How can Agile leaders help their teams deal with uncertainty?

In my experience 1.Building trust and collaboration 2.Allowing team members to express themselves without judgment 3.Coaching team members to rise above what they can't control

Agile leaders play a critical role in helping their teams deal with uncertainty effectively. Here are strategies and practices that Agile leaders can employ to support their teams in navigating uncertain situations: 1. Provide Clear Vision and Purpose 2. Embrace Agile Principles 3. Encourage Open Communication 4. Promote Psychological Safety 5. Coach and Mentor 6. Provide coaching and mentorship to team members, helping them develop skills to adapt to changing circumstances and make informed decisions. 7. Empower Teams 8. Promote Iterative Approach of working 9. Retrospective and foster continous improvement 10. Effective Risk Management 11. Encourage Cross-Functional Collaboration 12. Support Continuous Learning 13. Lead by Example

Agile leaders can support their teams in dealing with uncertainty by fostering a culture of adaptability and experimentation. Encourage open communication, embrace change as an opportunity for learning, and provide guidance while allowing autonomy. Establish a mindset that values continuous improvement, risk-taking, and collaboration, empowering team members to navigate uncertainty with confidence and resilience.

An example that I have seen is, teams that have psychological safety are free to share their vulnerabilities with leaders, and are able to provide constructive feedback which helps to reduce uncertainty and foster innovation/ creativity. It takes time to build psychological safety but the quickest way is for leaders to model the behavior that they would like to see.

Establishing a culture of psychological safety is crucial for a team to be able to work with uncertainty, express their feelings or doubts and feel supported.

Adapting to change is one of the crucial aspects of Agile. Some of the key concepts a team or team leaders could follow. 1) We all know planning is really important, and there is a saying that "well planned is half done". So its inevitable. But the flip-side is bad too if you end up doing upfront planning for way ahead. Because there is a also a saying "Change is the only constant". So the right approach here is to do high level planning for "next" and "later" and detailed planning for "now". 2) Have rituals and practices for getting feedback. Eg Showcases with important stakeholders. Checking for OKRs or any metrics periodically. To something as simple as doing "Desk Check" for each story developed. Also retrospectives help a lot.

I wholeheartedly agree with agile leaders supporting teams to navigate through and appreciate 'change and feedback' because this helps the squad to quickly close the feedback loop, helps the team develop a strong brand of meeting the customers expectations, foster strong collaborative environment business and technology, enabling teams to deliver state of the art products and lastly it builds value in each phase of the development lifecycle which ultimately reduces cost and rework. That is why change and feedback should be considered a norm, and it is recommended to be built in each step of the squad's way of working. I would dare say, agile leaders should not wait until the Demo but rather start as early as product refinement.

Focusing on outcomes and values is ultimately what is going to be the benchmark for successful projects. Currently companies are being careful what they invest in, and as an agile leader, I recommend that we socialize our teams to align with the concept of outcome and values. And we need to communicate this to the wider audience. This will ultimately give your teams more visibility with the organization while delivering on a product that positively impacts the customer. What I have done is try to encourage the Product Manager to share the vision with the team. Spend around 30 mins understanding what the vision means to the team and to business. Then ensuring we both align. Quicker to market, builds trust, communication and transparency.

Teams and individuals usually get struck in the BAU of churning out work and get sucked in the vicious cycle. While they still deliver work, any chances of getting better or optimal or innovations dont happen. Some strategies would help them - 1) Having a 10% capacity for every team to do something new. For eg a team which hasnt done TDD, can use the capacity to start righting unit tests. 2) Having Community of Practices and encouraging teams to attend them. Lunch and Learn sessions, Seminars on interesting topics, hackathons, brainstorming, developing POCs, etc can be tried. Again all these can be done in the extra 10% capacity too. 3) Encourage sharing POVs. You never know where great ideas could come from. Taking in team's inputs.

I would also like to add that agile leaders need to support the team by building into the capacity or sprints 'training, knowledge transfer, etc.'. Learning takes time, and effort. And this investment will ultimately yield value for the team. And accelerate them on the path of becoming high performing teams.

In this day and age this is something which is taking a back seat. It might work very well now. But this is something which would definitely affect people and in turn the outcomes seriously. Some strategies. 1) Creating a sense of purpose, rather than making people follow orders would directly enable people to be proactive rather than being pushed. 2) Having a work culture which is open to ideas, treating people fair and equal, rewarding where its due, creating work life balance, etc, etc. 3) Having proper career path, where individuals have set goals and see a visible career progression and needed guidance. 4) A reachable people/HR team when ever there is a a need. 5) Organisation open to feedback, by any form possible.

Mental Health is very important! - Begin by Creating positive cultures - Empowering persons to respectfully speak up, 'If you see something, say something' - Sustainable sprints - Zero tolerance for bullies - no matter who they are - Practice Growth Mindset Principles