Leadership in the Digital Era

Newpeople Insights

Leadership is about people, not leadership models. This was the starting point of our speaker Frank Vogt, during the first Newpeople Insights lecture. Following his book “DNA of Leadership,” the former CIO and COO, brought a different perspective on leadership to the 50 “digital leaders” that were present.

Frank shared insights on leadership from 13 digital leaders he had interviewed for his book, and came up with the following five traits of effective leadership. Successful digital leaders:

• Create their own path (expedition)
• Head toward a meaningful future (guide)
• Work from a positive view on people (trust)
• Provide the right circumstances (context)
• Deploy their unique leadership qualities (self-awareness)

Don’t worry; no leader possesses all traits, but at most two or – very occasionally – three. It also became clear that depending on what stage you are in as a company, a different leadership is effective. This applies to digital-growth companies (start-up, scale-up and grown-up) as well as to companies facing digital transformation (silo, omni or customer centric & data). With this, Frank made a valuable link to Newpeople’s leadership model.

We had a lively discussion about leadership which included the usefulness and risk of rules, the importance of trust and what we can learn from the leaders who inspire us as well as those who irritate us. Because leaders are neither born nor made: leadership develops in each of us. It is not ‘nature or nurture’ but ‘nature AND nurture’. And just as DNA makes us unique as human beings, we are all unique in our leadership as well.

The audience was inspired about how to rate their leaderships skills and talked afterwards at the bar in the REM restaurant on REM Island in Amsterdam’s Houthaven. Everyone received the book ‘DNA of Leadership’ for inspiration.

Would you like to attend the next Newpeople Insights? Or would you like to know more about new leadership? Then contact Ben Holewijn at ben.holewijn@newpeople.nl.

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