What do agile leaders do and how does this differ from traditional leadership?
In one sense, you might consider agile leadership to be simply “good leadership” or “healthy leadership”. However, agile leadership is critical in terms of the complex, uncertain, and rapidly changing environments we work in. This article highlights some of the key behaviors/benefits agile leadership provides…
Agile Leadership is the ability make better decisions and take more effective action amid complexity, uncertainty and rapid change.
Agile Leaders…
- Communicate a clear vision, align employees to that vision, and allow for adaptation in execution toward that vision – recognizing that most discovery and learning occur during execution.
- Employ a growth-mindset enabling them to value diversity, be open to other ideas, seek feedback, and improve their own capabilities – rather than relying on what has worked for them in the past.
- Are self-aware of their own biases and triggers to remain in a constructive and creative mindset fostering a healthy, collaborative, trust-oriented, and productive organizational culture.
- Improve decision making, team collaboration and business results when operating in highly complex, uncertain, inter-dependent and rapidly changing environments by integrating the value stream.
- Engage employees without over-influencing or micromanaging them through inquiring before advising, active listening to align their thinking, and exploring alternatives to foster creative possibilities.
- Increase employee satisfaction, engagement and creativity through empowerment and other catalyst behaviors – reducing employee turnover and developing employee ownership, collaboration and productivity.
- Diversify risk through identifying and testing assumptions, experimenting with new approaches, collaborating with customers, delivering incremental value, and seeking feedback earlier and more often.
- Foster organizational adaptivity enabling them to more effectively break down traditional silos, collaborate to solve difficult problems and better align toward corporate goals and customer needs.
- Improve outcomes through balancing short-term business results with long-term organizational health to enable early and frequent value delivery combined with sustained growth.
- Catalyze change, experiment with new ideas, and a foster a growth-mindset within their organizations to adapt to the changing economy, technology and the market.
