What is of special interest to managers concerning Digital Leadership? And how can this be included in the coaching process? The answers to these questions were provided by the 25th EMCC Conference in Dublin.

The motto of this three-day event with roughly 700 participants was ‚learn – reflect – transform’. We enjoyed a varied programme with highly interesting key notes, workshops and the Conference Networking Dinner. For a more detailed impression, you can find further information here. At this EMCC Conference (European Mentoring and Coaching Council), our company was represented through our own workshop – our topic:  Leadership Competences in Times of Digital Transformation – our main question: What is changing for coaches and due to the increasing digital transformation?

Make yourself familiar with the world of VUCA!
30 participants with a broad international background of knowledge and experience took part in our one-hour workshop. Our meta study  with its 7 new leadership competences formed the basis of our workshop. The combination of both theoretical information and practical experience was of special value to all participants.

What is changing for the leadership (key word: VUCA) and how will these changes affect the coaching of managers?

The workshop results of the group work were obvious: The increasing ‚digital quality’ in our present world of work creates a variety of new challenges for managers. Managers will have to move through rapidly changing areas of tension. Coaches will have to know those areas and quickly adapt to them to be still able to offer constructive support during their coaching sessions.

Be productively irritated!
This is one example of our workshop topics: The competence field ‚to foster networks‘ is the ability to actively expand social contacts within and outside of the own organisation even without  an immediately useful effect. We all agreed that, nowadays, it is essential for all managers to constantly accept new and unknown challenges – or in other words: to be productively irritated by those challenges.

Therefore, networking will gain a whole new quality. The functional ‚control function‘ of networks is now added by possible, however uncertain future opportunities. Coaching may help to understand these areas of tension and, thus, transform them into productive challenges and opportunities for managers.

Our conclusion
The international exchange with other coaches of the EMCC in Dublin was a true gain. The discussions revealed that the 7 competences developed by the Metastudy exactly define the challenges to be faced not only by German managers but by all managers worldwide. The feedback tool  ‘Future Skills for Leadership dynamic’ may be very useful for coaches to reflect the current and future challenges for managers in a well founded way.

We are already looking forward to the  next EMCC Conference 2020 in Paris.

article: meta study dynamic leadership

Matthias Diederichs & Renke Ulonska

Illustration: EMCC