Being agile means being quick and vigilant. When combined with knowledge and insight, it is a great trait in a leader.
1. Being Receptive
We need to be more agile than ever before. Being agile means being open to adjusting, receiving feedback, and starting over when our work and environment change on a frequent basis. Create a vision for how your team, work, or organization will look in six months.
2. Being Accepting and Present
An agile leader has a "yes, and" mindset, is present in the moment and is open to new ideas and possibilities. They accept the given circumstances without resistance and leverage skills, talents and resources to meet the current need. With change being the only constant, agility allows leaders to release the need for absolute certainty to respond and lead with confidence in the face of ambiguity.
3. Collaborating
Leaders are only a few years into a continuous shift away from corporate hierarchy into building a collaborative network. We see the future of work being more collaborative, co-created and complex. Being able to adapt quickly as a leader to changes and putting the team at the center to solve problems is what keeps companies nimble and competitive.
4. Being Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Rigid leaders do what feels comfortable and familiar to them no matter the circumstance. Agile leaders adapt to current conditions, even if doing so makes them feel uncomfortable. Since we can predict that the business landscape will continue to change and evolve, agile leaders will get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 0801:12
5. Always Listening
An agile leader is always listening to their team, their markets, partners, clients and even competitors. They are ready to hear what needs to be heard and then do something meaningful with that information. They are not limited by the way it's always been done. In fact, they are suspicious of anything that's been done the same way for too long. They are the ultimate collaborator in all situations.
6. Learning Continuously
An agile leader takes the time to continuously listen and learn before responding rather than being reactive and making knee-jerk decisions. You can’t stop listening to employees and to customers ever, but certainly not during a crisis. As you listen and learn, you will adapt your approach to how you deliver the experience based on current or immediate needs and pain points.
7. Being Resilient
Think of agility as being resilient. A resilient leader understands that becoming resilient is about replenishing daily. It is also understanding we are like batteries and must recharge daily. When hard times hit, if you have done the recharging, then you can weather any storm. Agile leaders understand this and can pivot quickly without worry because they have prepared. Agility is about resilience.
8. Being Able to Deal with Frequent Disruption
The key agile leadership concepts I'm working on with clients are empowering their people, communicating way more than they think they need to, shifting from timelines to triggering events and being open to trying new things (even changing direction fast if it's not working out). We're living in a time of frequent disruption. To not just survive but thrive, we all get to be agile.
9. Being Curious
Agility requires adaptability, and adaptability requires the practice of constantly monitoring changing conditions and formulating possible responses. Curiosity is your superpower. If you are always curious, you are always learning new things, new ways of work and potential new approaches to solving old (or new) problems.
10. Operating from a Higher Level of Developmental Capacity
Only 10% of leaders are truly agile. They create contexts imbued with safety and trust where multiple differing perspectives are welcomed and integrated. They show appropriate vulnerability by knowing they don't have all the answers. They cultivate self-awareness and a reflective disposition. They are continually working on their craft, learning more about themselves and others.
11. Creating Inclusive and Empowered Teams
People often think an agile leader is just someone who can facilitate change quickly and efficiently. Being an agile leader is less about process and more about a mindset committed to encouraging teams to self-organize, think, act and make decisions without the boundaries of traditional hierarchical structures. Agile leaders go beyond the pivot to create inclusive and empowered teams.
12. Leading by Example
Are you really okay with experimentation and learning? Are you taking the risks to bring in the agile approach that you want your teams to embrace? Lead by doing the things you want your teams to do, not just telling them. Collaborate from the start on how you can implement new common values to create a greater goal for the company and then let your teams see you fighting to bring those values to them.
13. Cooperatining Courageously
Being agile has become a buzzword since we need innovation and we operate in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world. However, actions speak louder than descriptive words. Be a nimble manager by distributing power, decision making and leadership in your team. Practice courageous collaboration by reflecting and upgrading agreed metrics. Encourage disruptive questions. Be the change.
14. Adapting
The concept of an "agile leader" is an unfortunate subcategorization that is both vague and conceptually already covered in servant leadership. Agility, in terms of adaptability in decision making as well as process management, has and will be one of the cornerstones of time-tested business practices that have been successfully utilized for decades.
15. Being Flexible
In past generations, good leaders were judged by staying the course and not changing their minds or sticking to their original decisions like glue. Now, good leaders are those with good reality testing. They are those who can take current changes and trends into account, factor them into their decision making and set a more appropriate course based on new information without shame of changing direction.
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