Reflections on our first workshop – “Digital Leadership and Communication”

On 8.9. 12 handpicked leaders from Danish companies met at IT University of Copenhagen to learn about the chances and challenges of digital communication for leaders.

After an introduction of the I4L project, the team members, as well as the participants, the workshop was kicked off by an inspirational keynote on “Leading Creativity in the Digital Workplace”, by Mette Kim Bohnstedt  as announced in a previous blog post. With many hands-on examples Mette illustrated how are our jobs changing, how we are bombarded with information, and how creativity occupies an important role in the new digital society.

An important aspect of the workshop, that was also pointed out by the participants, was the interactive nature of the sessions, as well as the balance between information and reflection.

In this context, amonst other things, the participants applied a framework that was developed for the workshop that allowed the leaders to critically reflect on how they communicate, adapt, listen, understand, and empathize when their communication is mediated by technology. Some of the action points mentioned, were: “working on my kindness factor when I communicate digitally”, “focus on building an atmosphere for creative thinking”, “be more inclusive towards digital workers and have more frequent communication, despite the time zone difference”.

Some of the things the participants reported to have learned from the workshop, were: “types of motivation – how I can become a better remote leader.”; “a really useful framework for continuing my work within digital transformation”, “a wealth of cases and inspiration from other participants”.

We are looking forward to working further with the participating companies of the workshop.