The digital age has added a new dimension to the traits needed for #SmartLeadership, creating operational success stories in these interesting times, while mitigating risks on the way. This new kind of leadership that harnesses fresh ways of thinking and working, requires everyone to acquire and nurture a new set of skills and maximize the value they provide at the moment. This will be a perfect balance of art and science that accelerates productivity and agility to address the changing dynamics of the business ecosystem.
The new view of the workplace requires enhanced soft skills that encompass collaboration, business etiquettes, positive behavior traits and work ethics contributing deeply towards building stronger relationships and people engagement. This is more than a disruptive idea in the gig economy; after all, technical skills can get you the job; soft skills will define your success and span as a manager – research validated.
“After all, technical skills can get you the job; soft skills will define your success and span as a manager.”
| Image source: www.nationalsoftskills.org |
Challenge is, soft skills are innate to one’s personality and much harder to teach and learn unlike technical know-how. Also, resistance to change is a recalcitrant problem that organizations face in promoting fresh ideas.
Building the Digital DNA
In the sharing economy, new age consumers and clients hold the real power, being extensively technologically and digitally aligned, using it at the front and back of their hands. Omnichannel messaging, presence and capabilities are imperative to offer a seamless experience to these customers. And it’s common knowledge that customer experience is everyone’s responsibility in an organization, making it necessary for companies to create a ‘Digital Thinking’ culture based on the common organizational purpose.
“In order to be positioned to succeed in the hyper-competitive world today, one must leave the shadows of contextual past, focus on the power of the present and hope for the future.“
In order to be positioned to succeed in the hyper competitive world today, one must leave the contextual past, focus on the power of the present and hope for the future. It’s a mantra that underlines our journey towards building the digital readiness, as an organization. We understand that digital leaders may not learn to code or build an app, they must be aware of using these assets strategically to build business and to build their personal brand. It also means that leaders need to deeply understand and demonstrate the use of technology and the digital platforms to turn vision into reality.
Simply encouraging Digital Thinking
As the worldwide leaders in omnichannel customer experience, we aligned ourselves to the future of work early on and started preparing our people to face this perfect storm – building a digitally cognizant organization.
Going back to how this started a couple of years ago when our team embarked on this journey, we were constantly nudged with the need of a critical change for building future-ready talent and capabilities. With more than 80% of our employees at the forefront of providing customer service, we were ready to reskill and retool them with digital competencies and intelligent technology. This led us to cultivate a digital mindset across the workforce helping them determine the most sensible solution for their customers and supporting business-led initiatives.
Following a top down approach, we started with bringing everyone in the organization on the same page, by delivering small thought nudges via leadership communication channels, on how leveraging the opportunities brought about by the ‘Internet-of-Everything’ can lead to huge personal and professional success. This was followed by a reverse mentoring approach wherein the digital-savvy millennial managers and other digital experts within the company took upon the responsibility of preparing everyone to navigate this disruptive sea. It was our inhouse digital literacy mission driven by values-led and purpose-driven leadership.
A small case in point has been a movement (#GenderSmart) we catapulted from India, which has really taken off online, evoking myriad positive reactions and thoughts from Teleperformance employees globally, clients and our key influencers. #GenderSmart was the online campaign illustrating our support and strategy towards greater Gender Parity at workplace, which has been backed by adding more women to our team in record time. With intensive digital training and guidance, the company staff championed our digital media engagement for this campaign. They contributed unanimously in building the momentum and numbers by embracing the digital approach that is collaborative, agile, and responsive. The results were not surprising as during this time we reached the highest engagement on our social media channels along with 99% online authority for #GenderSmart, while the company environment and happiness quotient showed incessant improvement.
It’s important to understand, no matter how well the organization has done in the past, change is inevitable to keep doing good-cannibalize your own business before someone else takes over! It always starts small to meet the big objective.
Write to us in the comment section below to share your feedback on our initiatives and add your experiences on a similar journey.
Visit us at: www.teleperformance.in
Contributor: Neha Sethi @nehacsethi