Leadership in the Digital Age: Insights from Faisal Hoque

In an era of massive change and digital transformation, effective leaders must possess unique qualities and strategies to navigate complexity, drive innovation and inspire their teams. In a conversation with host Jim Marous on the Banking Transformed podcast, bestselling author Faisal Hoque, winner of Deloitte Technology’s Fast 50 designation, shares his insights on leadership in the digital age, drawing from his extensive experience working with Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. Department of Defense and as an entrepreneur.

Q: What are some of the key characteristics of a future-ready leader?

Faisal Hoque: If you look inside and outside an organization, it’s a very complex environment because of geopolitics, economic conditions, technology and the changing workforce. The subject matters are becoming more granular and specific, so leaders navigating an organization can’t know everything. They have to get the most out of the people inside and outside their organization.

This means having that transformational element that allows you to create and communicate a vision, rallying people within and outside the organization behind what you’re trying to execute. That’s the fundamental role of a leader.

Q: How has effective leadership changed compared to the past?

Hoque: In the past, leadership was often very command-and-control oriented. You’d say, “Here’s our goal. This is what we’re going to do in the next 90 days, six months, or a year. If you don’t meet these goals, you’re going to get fired. It’s my way or the highway.”

Today, however, employees can easily move to another company, often without even leaving their homes. The competition for talent is fierce and getting the best out of that talent requires a different approach.

Fostering a Culture of Collaboration and Innovation

Q: How important is collaboration and interconnectedness in today’s business environment?

Hoque: Creativity may start as a solo act. Someone thinks of an idea or solution that could change a company’s business model or progress. But in today’s complex organizational and market environment, creativity or innovation is not sustained or even created unless it’s collaborative. A multidisciplinary approach is required to build anything sustainable.

Connectivity comes in with the recognition that I can connect my thoughts and ideas with the needs and expertise of others within my ecosystem. You have to be a very self-aware leader or individual who knows your weaknesses and deficiencies as well as your strengths and be able to rally people who add the missing ingredients to create the final offering.

Q: How can leaders encourage a culture of innovation within their organizations?

Hoque: The best leaders are champions of a change culture driven by nonstop learning and change. But you can’t do change for change’s sake. It has to be managed and orchestrated based on your goals and objectives.

Change also comes from having the right processes, tools and technology to help you make decisions. It’s like flying a plane — you have your navigation board. You don’t want to fly blind because you’re going to hit something.

Navigating Change and Transformation

Q: How can leaders effectively communicate their vision for change and get buy-in from their team?

Hoque: It’s really about people. They have to know why they’re doing what they’re doing, why it matters to them and how they’re going to do it. Those are the three key things.

If you say we need to enter a different market, you have to explain why and how it impacts them as individuals. Will it allow them to develop new skills? Will it enable them to earn more money? Will it provide greater job satisfaction because they’re making a global impact with the products they’re producing?

Q: What strategies can leaders use to continuously adapt and evolve?

Hoque: I prescribe a five-step process that starts with learning and studying, then creating a path forward, monitoring and navigating, taking a pause and reevaluating what works and what doesn’t. This process allows you to constantly reinvent yourself as an individual and as an organization. They’re all interconnected.

Q: How can leaders better understand and align with employee motivations?

Hoque: Change and transformation aren’t one-time events; they’re cultural. There’s a saying, “Leaders create leaders.” I like to modify that: the right leader creates processes that constantly change the culture, fostering innovation and creativity in line with external developments.

When you do this, it’s not dependent on you alone. It’s an engine — a cultural engine that you have to establish.

Q: What role does empathy play in effective leadership?

Hoque: The greatest CEOs focus on this element, which comes from the constant practice of empathy and mindfulness. You have to constantly try to learn about other people, which is hard because we’re all very self-absorbed. We like to focus on our needs and goals, not necessarily on what other people need and want.

The Impact of AI on Leadership and Organizations

Q: How is AI changing the expectations of leadership?

Hoque: AI is going to change everything because it has the enormous capability of taking vast amounts of data and presenting it to you in intelligent form at a speed and computing power we’ve never seen before. That’s what AI means at a fundamental level.

For example, if you’re a doctor with a difficult cancer patient, you’ll be able to explore possible treatments in minutes rather than days of research. Or, if you’re a researcher wanting to know best practices to improve your organization, you can find that information very quickly.

Q: What opportunities and challenges does AI present for leaders and organizations?

Hoque: As a leader, you have to be very conscious of both the opportunities to do good and the need for governance to prevent falling into traps. You need to be aware of the potential for misusing this power, which could create all kinds of negative elements in society and within your organization.

Everyone has the opportunity to prepare for this. The world as we know it — how we work, play, govern and communicate — is all going to change and we’re seeing this now. Every day, things change in terms of the information we get, how we communicate and how we work.

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Building Resilient Organizations

Q: How can leaders build resilient organizations that can weather uncertainty and disruption?

Hoque: Building resilience starts with recognizing that change is constant. You have to have a very clear vision of where you want to go, but you also need to be flexible in how you get there. It’s about creating an organizational structure and culture that can adapt quickly to new challenges and opportunities.

One key aspect is diversification — not just in terms of products or services, but also in thinking and problem-solving approaches. You want a mix of people with different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. This diversity helps you see challenges from multiple angles and come up with innovative solutions.

Another crucial element is investing in your people’s skills and capabilities. The organizations that weather storms best have invested in their people’s ability to learn, adapt and take on new challenges. This might mean providing training opportunities, encouraging cross-functional projects, or even supporting employees in pursuing further education.

Q: How does transparency factor into building organizational resilience?

Hoque: Transparency is absolutely critical. In times of uncertainty or disruption, people crave information. If you’re not transparent, people will fill in the gaps with their own assumptions, which are often worse than reality.

As a leader, you need to be open about the organization’s challenges. Share what you know, what you don’t know, and what you’re doing to find out more. This builds trust and helps everyone feel like they’re part of the solution.

But transparency isn’t just about sharing information downward. It’s also about creating channels for information to flow upward. You need to create an environment where people feel safe bringing problems or concerns to light. This early warning system can help you identify and address issues before they become crises.

Remember, resilience isn’t about avoiding all problems — that’s impossible. It’s about creating an organization that can respond effectively to whatever challenges arise. That comes from having a clear vision, a diverse and skilled workforce and a culture of openness and continuous improvement.

Assessing and Improving Leadership Effectiveness

Q: How can leaders accurately assess their own effectiveness?

Hoque: Whenever I go into an organization, especially complex ones, I ask the leader to give me open access to their people so I can talk to them. The reflection of the organization isn’t what the leader says; it’s the people in the organization.

I usually talk to rank-and-file employees as well as senior and mid-level management. This gives you a good idea of where the organization stands. People will tell you whether they’re happy, whether they have clear direction, whether they’re making an impact and whether they lack processes or tools.

Q: What steps can leaders take to improve their skills and adapt to changing environments?

Hoque: You have to be inspirational. You have to influence and have emotional intelligence, but you also need processes and tools that make things debatable. If you don’t have these, you’re not going to succeed.

You also need to embrace the mindset that failures and false starts will happen and you’ll learn from them and move forward. If you punish people for not succeeding, nobody will be motivated to create anything new. This mentality of change comes from embracing failure and learning, asking, “What can we do better? How do we go from where we are today? How do we move forward?”

Learn more about leadership opportunities in banking.

Q: How important is continuous learning for leaders in today’s fast-paced business environment?

Hoque: It’s absolutely critical. The minute you succeed, you fail and the minute you overcome your failure, you go through this cycle again. Transformation is never a destination; it’s an ongoing journey. It requires more than just technology and momentary focus. It requires a long-term commitment and leadership, management and culture play the biggest roles in it.

As a leader, you can’t possibly know everything, especially given how specialized and granular subject matters are becoming. Your role is to recognize where and how to tap into internal and external resource pools, leveraging them and listening to them to navigate. The best leaders sit back and listen more than they react and do. A leader’s job is orchestration, not playing every instrument in the orchestra.

For a longer version of this conversation, listen to “Cultivating a Culture of Continuous Learning”, a podcast with Jim Marous, available here. This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Justin Estes is an award-winning writer, strategist, and financial marketing expert with expertise in banking, investments, and fintech. His clients include the NYSE, Franklin Templeton, Credit Karma, Citi and, UBS, and his work has appeared in Forbes, Barrons and ThinkAdvisor as well as The Financial Brand.