Vicki Swisher - Agile Leadership in Action

Today, everyone is talking about agile leadership. Fortunately for UnitedHealth Group, their Vice President of Talent Management, Development, and Learning, Vicki Swisher has first-hand experience in?agile leadership. In fact, Vicki authored a book on the topic, titled Becoming an Agile Leader.

In her book, Vicki shares that to be an agile leader requires developing learning agility, which is defined by five key attributes: self-awareness, mental agility, people agility, change agility, and results agility. ?Vicki’s own career journey offers useful parallels to some of those same agile leadership characteristics.

Self-Awareness

Vicki did not have a traditional career path to her current role. She started in public relations for a hotel business and soon moved into sales, where she led her first team. It was in that role that Vicki discovered helping her team be successful inspired her; she knew she wanted to make helping people learn and grow central to her work. It was this “ah ha” moment about herself that led Vicki to take her first steps into a career focused on learning and development by becoming a sales trainer.

Mental Agility

Vicki is the first American-born member of her family. She was also the first to graduate from college. Her English mother and Italian father encouraged her to excel and to seek out opportunities to learn and grow. The “positive push to excel” she got from her family early in life supports Vicki constantly learning new things. “I try to take lessons from everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and figure out how to apply those learnings,” Vicki likes to share. It is no surprise, then that Vicki’s mantra is “I’m still learning” from the great Renaissance artist, Michelangelo.

People Agility

Being an agile leader isn’t just about the internal dimensions of self-awareness and mental agility—it's also about how agile you are in the external world and in relationship with others. To illustrate this point, Vicki shares that people agility enabled her to change her paradigm around what it means to be client-centric.?She had joined an organization that had intellectual property to protect, and she saw colleagues acting in ways she didn’t at first perceive to be “client-centric.” Vicki stayed curious about her colleagues’ perspectives, learned from them, and ultimately adopted a new approach to client-centricity that made sense in that organization. Thanks to this experience and other hard-earned lessons, Vicki’s motto is now, “lead with empathy and assume positive intent.”

Change Agility

Vicki has simple coaching for change agility: “Don’t assume there is only one answer; there usually isn’t.” Stay open to different perspectives and possibilities. Be curious about what could work rather than be attached to what you assume will work. And when the person who needs to change is you, Vicki advises, “Reflect on your current skills and find opportunities to apply them in a new context AND be able to tell your story.”

Results Agility

Last, but certainly not least, Vicki knows that as leaders we must focus on results.?While volatility, ambiguity, and constant change may make creating results uncertain, Vicki says it is wise to lean into new situations with optimism and remind yourself, “I will get good at this.”?

Interested in learning more from Vicki? Join NIIT Principal Consultant Pooja Singh Mehta, Vicki, and our panel of twelve outstanding women leaders for “From Glass Slippers to Glass Ceilings | Celebrating Women Leaders in Learning” on Wednesday, March 30, 2022 at 4:00 PM CEST | 10:00 AM EDT | 2:00 PM GMT.

Click here to register.