Agile leadership is the requirement for new managers to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment. An agile leader promotes adaptability, collaboration, and continuous improvement amongst teams. Managers, by applying effective agile practices, empower their teams to improve team performance and drive success.

Key agile metrics of leadership track effectiveness and adaptability, and core agile development of skills empower teams. Research proves that companies led by agile executives outperform their peers 3.5 times more often.

Agile leaders spread leadership among many, giving increasingly important lateral managers roles – such as product owners or scrum masters – significant content and methodological leadership. Agile coaching and workshops can bring in a sea of change in the manager’s capabilities. 

In this blog, we will see how the adoption of an agile mindset gives you the power to transform your leadership approach and drive sustainable success in your organization.

Understanding the Foundations of Agile Leadership

Agile Leadership is a management style focused on flexibility, empowerment, and responsiveness to change. Moving away from top-down management styles, the Agile leader is concerned with creating an environment where teams self-organize, innovate, and grow in their work. This would be particularly helpful for new managers who have to lead complex and diverse groups in dynamic settings.

(Source: management30)

“Agility means you’re faster than your competition. Agile time frames are measured in weeks and months, not year”. —Michael Hugos, agile network architect.

What is Agile Leadership?

Agile is an organizational philosophy built on flexibility, collaboration, and responsiveness. It motivates the leader to offer a working environment where teams will thrive, become innovative, and thus be adaptive to changing circumstances. Agile leaders empower their teams, create a culture of trust, and drive continuous improvement.

(Source: McKinsey)

Agile Leadership Theory

The agile principles and theory take the view that organizations need to respond to the changing market or customer needs. Agile leaders develop a mindset focused on adaptability and innovativeness, with an understanding that traditional hierarchical leadership structures more often than not hinder responsiveness. Adopting agile theory will help the leader in building a culture that aspires to collaboration, learning, and growth.

How Does Agile Leadership Differ from Standard Leadership?

What differs in Agile stewardship from more conventional approaches is the way long-term planning and decision-making take place. In a more formal approach to leadership, big decisions are made by the “higher-ups”, and planning is typically made around a long-term plan that has some sort of distant goal.

(Source:linkedin)

In contrast, an agile approach to management would be far more holistic, with decision-making done around new issues, new goals, and what is currently going on. This method puts a strong emphasis on culture and community to ensure the involvement of all the organization’s members in decision-making—not just a hierarchical approach.

The Challenges of COVID-19 further underlined the need for agility. According to a study, 93% of business units that fully transformed into an Agile model outperformed those that were not in this category prior to the current pandemic (Global SAFe Summit, 2020).

Measuring Agile Metrics for Leadership Effectiveness

The following agile metrics for leadership can be used by organizations to measure the effectiveness of agile Stewardship:

1. Employee Engagement: The employee engagement level metrics explain whether leaders are truly developing a positive work environment or not. The agile principle goes hand in hand with highly engaged workers.
2. Project Success Rates: The success rates of projects can be termed to evaluate how much continous leadership practices have influenced an organization. Agile methodologies commonly produce higher success rates of projects in contrast to traditional approaches.
3. Time to Market: The time taken to launch a product or service in the market itself could be considered to be one measure of the efficiency of agile development. Agile organizations face reduced time frames due to their responsive nature.
4. Team Productivity: It will help in assessing the team’s productivity by performance metrics, hence depicting improvement areas in current function while showcasing agile practices.

Do You Know? Before the current pandemic, 93 percent of business units that had fully adopted an agile model did better than those that hadn’t.

Transformative Agile Leadership Practices for Modern Managers

1. Co-Creation and Visioning

Agile leaders co-create with their teams a vision and a direction. Through this approach, ownership and commitment are created amongst the people who constitute the working team since all are invited to share ideas on how things can be done better. By asking team members to participate in visioning, agile leaders come up with aligned and motivated teams toward common goals.

2. Facilitation and Support

Instead of control, agile leaders provided an environment in which teams could thrive. They provided the support and tools necessary for such individuals to take an innovative program upon themselves in a drive toward independent decisions. It improves not only morale but also engenders accountability and innovation.

3. Encouragement to experiment

Agile leaders encourage experimentation, whereby teams try out new ideas and learn from the results. This is an iterative process in search of innovation and resilience while the teams are learning how to move fast due to changing circumstances.

4. Leading by Example

Agile leaders lead by example. Living by agile assessment with adaptability and open-mindedness, showing commitment toward continuous improvement tends to inspire similar agile behaviors in teams. Leading by example sets up a feeling for the culture regarding agility within an organization.

The Need for Agile Leadership Skills in Today’s Business Landscape

To this effect, agile leaders must develop a variety of skills, which include:

1. Adaptability: The leader needs to be adaptive to the environmental situation regarding both strategic and tactical vision. 
2. Emotional Intelligence: Understanding and managing one’s own emotions—and others’—with whom the individual interacts, to facilitate collaboration between all parties and earn trust.
3. Communication: Clearly conveying ideas and views to others and encouraging the same in open dialogue.
4. Coaching and Mentoring: Assisting in the growth and agile development of staff through guidance and feedback.
5. Decision Making: Make data-driven decisions based on your insight, supplemented by insights from team members.

DO YOU KNOW? According to a new study by Betterworks, agile management supports continuous learning and innovation-oriented settings. This, in essence, compels people to be more engaged and motivated in work.

Key Agile management Questions: That Every Leader Should Ask for Continuous Improvement

New managers might ask themselves the following questions to accelerate their agile leadership practices:

1. Empowerment: How will I empower my team to own their work?
2. Communication: What will I do to create an open communication and collaboration environment?
3. Safe Environment: How can I contribute to a safe environment for experimentation and learning?
4. Modeling Behaviors: How am I modeling agile leadership behaviors for my team?

These key components can help newly minted managers in the leadership development of agile capabilities, which support high-performing teams and organizational success.

The above works, studies, and paper discussed to date explain the effective factors in determining agile methodology research conducted by “A Research on Determining Effective Factors in Agile Leadership”, by Akkaya, Cavaliere, Aktaş, and Kargın, 2022. Agile leaders Favor Teamwork Flexibility in Adopting Change in Modern Rapid Business Environment: Enhances Employee Engagement and Project Performance which revs up Total Agile Thinking with Innovation and Pliability in Team.

How Can New Managers Achieve Success with AITD?

At the present times, agile management is a serious business mandate if new managers are to drive success in an organization. Agile leaders emphasize adaptiveness, collaboration, and a focus on people. They drive innovation and foster continuous improvement in the work culture.

In adopting agile management practices, new managers can empower their teams, increase productivity, and feel more confident about embracing change.

Amity Institute of Training and Development (AITD) identifies agile development as important for a new manager and offers a line of agile leadership workshops and coaching to help in the acquisition of skills and mindset. In workshops on agile framework under the key themes, AITD defines and explains the Agile leader and Agile leadership practices, and agile leadership theory.

1. Agile management Skills and Behaviors

AITD develops some agile management skills in managers, which involve adaptability, emotional intelligence, and communication. New managers exercise these capabilities when wading through complexities and forming collaborative teams.

2. Agile coaching and leadership development

 Through one-on-one coaching, AITD will help fine-tune the practice of agile among leaders in order for them to support further growth and innovation of teams. Such agile coaching deals with real applications of agile theory.

3. Agile mindset and assessment of leadership

AITD fosters an agile mindset in the background of continued learning and resilience. It helps leaders recognize their areas of strengths and weaknesses so that their efforts are aligned with agile values.

Agile management workshops at AITD provide hands-on experience with Agile methodologies and agile networks, effective communication techniques, and strategies for creating a culture of continuous improvement. Coupled with the development of one’s skills through AITD’s agile governance, this will help fledgling managers further their practice and keep up with the latest innovative leadership trends.

Bring your leadership to a new height with AITD Agile Mentorship Programs. Contact us to discuss how we at AITD can help you on your path to an Agile Leader.