Ola Gwozdz: Investigating leadership styles in today's digital landscape

How are today's industry leaders dealing with the rise of remote workspaces and flexi-hours?

Post-covid, employees have grown accustomed to a life of screen-sharing and slack messaging that it may be challenging for some leaders to stick to their office-bound management styles.

According to the O.C Tanner Leadership 2020 Report, employee experience is often dependent on what type of boss you have. As the report implies, traditional leaders have long been celebrated for using their power to take charge, make private decisions and to tell others what to do.

Yet modern leaders take a different approach. They share information openly and act as advocates for their employees, which creates a higher level of trust and promotes a sense of belonging.

This key shift from traditional to modern leadership practice hasn't gone unnoticed by University of York Data Philosopher Ola Gwozdz.

Ola is a Data Philosopher and Change Management Specialist with over a decade of experience in technology adoption in major construction projects (Olympics, CrossRail, Tideway) and has been awarded the Excellence in Research Award from the University of York.

Throughout her research, Ola explores the impact of diverse leadership on innovation and sustainability in the built environment. ​​

From various interviews with experienced and emerging industry leaders, Ola realises that modern leaders exceed most traditional management training.

So to further explore this shift in today's leadership practice, she is launching the People Innovation Lab.

''This will be a collaborative programme designed to investigate, measure and model new ways of leadership in the context of diversity, sustainability and technology by engaging in the science related to human capacity, emotional agility and a wholehearted leadership.''

Her Knowledge Exchange initiative involves individual leaders, organisations and well as the wider industry.

Its key aim is to ‘Innovate’ in the field of human capacity and condition, with the outcome of improving productivity, creativity whilst preventing burn-out, cynicism and disillusion.

''These series of short experimental projects (labs) are based on simple and manageable, research-based micro-steps which are then recorded and analysed to produce data around what works and what doesn’t in a modern organisation. What makes us feel alive and inspires positive and creative outcomes.''

For Data Philsopher Ola, establishing edupreneurial initiatives like the People Innovation Lab enables us to challenge the changing world around us.

Her short projects (labs) aim to produce data around what works and what doesn’t in a modern organisation. Thus helping future leaders to shape the impact of employee experience, engagement and innovation.

''We are all students here on this planet, so the important thing for me is to be an agent of positive change and of critical and creative thinking wherever I find myself in this world!''

Would you like to find out more about the People Innovation Lab?

If so, reach out to Ola via her Medium profile or visit her University of York profile here!