Agile Leadership Principles: Where Companies Get Them?Wrong

An honest examination of common leadership shortcomings.

The 21st century is marked by increased complexity and ambiguity and most companies are still failing the future leadership challenge. 

I can attest to that. I’ve seen topics such as inclusion, diversity, social responsibility, and social networks move from obscurity to the top of the corporate vocabulary in a short space of around 10–15 years. 

I’ve watched and helped implement new and shiny ideas such as the 9 Agile Leadership Principles. And in my perception, all of the strategies that have been tested tend to look much better on paper than in reality.

The 9 Principles of Agile Leadership 

There is still a huge gap between what companies say they want to do and what they are actually doing.

I would like to contribute to this discussion from my perspective: a black, LGBT, middle-aged creative professional in a senior managerial role.

So here I’ll list all 9 principles of Agile Leadership and comment on how companies usually get them wrong.

1. Actions speak louder than words

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”—Gandhi 

The first principle of Agile Leadership is that actions should speak louder than words. You should not only help to promote positive change, you should be the change in want to see in the world. And, yet, we see beautiful words being shouted out daily by various corporations, but very little in terms of convincing actions to accompany them. 

A good example of this today would be a company that takes a ride in the #blacklivesmatter movement for marketing purposes but still have an all-white leadership team. This means they are condemning a symptom of racism without having a deeper reflection on the root of the problem. 

On the other side of the coin, here is an action that truly does speak louder than words: In 2020, Magazine Luiza, a Brazilian Department store, ran a trainee program exclusively for black applicants. 

In the 21st century, there is no more space for hypocrisy. Either you help fix the problems you talk about or don’t talk about them at all. 

2. Improved quality of thinking leads to improved outcomes

Agile leaders “take input from those closest to the problem and this goes some way to ensuring that they are in touch with reality rather than relying solely on electronic information to inform their decision making” — agilebusiness.org.

Too much emphasis is being put on big data, AI, and market research these days. Although these are necessary and powerful insight tools in today’s technological and social landscape, they cannot be the only ones. 

The best way to guarantee that your company will keep close contact with reality is to have a truly heterogeneous team and take their inputs into consideration. 

I see too many companies with teams that are far too homogeneous to deal with the complexities of the 21st century. And I am not only talking about social, gender, and racial homogeneity here. I am also talking about a homogeneous way of thinking. 

Human Resources need to start focusing less on academic achievements, such as an MBA, and more on life experience if they want to form a truly future-ready leadership team. 

3. Organisations improve through effective feedback

Agile leaders need to question their own organization in ways that are not always going to feel comfortable. Although much has been invested in feedback systems over the years, fear culture still restricts honest feedback from lower to higher management.

You can have the most sophisticated methods and systems in place to encourage an open feedback culture. But, if you don’t have the right type of leaders in a team who know how to make people feel safe, you will never achieve the level of honest feedback that is necessary for today’s complex environment. 

Honest feedback requires time, intention, and interaction between team members that go deeper than the day-to-day deliverables of the job. These interactions cannot be replaced by systems. 

4. People require meaning and purpose to make work fulfilling

“The work of the Agile Leader is to be aware of what is in the hearts and minds of their colleagues and then to unify and align those values into inspired action” — agilebusiness.org.

Although much has already improved in terms of work-life balance, purpose and job satisfaction, social inclusion, team collaboration, and feedback systems, the results are far from perfect and there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

Leaders who take a sincere interest in and can understand their teams and really care about their well-being, dreams, aspirations, and fears, are still few and far between. Most leaders are too busy stressing about tangible short term results to invest the time that is needed to create a sense of common purpose and meaning.

Team-building exercises can be fun but they do very little to achieve a deeper level of understanding between team members. One on one interactions are ideal, but they often demand time, and time is short for most leaders today. 

5. Emotion is a foundation to enhanced creativity and innovation

Companies still put too much emphasis on the skill sets that come from the left side of the brain, the rational side, and too little on the right, emotional side. Competition still comes before empathy in the corporate world. Financial growth still comes before personal growth. 

However, a truly agile leader knows that when individuals work with their emotions, they achieve more of their potential. And not allowing people an accessible, open, honest, and transparent environment in which they can feel free to explore and grow, they are unlikely to stay. 

According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trend Survey, the main why people quit their job is the inability to learn and grow.

Leadership scholar, Joseph Rost, talks about a post-industrial definition of leadership as “an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.” However, the quality of interaction between leaders and followers is often overlooked.

“Leadership is about transformation, all kinds of transformation” — Joseph Rost

A good leader is measured by the number of people they have impacted for the better. Not by where they’ve arrived on the career ladder. Not by the immediate results they brought to your company. It’s all about personal growth and how they can inspire others around them to grow and transform.

6. Leadership lives everywhere in the organization

Leadership is influenced by culture. These 9 principles should not be something your company leaders need to refer to on a daily basis or constantly talk about. It should be in their essence and rooted in the souls of everyone who works for your company. If you still need a checklist, it means that it’s not really in your culture.

7. Leaders devolve appropriate power and authority

“Agile Leaders recognise that people work best when they are enabled, engaged and energised. Empowering individuals is a necessary skill of the Agile Leader”

There is the time to teach, the time to learn, and the time to pass on the controls. However, there is a common view in the corporate world that if you let your employees do their own thing, chaos will reign.

To challenge this perspective, a Harvard professor recently conducted a study on mindfulness.

In the study, researchers took symphony musicians who were bored with their work, tired of playing the same piece over and over again under the controls of a maestro, and divided them into two groups. 

The first group would play as they normally would for their maestro. The second group was told to make their individual performances for themselves, adding their input in subtle new ways, and to play mindfully. 

When the researchers played the recordings for people who knew nothing about the study, they overwhelmingly preferred the mindfully played pieces. 

“So here we had a group performance where everybody was doing their own thing, and it was better. When people are doing their own thing in a rebellious way, yes, it might [end in chaos]. But if everyone is working in the same context and is fully present, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a superior performance.” — Ellen Langer, professor of Psychology at Harvard University and mindfulness researcher. 

8. Collaborative communities achieve more than individuals

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The quote above is often mistakenly attributed to Aristotle. And, although the idea has a fit with his teaching, the exact quote is actually more precisely associated with Gestalt Psychology. 

True Agile Leadership is what you achieve when you have an ecosystem of agile leaders working towards common goals. And for that to come true, it needs to expand to society, partners, and clients. 

One Agile Leader speaking to an audience of old school thinkers will not get very far in achieving much agility at all. The entire system must move together in the same direction. 

9. Great ideas can come from anywhere in the Organisation

Agile Leaders allow themselves to be open to the influence and ideas of others, regardless of their status or position.

The first challenge for Agile Leaders is to work on their ability to listen. The second challenge is the timeliness of input. Many leaders fail to involve team members until a process is already underway. 

Sharing information and inviting participation from employees in the planning stages of any action is much better than passing on fixed tasks on how they should be implemented. 

Takeaways

When it comes down to it, most of the setbacks we still face are directly related to an old corporate culture that is too focused on tangible short-term goals. 

Corporate values and lifestyle need to adapt to allow enough time for reflection and the redirection of energy towards intangible goals, such as the improvement of human to human interactions. 

I hope this article has helped you reflect on the reality and challenges of leadership in our day to day office lives and I look forward to hearing about your own experiences.

Thank you for reading.