entails, especially in the post-pandemic digital age where the advent of emerging technologies, socio-demographic shifts, and economic certainty have disrupted “business as usual” almost beyond recognition.

As a result, modern business owners and managers are exploring different styles of corporate leadership to help smoothen the transition into the new normal and beyond. If you’re looking for the same, keep reading to learn five corporate leadership styles you can adopt in the post-pandemic digital age.

5 Corporate Leadership Styles in the Post-Pandemic Digital Age

Here are five styles of corporate leadership along with their unique benefits you should know about:

1.    Transformational Leadership

With digital transformation becoming a trending buzzword in every industry and organization, it’s only fitting we kick things off with transformational leadership. This leadership approach is specifically designed to inflict change in employees, management, and social systems within an organization.

Today, businesses of all scales and niches are adopting new technologies, revamping their workplace culture, and exploring new domains/revenue streams. Thus, they need a leader who can create valuable and positive change by strategically turning followers into aspiring leaders. This allows them to delegate tasks without constant supervision.

This leadership style is desirable for growth-minded companies with a learning environment. It doesn’t merely focus on organizational goal achievement. It fosters personal connections with teams, boosting motivation, collaboration, and overall performance.

2.    Coaching Leadership

Coaching leadership is a relatively new, guidance-based leadership style designed to help teams gain short-term and long-term wins by fostering self-responsibility, collaboration, and effective communication. Coaching leaders assess their team members’ motivations, capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses to offer personalized guidance and support that brings out the best in them.

Leaders who adopt this leadership style are better suited to recognize and cultivate talent, promote upskilling, and encourage free-thinking. This leadership style fosters a more confident company culture and a positive, motivating environment. However, this style of corporate leadership can be incredibly time-intensive. Therefore, it may not be suitable for organizations with a deadline-driven environment.

3.    Servant Leadership

Also known as altruistic leadership, this corporate leadership style fosters a decentralized organizational structure where autonomy, collective decision-making, and power-sharing are encouraged and prioritized.  Servant leaders are characterized by having a people-first mindset and are tasked with ensuring team members are professionally and personally fulfilled.

Thus, they emphasize employee satisfaction so employees can focus on their performance and improve productivity, which leads to an increase in revenue. However, to facilitate this win-win scenario, businesses must create a reward-based work model to incentivize their teams to collaborate and commit to self-growth and responsibility.

However, servant leaders are susceptible to burnout since they usually put the teams’ needs above their own. Secondly, this form of leadership can often lead to a conflict of opinions due to the absence of a central authority. Therefore, it’s not suitable for traditional organizations and businesses with a hierarchical system in place.

4.    Transactional Leadership

Transactional leadership is one of the most common corporate leadership styles in the market. It focuses entirely on incentivizing employees to achieve targets and improve their performance. Employees that succeed are rewarded, whereas those who fail might be subject to punishments depending on the circumstances.

For instance, policy violations could lead to disciplinary proceedings. Similarly, failing to achieve targets could lead to demotion. However, the main purpose of this leadership style is to ensure employees have a clear vision of their responsibilities and performance targets so they can chase them down.

Transactional leaders are laser-focused on setting goals and monitoring performance. They’re essentially pacesetters that rely on mentorship, regular training, and managerial psychology to meet organizational goals. Therefore, these leaders are perfect for businesses that depend on specific goals and short-term success, such as sales agencies and consultancies.

Transactional leadership isn’t the best style for businesses that rely on creativity or those that don’t want to incentivize employees every time through rewards to improve operational efficiency or boost loyalty/satisfaction.

5.    Democratic Leadership

Democratic leadership, or shared/participative leadership, is one of the most popular leadership styles in the post-pandemic digital age. This style of corporate leadership involves collective decision-making. Every employee has an equal say in the company’s or project’s direction, with the leader eventually making the final call.

Therefore, it’s perfectly suited for businesses with a modern (Gen Z/Millennial) workforce that’s much more vocal than its traditional (Baby Boomer) counterpart. The most important benefit of this leadership style is that it enables employees at every level to exercise authority and take on more responsibilities. Empowered employees become eligible for leadership positions in the future.

As a result, a democratic leader needs to be always ready to ask for input from their team and generate as much feedback as possible before making a decision. They are rational, flexible, and excellent listeners that value group discussions. They want members to feel unafraid and share their opinions openly as they believe this can improve engagement, performance, and workplace satisfaction.

Which Leadership Style is Right for You?

So, there you have it – 5 different styles of corporate leadership perfectly suited for the post-pandemic digital age. However, before you adopt one, you need to carefully assess your organization’s culture, team behavior and dynamics, and your industry, including the competitors and customers. You can ask yourself a few questions, such as:

  • What’s more important – goals or relationships?
  • What’s more important – structure or freedom?
  • What’s more important – long-term goals or short-term goals?
  • What type of decision-making is more suitable – collective or individual?
  • What’s the key to improving motivation – empowerment or direction?

Whether you manage a big or small team, answering these questions (and more) will help you determine your corporate leadership style and what you believe constitutes a healthy team dynamic. In many cases, this requires professional intervention from leadership experts.

DTG Consulting Solutions, Inc., a specialized, industry-leading, and highly experienced staffing company, can help you discover the ideal leadership style for your business and adopt it seamlessly. We can also equip your enterprise with a highly skilled and experienced talent to fill your leadership roles.

Feel free to get in touch with us anytime for more details.

“Required: Current AWS Certification…”

As a Technology Recruiter, I see job-ad after job-ad calling for AWS Certifications and many positions that require (hope for) multiple.  With KeyBanc analysts estimating that Amazon boasts a whopping 62% of cloud market share[1], it should come as no surprise that any competitive organization with an existing or planned cloud presence – especially in financial services – is looking to attract top certified AWS cloud talent.

With the high demand for cloud technologists, it also shouldn’t be a surprise that compensation levels for these professionals have skyrocketed.  According to the IT Training body Global Knowledge[2], AWS now holds 2 of the top 5 paying IT certifications: AWS Certified Solutions Architect-Associate (#2) and AWS Certified Developer-Associate (#4).  Keep in mind; these are the Associate level certs.  For anyone that has invested the time to earn the Professional level, well, please don’t hesitate to contact me – I’m well aware of your worth.

The salary figures cited in the aforementioned Global Knowledge article are based on survey responses and do not differentiate by geographical location or experience level.  From personally combing the AWS talent market in Greater NYC on behalf of one of my firm’s financial clients, I can tell you these professionals expect far higher compensation.

I recently interviewed a candidate that looked perfect for my client’s job spec: 10-years’ experience, all in financial services, Infrastructure background, held the AWS Solutions Architect certification at the Professional level, along with DevOps and SysOps at the Associate Level.  After qualifying him for my client’s position, I asked what he was expecting in terms of compensation.

 “$225k as a base, plus bonus.”

 


Founded in 1972 by John Di Bari, a Vietnam Veteran, DTG Consulting is a boutique search & staffing firm that has been placing candidates in cloud-related positions since the inception of cloud computing.  If your company requires talent for a migration, deployment or other cloud-related project, don’t hesitate to contact us to further discuss your needs.

FSA

With a low inflation rate, the 2016 flexible spending maximum contribution for employees is expected to remain unchanged. According to industry experts, the maximum contribution will remain at $2,550 barring a surge in inflation during the fourth quarter of this year.

401k/403b/457 Elective Deferral Limit

For tax year 2016, the contribution limit for 401K/403b/457 plans will stay at $18,000. The catch-up contribution limit for employees over age 50 will also stay at the current contribution limit of $6,000.

Section 132 Qualified Transportation Benefits

A change has occurred to the way commuter benefits plans are managed. Beginning January 1, 2016, employees who use a qualified transportation method to commute to work will need to use a section 132 credit card to pay for your commuting costs. The credit cards will be provided by the company sponsored plan. Submitting electronic or paper claims for transportation will no longer be a valid form for reimbursement. Electronic and paper claims will be continue to be accepted for parking related expenses.

As of the posting of this message, the maximum contribution for pre-tax transportation benefits will remain at $130 per month for 2016. The pretax parking contribution limit has been raised to $255 per month starting in January 2016.

© 2024 DTG Consulting Solutions, All Rights Reserved
Privacy Policy