What does agile leadership mean for you as a leader?
Leadership in an agile context is distributed across multiple formal and informal leaders - and largely distributed to the self-organized team. As an agile leader, it is therefore essential that you promote and lead on agile values and principles. It's about focusing more on collaboration, managing change and creating value early and continuously - and less on control, extensive documentation and sticking to a plan. To succeed as an agile leader, you also need to trust that the task at hand will be accomplished when employees and teams are given the right environment, framework and mandates to get the job done.
To succeed as an agile leader, you need to be able to adapt your own approach to leadership quickly, easily and flexibly. You must also have the ability and courage to read and respond to changing circumstances with a broad action and leadership repertoire. Thus, it's important to be aware of your own leadership style and preferences, including how your leadership can support agile teams and how your own behavior can inhibit or promote trust and collaboration.
In addition, the agile leader has a special responsibility to ensure that direction, coordination and commitment is created within and across teams. It's less about focusing on who is doing the leading and more about how leadership is produced collaboratively. Leadership in an agile context occurs when people working together in teams create a common direction, clear coordination and strong commitment to shared deliverables and goals.
