What does a digital leader actually do?

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Ask most people to picture a digital leader, and they will probably describe someone who can code, understands infrastructure and digital architecture, or someone who is fluent in data and systems. That picture is not wrong, of course, but it’s limiting. It’s in the gap between that assumption and reality where a great deal of talent goes unrecognised. To tackle these assumptions, we explore the skills and capabilities needed for digital leadership in today’s world and why this matters for your career.

Table of contents:

  • Making the distinction between technology and strategy.

  • What digital leaders actually own.

  • Why this matters for your career.

Making the distinction between technology and strategy. 

Digital transformation has, after all, been driven largely by technology, but technical expertise is not the only prerequisite for digital leadership. They are strategists who operate at the intersection of technology, people, and organisational change. It’s a distinction that matters, and can result in organisations looking for the wrong people while it leads talented professionals to underestimate their own readiness. Giulia Colacicco, Chapter Lead Delivery Enablement Infra & Cloud at VodafoneZiggo and  RightBrains Digital Leadership Programme alumnus, articulates her view of a modern digital leader: “An impactful leader is someone able to harness their EQ, in-depth content knowledge, strategic thinking, and a drive for innovation,” she explains.  Whilst technical content is valuable, a focus on processes, mindset, and creativity is just as important and should also be cultivated,” she adds.

What digital leaders actually own.

In practice, digital leaders are responsible for four things that have little to do with writing code:

  1. Translating technology into business value.

Digital Leadership is about the ability to look at a new technology and ask not ‘how does it work’ but ‘what problem does it solve, and for whom?’ From there, the task is to communicate that answer to a board, a team, or a customer. This is a fundamentally strategic capability.

  1. Leading organisational change.

Digital transformation fails most often not because the technology was wrong, but because the people and processes around it were not brought along. Digital leaders hold responsibility for the human side of change: building trust, managing resistance, and creating conditions for adoption. Iris van der Hart, Director FttH Rollout at KPN and mentor in this year’s RightBrains Digital Talent Programme, explains that in a time of accelerated digital transformation and data-driven technological change, production can hold the focus. “I’m responsible for fibre rollout projects with my team, but the impact we make resonates beyond the delivery of the app or system. I try to remember that people, and the decisions we make together, are at the heart of it all.”  

  1. Driving cross-functional alignment.

Digital initiatives rarely sit within one department. Digital leaders work across finance, HR, operations, and commercial teams, acting as translators between technical teams and the rest of the organisation. The ability to build bridges, not silos, is non-negotiable. In the Deloitte Report titled ‘The future of Digital Leadership’, the widescale adoption of AI is addressed as a critical cross-functional conversation that digital leaders need to consider. “To be trusted in the era of autonomous systems, with AI as a stepping stone, organisations, governments and public service need to repeatedly prove that digital systems are acting as intended. Autonomy without evidence invites regulatory action, customer defection, public backlash, or loss of stakeholder confidence. Trust without autonomy risks slowness and loss of competitive edge. And autonomy without human oversight invites loss of control.”  

  1. Setting and owning the digital agenda.

At a senior level, digital leadership means shaping the organisation’s long-term relationship with technology, and not just responding to it. This requires vision, prioritisation, and the ability to make decisions despite uncertainty.

Why this matters for your career.

The professionals best positioned for digital leadership are often those who have spent years working with technology without labelling themselves as ‘technical’. They have sat in rooms where strategy met reality. They have managed stakeholders, navigated complexity, and made sense of systems without needing to build them. A great example of this lies within the journey of Merel Woudstra, Director of IT at the Randstad Group. Her career began not in IT but as an editor, with curiosity about the business world serving as the inciting incident that led her into digital technology. She didn't even enter through a technical door: her early career shift from broadcasting landed her in a role as an intermediary for secretaries at Randstad, immersing her in the business world through client calls and visits rather than code or systems. Leadership itself wasn't something she actively pursued either; it was a notion brought about by her superiors, and her course toward IT leadership had been set before she fully realised it. Her story is a reminder that digital leadership often grows out of curiosity, communication, and business acumen long before it grows out of a technical title.

If that sounds familiar, the question worth asking is not whether you have the right background. The question is whether you have been given the frameworks, the language, and the visibility to step into the role that your experience has, in many ways, already prepared you for.

Ready to make the move? RightBrains’ Digital Leadership Programme is designed for experienced professionals in digital and technology who are ready to move from operational expertise into strategic leadership. If the description in this article resonates, it may be worth a closer look.

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By Carine du Pisanie

Carine du Pisanie is the Director of Marketing and Operations for RightBrains and is passionate about creating meaningful content and value to women in digital technology. In her entrepreneurial area, she is fascinated with the intersection of creativity and technology in the age of AI.

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