9. A conceptual framework for the digital leader-followership

9.1 Application of LFT model for digital leader-followership

As mentioned in "The Context of the Digital Era," emerging digital leadership differs  from traditional hierarchical leadership in many areas such as socio-cultural, theoretical, philosophical, and generational. The disruptive and unpredicted nature of the digital leadership seems to cause an on-going change and discontinuity among leading and following functional patterns in today's organizations who are in a transition from industrial to information and digital age.

The LFT approach may well serve as a bridge model between the traditional and emerging leadership paradigms in the digital age. For instance, by fostering leader-follower competences and wiliness to trade leading and following roles between digital immigrant and digital native generations, the existing L-M gap may be bridged. Examples of bridge building:

  • Salkowitz offers to close the digital gap and build intergenerational bridges by empowering the younger generation to educate older workers in information technology.
  • Chaudhuri and Ghosh recommend reverse mentoring programs for Boomer and Millennial generations to keep the former engaged and the latter committed.
  • To bridge the gap between generations, Kornelsen suggests leading with Millennials in a VUCA-world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous).