The principles of agile leadership and why it matters

What is agile leadership?

Agile leadership refers to a style of management that enables individuals, teams, and companies to change quickly in response to current challenges. It’s marked by a high degree of adaptability, autonomy, and flexibility that allows people to stay inspired, productive, and on the path to success regardless of any external circumstances. This is one of the most effective leadership styles you can have in an industry or environment marked by frequent change and disruption.

How do I become an “agile leader?” Why does it matter?

In order to bring agile leadership to life in your team, there are a number of different principles and practices that you will have to be embrace that deviate from traditional management principles, to include:

Reframe your perspective on change

In traditional management styles, change is often viewed as a disruption or an inconvenience. That’s natural, as a change often means that people and teams will have to adjust established processes, schedules, and more to make something happen. People are naturally averse to change, especially when they have ways of doing things that work.

Agile leaders take a different approach to change. In agile leadership, change is not only expected but embraced when it happens. Each change is taken as an opportunity to learn, experiment, and grow to turn over a better end result to the customer. Agile leaders operate with the understanding that their team needs to be as fluid and adaptable as the market to keep their needs satisfied.

Encourage open communication

In agile leadership, communication is the name of the game. Be open and transparent with your team so that they know what to expect as much as possible. By enabling everyone on your team to make the most informed decisions in their role, you increase the likelihood the end product they turn over will match or exceed the needs of what they’ve been tasked with.

Establish as many feedback loops as possible, both internally and externally. Constant feedback from customers and other stakeholders, alongside free-flowing information and data among teams and leaders will provide you with the data and insights you need to make your agility meaningful and impactful.

Promote autonomy

As an agile leader, your job is to provide the broad vision and direction for your team to follow. Empower your team with what they need to follow that vision and let them make decisions and own the responsibility for their outcomes. Micromanagement is antithetical to agility. Give your people some breathing room, trust them to deliver, and give them support along the way.

Examples of agile leadership in action

Some of the most successful business leaders in the world, including Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg, have applied the principles of agile leadership to help propel their organizations to the top of their respective industries.

Bezos makes it a point to support a team’s decision if the members believe it’s the right choice, even when he himself doesn’t see it the same way, committing himself fully to the path that the team believes in. If the decision turns out to be right, then the company has another success on their hands. If it fails, Amazon corrects course quickly and learns from the mistake. This unafraid-to-fail mentality has been a major part of what has earned Amazon a dominant status across multiple different industries.

Sheryl Sandberg, who served as the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook/Meta, ensured that decisions were the result of the collective input of all relevant contributors rather than just top-level executives, and remained unafraid at the prospect of organizational failure. Sandberg also emphasized the importance of empathy and flexibility with employees, encouraging leaders to respect their personal lives and focus on building relationships.

We at Dignify have helped many of our clients act on the principles of agile leadership through our Project Team Alignment process. Recently, we had a client of ours encountering difficulties on a major project, and they weren’t certain why that was happening. Through the Project Team Alignment process, we helped the executive leadership team of this client discover through a series of surveys and interviews that there was a lot of conflict among the field leadership team of the project. Upon discovering these circumstances, the executive leadership team didn’t hesitate to pivot quickly and focus in on bringing the field leadership team together to build mutual understanding and resolve longstanding conflicts.

The bottom line

In embracing agile leadership, you position yourself and your team to thrive in environments marked by rapid change and uncertainty. Agile leadership creates a culture of adaptability and innovation that not only strengthens team communication, engagement, and ownership, but also ensures that your organization remains competitive and resilient in the face of evolving challenges. As demonstrated by leaders like Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg, this approach can be applied to outstanding success in highly competitive industries. Anyone can harness the benefits of agile leadership – all it takes is a willingness to communicate, acquire the relevant information, and a willingness let people lean into their strengths and adapt accordingly.