Digital Leadership Development: A Teaching and Learning Model App'lied

In this paper, we propose a contextualized and personalized leadership development program delivered through a digital tool (an app). This work contributes to the leadership development literature by outlining a theoretically-grounded, practical approach addressing the challenges related to processes (how) and content (what) of leadership development in a time characterized by digitalization and rapid change. Through contextualization, variability, and digitalization, our digital leadership development program proposes solutions to a variety of leadership development challenges, including transfer, feedback, practice focus, and off-site teaching and learning settings. Furthermore, with the increasing variability and complexity of contemporary organizations, leaders must acquire specific leadership meta-skills that are both adaptive and transferable. As described in the paper, our digital leadership development program uses task- and relations-oriented leadership behaviors as vectors for targeting four such meta-skills: reflection, transfer, ability to receive and process feedback, and ‘informating.’