How to improve leadership agility
In unpredictable times, leading with agility is essential – and the world today seems more volatile than ever. A global economic recession combined with accelerated digital transformation has changed the entire business landscape. Technology is changing our lives and work in new ways. Leaders have a choice: Lead with agility or become a chokehold on their business.
Facing this choice, some business owners have realized they are more agile than they thought. Others have discovered they need to work on their agility leadership skills. One thing is certain: As markets continue to evolve at a faster and faster pace, everyone can benefit from learning how to improve leadership agility.
What does it mean to lead with agility?
Leading with agility means that you are able to make tough decisions in complex, fast-changing scenarios. It means you don’t hold on to the past – you let go of old ways of thinking and change course in an instant when you receive new information. You don’t accept fear of failure in business and you quickly recover after a setback. You are willing to learn how to improve leadership agility even more. You adapt, overcome and survive.
All great leaders have developed certain skills that allow them to inspire others. Agile leadership puts more emphasis on quick thinking, adaptability and decision-making. Some common principles of agile leadership are:
Creativity
Leading with agility involves quickly adapting to new situations as they arise. You’ll often need to think of creative solutions that allow you to solve both short- and long-term problems.
Collaboration
No successful person got where they are alone. Agile leaders are humble. They know that great ideas can come from anywhere, and they ask for feedback and create a collaborative problem-solving environment.
Confidence
Not everyone can make big decisions. It takes a deep belief in your skills and knowledge and the inner strength to accept the consequences of your actions.
CANI
As long as you commit to constant and never-ending improvement (CANI), you can develop agility leadership skills. This mindset will get you far in business and in life.
Why is agile leadership important?
Leading with agility improves your ability not only to respond to events quickly, but to make the right decision. When the shift to remote work happened, did you embrace it? Did you invest in employee well-being and give them the tools they needed to succeed? Those are signs of agile leadership. Google immediately reworked its policies and was one of the first companies to extend working from home, showing why they are one of the most agile companies on the planet.
Do you keep an eye on your market and prepare for coming changes? WordPress.com is one example of a million-dollar company that already had a 100% remote workforce – and didn’t just survive the recession, but thrived. By improving your leadership skills and changing the way you think about the future, adopting the principles of agile leadership can actually impact your bottom line.
How to improve leadership agility
Tony tells us that success in life is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics, and that’s especially true in situations that call for agility leadership skills. Adopt the mindset of a winner and develop with these five strategies.
1. Connect with your purpose
Leading with agility doesn’t mean that you don’t have a plan. In fact, the foundation of true agile leadership is a deep sense of purpose. As Tony says, “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” Your purpose is the north star that allows you to solve problems with agility, but stay on track to your ultimate goal.
2. Control your emotions
Leading with agility requires the ability to think critically, without letting emotions cloud your judgment. Agile leaders never make rash or ill-informed decisions, yet they take action quickly and decisively. To find this balance, you must learn how to control your emotions. Recognize and learn from them in the moment, but make decisions with an eye on the future.
3. Ask the right questions
Successful people ask better questions, and as a result they get better answers. They don’t stop there. They allow those answers to change their minds and help them grow as leaders and people. They know others’ strengths and expertise and can leverage them to help solve problems. They involve all levels of their organization because they know that different perspectives and insights only make leading with agility easier.
4. Transform your perspective
When there is a problem in your path, do you let it stop you? Or do you find a way to go around it, over it or through it? Agile leaders don’t let problems slow them down. They’ve transformed their perspective so that they don’t even see problems – in their minds, obstacles are opportunities in disguise. Agile leaders are always looking for the lesson so that they can apply it to their next big decision.
5. Develop emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence, or the ability to see and understand others’ feelings, is a vital agility leadership skill. It’s what allows you to not only “read the room” but to adjust your leadership style depending on what will be most effective in that moment. It also allows you to build rapport, the first step toward influencing others. After all, there is no leading with agility if no one will follow you.
Ready to lead your company into the future?
Unlock all the principles of agile leadership and learn how to put them into action at Business Mastery.