E-leadership: Tackling complex challenges

In exploring the impact of digital technology on leadership, we identify e-leadership as a complex challenge that is characterized by five key paradoxes: swift and mindful; individual and community; top-down and grass-roots; details and big picture; and flexible and steady. For people to function effectively in this changing environment, a broader definition of leadership is needed – one where people in organizations make sense together of the challenges facing them and where they participate in leadership at every level. This requires a training environment where individual skills of perspective-taking, network and coalition building, and story telling are developed along with team-based skills of using dialogue, managing networks, and protecting voices from the fringe.