The days of nagging bosses and wagging fingers are drawing to an end. Transformational leaders are championing a revolution in the way that teams are managed and businesses are run. The traditional leadership skills are still there — project management, organization, performance monitoring, and encouraging growth and development. However, they are being joined by transformational skills such as accountability; teamwork; and driving new behavior, culture and attitude changes.

This new breed of leaders is finding new avenues to build confidence, inspire action, gain support, and create environments that disrupt old assumptions and worn-out models. These new skills can be yours. Here’s how to build and apply them.

Understand, Articulate, Communicate

Before traditional leaders can become transformational leaders, they have to reinvent the way that they approach tasks, especially how they go about understanding what needs to happen, articulating themselves to win support and communicating with their team members. This process will require leaders to study the array of technology and tools available to them and decide which will give their team the best advantage. They will also need to ask some big questions about the regularity and effectiveness of their communication channels, including questions like these:

• • Is it necessary to use email, chat, project management platforms and the intranet?
  • How can we consolidate and streamline communication?
  • Who will be most hesitant to change?

Team meetings in stuffy boardrooms are often seen as a waste of time, and many teams are moving to virtual meeting platforms, saving commuting time and allowing for the sharing of links and media. These remote meetings are a whole new playground for articulating change.

Information consumption has become mostly digital, and many people interact more with their work devices than with their colleagues. Transformational leaders remind their teams that they are not working alone but are a vital part of a team and on the journey toward accomplishing important goals. They can reinforce this message by celebrating team goals and sharing metrics that everyone contributed to.

Find Opportunities for Provoking Thought

Being a transformational leader is not about barking orders; it’s about opening dialogues and inspiring thoughtful conversation. Do you have what it takes to stimulate the people around you? Are you a friendly and patient person who can create an environment where team members feel comfortable asking and answering questions? Can you accept that tough transformational issues will require extensive thought and collaboration and that you are part of the team?

For too long, senior managers have attempted to solve complex problems with a top-down approach, but as they often aren’t on the front line working with those issues themselves, their advice often has gaps. Transformational leaders show humility, probe issues with the right questions, and let team members with relevant professional knowledge and experience provide input.

Create a Democracy

It’s a truth we can see throughout history that with great change comes great conflict, and it will continue to be true as we move into the future. Knowing truth, and the proven benefits of democratic behavior, you can apply a transformational leadership style by implementing voting and surveying tools to gather opinions. By creating a democratic working relationship with your team, you can build trust and gain support for a change.

There are many online tools for polling and voting. Surveying, too, gives employees the opportunity to share their thoughts while maintaining their anonymity, and it can be these faceless opinions that drive change. Allowing teams to vote on their own futures will also give them a feeling of greater autonomy in their work.

Think, Plan and Act Transparently

These three methods for applying a transformational leadership style in the digital era have one thing in common: transparency. Communicating well and provoking debate will improve transparency, as will seek collaborative input.

The digital era has created ambiguity and constant change, but it’s also led to interesting technological complexity and competitor disruption. Being a transformational leader who demonstrates the belief that your team is capable of taking initiative can make juggling all of these considerations less of a burden.