12-05-2025
19 tips for effective leadership in the era of digital transformation
Technological advancements continue to push digital transformation forward and change how businesses operate. In response to this, leadership styles and best practices are shifting toward greater agility, collaboration, and real-time decision-making.
To help you navigate these shifts, Fast Company Executive Board members share practical tips for leading successfully in a technology-driven landscape. Here's how they recommend guiding innovation, balancing digital tools with human insight, and building more flexible, connected organizations.
1. TAKE AN ADAPTIVE, DATA-INFORMED APPROACH TO DECISION-MAKING.
Leadership is shifting from directive to adaptive and data-informed. With AI and real-time insights, leaders don't need to have all the answers—they need to ask better questions, guide decision-making, and empower teams to act fast. – Tom Amburgey, Euna Solutions
2. USE REAL-TIME DATA SETS TO COLLABORATE WITH KEY STAKEHOLDERS.
Leadership styles themselves can be more innovative when working with key stakeholders—customers, employees, and shareholders. The collaboration, enabled by the ability to synthesize vast data sets across multiple platforms, can be much more real-time and data-driven. This leads to proactive decisions and new ways of working, which is a shift from reactive styles based on historical data. – Cathy Rowe, Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
3. LEAD LIKE A TEAM CAPTAIN.
Leadership today should be less about command-and-control and more about data and insights, as well as collaboration. Good team leaders are like the captain of the soccer team. They play with their players while leading them to victory. – Al Sefati, Clarity Digital, LLC
4. ADAPT AND ADOPT WITH OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE APPROACHES.
To be effective leaders today, they must adapt and adopt swiftly, embracing offensive and defensive strategies. The days when leaders could succeed without embracing emerging technologies and innovative thinking are behind us. The landscape has shifted, and so must their approach. – Katrina (Katya) Rosseini
5. EMPOWER YOUR PEOPLE.
There is real value in leading with empowerment. Why? Innovation happens too rapidly for a command-and-control approach. Instead, people closest to the project or issue must be trusted to make the best decisions for the organization. At our company, empowering people is a strategic priority. This stems from our belief that, as technology advances, it will only be as powerful as the people behind it. – Barbara Humpton, Siemens
6. CONSIDER AI YOUR 'UNLIMITED TUTOR.'
Utilize AI as an 'unlimited tutor.' In the past, if you didn't know something, you might say 'Google it.' Now a days, I try to empower my employees to figure something out by using ChatGPT and then coming back to me with the approach they may want to take and why. – Toni Pisano, PortPro Technologies, Inc.
7. LEARN TO ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.
Leadership is shifting from having all the answers to asking better questions. With AI in the mix, especially AI optimization, it's less about gut instinct and more about how fast you can interpret the signal. – Jonathan Snow, Avenue Z
8. APPLY LEAN PRINCIPLES AND A CUSTOMER-FOCUSED MINDSET.
Leadership is evolving to be more adaptive, collaborative, and customer-focused—leveraging AI and data to drive deep learning, continuous improvement, and innovation. Applying lean principles helps create learning organizations that drive innovation through customer needs and insights gathered from team members at all levels. This also establishes a smarter, more connected approach to solve new challenges. – Mike Field, The Raymond Corp.
Standout leaders blend technological fluency with deep emotional intelligence, viewing digital tools as amplifiers of human potential rather than replacements. They harness real-time data analytics to make faster, more informed decisions while strengthening interpersonal connections through thoughtfully designed virtual environments where distributed teams thrive. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
10. DISTRIBUTE AUTHORITY SO TEAMS CAN MOVE QUICKLY.
Leadership styles are shifting from deliberative to decisive. With AI and real-time data, leaders can drive decisions with speed, agility, and discipline. Decision velocity is built by distributing authority, embedding real-time insights into workflows, and empowering teams to act fast, turning speed into a shared organizational capability that drives alignment, responsiveness, and sustained growth. – Santhi Ramesh, SKU
11. USE TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPLEMENT IN-PERSON FACE TIME.
Technology allows leaders to be more accessible and connected. It provides an open-door policy, wherever you are on the planet. Sometimes, what is needed most is real-time feedback or a virtual high-five. Technology should never replace the importance of face-to-face communication. But in the moments when you are not live, meeting virtually is still impactful—and it's never been easier. – Bryan Buck, ON Partners
12. TRANSLATE YOUR BODY LANGUAGE TO SUIT DIGITAL MEDIUMS.
Tech and digital have changed many aspects of leadership. The evolution of leadership styles faces a disconnect because tech communication is two-dimensional when many people converse in a 3-D world. They must learn how to translate body language into something that comes across in tech. – Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure
13. COACH YOUR TEAM AND CREATE SPACE FOR THEM TO SHINE.
Leadership today isn't about having all the answers—it's about creating space for others to shine. With AI and digital tools, we get to spend less time on busywork and more time coaching, listening, and building something meaningful together. – Cody Barbo, Trust & Will
14. REMOVE BARRIERS AND ENABLE EMPLOYEE AUTONOMY.
As tech delivers more visibility and automation, great leaders evolve from directing to empowering. Rather than doubling down on control, they focus on unblocking progress and enabling autonomy. The paradox is that letting go, supported by the right tools, actually unlocks greater ownership, speed, and innovation across teams. – Albert Lie, Forward Labs
15. IDENTIFY TEAM STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES WITH TECH-DRIVEN INSIGHTS.
Technology can help leaders better identify their team's strengths and weaknesses with data-backed insights. For example, an AI-powered learning and training platform can pinpoint the individuals who need more hands-on guidance and personalized coaching on a specific topic or skill. These insights can help the leader get ahead of performance issues that may arise down the road. – Irina Soriano, Seismic
16. STAY DEEPLY INVOLVED IN THE ORGANIZATION.
Technology hasn't replaced strong leadership—it's made attention to detail even more important. With automation handling routine tasks, the best leaders are the ones who stay deeply involved, catch small issues before they become big problems, and use data to make decisions. Digital tools are great, but they don't replace hands-on management. – Milos Eric, OysterLink
17. CONSIDER REPLACING YOUR HIERARCHY WITH 'EXPERTISE PARTIES.'
Replace hierarchy with 'expertise parties,' teams where authority follows knowledge, not titles. Our CFO took direction from a 24-year-old blockchain specialist without hesitation. Digital transformation isn't evolving leadership; it's exposing who was faking it. True leadership is surviving the transparency that emerging tech creates. – Shayne Fitz-Coy, Sabot Family Companies
18. AUTOMATE TASKS WISELY.
