What is Agile Leadership?
Agile Project Management has had tremendous success as a software development methodology. But since its inception, Agile has evolved outside of software development and is today used more broadly to manage teams and entire businesses. This has given rise to ‘Agile Leadership’, a term used to describe a culture rooted within the values and principles laid out in the Agile Manifesto for Software Development.
The table below highlight the main tenets of agile leadership (how I see it) and how it differs from traditional leadership styles.
It will be great to get your input on the seven characteristics below and if you feel something is missing or needs more clarity.
- Empowering vs Controlling
An agile leadership style empowers individuals to make key decisions instead of promoting a micromanagement ‘controlling’ culture where everything has to be approved from the top. A leader empowers by trusting its team to solve problems and deliver on the team goals. Often the leader provides the vision and strategy and leaves the ‘how’ to the team.
In a controlling culture, a strict hierarchy is followed. A command and control mindset erodes trust and stripes away autonomy.
2. Clear vs ambiguous objectives
An open, transparent and inclusive goal setting process gets buy in but also creates clarity on the team objectives. This is crucial for creating a strong alignment within the team and also providing autonomy to the team and individuals.
In teams where the communication around the goals is vague, one will find silos and disconnect within the team members.
3. Adaptive vs Rigid
In an agile organization, people and their input is given priority over processes. Experimenting and trying new ways of working is encouraged especially in view of changing context. A continuous improvement culture is developed by always seeking to improve.
Traditionally large corporations are rigid as high value is given to processes than individuals. A strong resistance to change prevents improvement opportunities. Such organizations often have infrequent reviews of individual and team performance and therefore few opportunities to reflect on changing requirements and identify improvements.
4. Learning vs Besserwisser
In a learning organization experimentation is encouraged. A fail fast, fail early culture is accepted with the aim of learning and growing. Curiosity is valued and therefore questions are encouraged. This is in contrast to the Besserwisser or know-it-all leadership style where one tries to maintain a facade of having all the answers. This is usually entrenched in a desire for perfection resulting in over planning and over preparation without added value.
5. Collaboration vs Competition
An agile mindset encourages collaboration where team and company goals are given priority over individual goals. Focus is on sharing information to help each other so that together the team can progress and produce more value. Customer collaboration is key, involving them as early as possible and as much as possible in the value creation process to receive early feedback.
A highly competitive team culture gets toxic very quickly as team members try to get ahead by whatever means possible instead of working cohesively as a team.
6. Positive Accountability vs Blame culture
Agile leadership creates accountability by setting clear objectives and agreeing upfront on commitments and priorities.Clarity on what everyone is accountable for and how it will impact the team goals, creates an innate drive to deliver.
Techniques like daily standups for updates and frequent check ins to monitor progress helps create focus and hold the team accountable. Check ins also identify delays and issues in a timely manner.
A blame culture that is quick at pointing fingers creates tension within the team and fear of failure that ultimately hinders risk taking and creativity.
7. Outcome vs output metrics
Traditional leadership styles create lots of metrics that are internally focused and don’t drive customer value. These include things like number of hours worked, number of lines of code etc. Agile leadership focuses on outcomes that drive customer value. Examples include working product delivered, customer retention etc.
These 7 tenants are dependent on each other for successful practice of Agile Leadership. However, I believe at the core lies TRUST. The most important job of a leader is to create trust, and there are many ways of doing that. (It deserves a blog post of its own- coming up next!)
But the first step is that you as leader trust your team before you expect them to trust you back.
It will be great to get your feedback on these seven aspects of Agile Leadership. Does it resonate?
What are your thoughts?
-Nada
with input from Fredrik Lied Larsen