10 Qualities of an Agile Leader – Agile Leadership
What is agile?
What is agile leadership?
In this video, we’ll dive into the different types of leadership in an agile environment.
Stay until the end to find out some free resources and communities you can join to take your
career to the next level!
Let’s go!
[Intro] -What is Agile?-
Agile is an iterative approach to project management, commonly in software development
that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches.
Blah blah blah.
That’s the more technical definition anyway.
But in simple terms, agile means being fast and adapting to changes quickly.
It’s a way of dealing with a work environment that may have a lot of uncertainty.
More and more organizations are becoming agile, or at least partially, because of the quick
changes in customer needs, project research uncertainty, the need for flexibility, and
wild changes in economy.
Factors like politics, laws, regulations, environmental conditions, social, technological
all play a role in how a company may change.
So, with agile environments come agile leadership.
Agile leadership is a type of leadership that is focused on adapting to change and improving
quality on multiple facets of the organization.
It’s a mindset rather than just a process to emphasize on collaboration, communication,
and flexibility.
We won’t get into the nitty gritty details of how Agile works or the processes and tools,
that’s as much as I will talk about it for this video.
-Qualities of Agile Leadership- We previously talked about the different types
of leadership here on this channel, if you’re interested, click on the top link here.
I strongly recommend it as a lot of the concepts will overlap with the theories in this video.
In addition to those leadership types, Agile leaders are flexible, adaptable, and willing
to learn from mistakes.
They value teamwork, transparency, and continuous improvement.
Under the recommendations of PMI, Project Management Institute, servant leadership mindset
is highly valued and should be the main approach and mindset in leading teams and organization.
Just to note that servant leadership qualities and characteristics are not the same as a
servant leadership mindset, but for the scope of this video, we’ll not talk about the
nuances.
So here are some of the qualities of an Agile leader.
Number 1: Being Communicative and Honest Since in an agile work and environment change
on a regular basis, being agile is requires a lot of communication and collaboration.
It is highly recommended to meet with the team daily to get updates on project, getting
feedback, and continuously improve.
This is usually through a process called Daily Standup.
Communication is important as this is how information is passed and shared, so that
there are no misunderstandings on what each team member must do.
Number 2: Collaborative More and more organizations are looking into
closing the gap on hierarchy and structure.
Often, hierarchy and structure can get in the way of collaboration as a junior or entry
level team member may not want to share their ideas or on how to improve something within
the company.
By allowing everyone to share their thoughts, it allows the team to be more collaborative.
Number 3: A Good Listener An agile leader under the servant leadership
has to listen to their team.
But not just their team, their peers, clients, customers, boss, suppliers, vendors, contractors,
and many, many more.
It’s a lot of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal management.
One important quality is to be a good listener.
Listen to their needs, what you can do to help them, and ultimately, what you can do
for the betterment of your organization, team, and client.
#4 Learning continuously Whether soft skills or technical skills, an
agile leader is required to learn continuously.
That’s why if you’re a CAPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, DASM, etc., you will have to fulfill your
professional development unit (PDU).
Basically, they make sure you’re continuously learning.
And for good reason!
There are so many changes in today’s world, an agile leader needs to adapt quickly.
#5 Being Reflective and Improve Customers, boss, and even peers may “criticize”
or provide feedback for you.
Let’s face it, we’re not perfect.
But in order to be a good agile leader, we need to be honest with ourselves about what
we're doing well, where we could improve, and how our behaviour impacts others.
We need to be able to take criticism in stride, not take it personally when someone suggests
something different than what we're used to doing, because change is how we grow as individuals
and as a team!
#6 Leading by Example Agile leaders know how to lead by example.
When agile teams adapt rapidly, they're able to respond quickly and effectively to changing
demands.
You should respond quickly and effective as well.
When you're the leader, it's your job to set the tone for your team.
That means you need to be the one who walks into a room and commands attention, or who
can turn a bad situation around with just their presence.
#7 Adapting and Being Flexible Agile leaders are constantly adapting to the
needs of their teams.
You need to be able to adjust your strategy on the fly, because every team is different,
and every project has its own set of challenges.
This means knowing when to hold on tight and when to let go, and knowing how much freedom
each member of your team needs in order to do their best work.
If something doesn't work out as planned, you need to be flexible enough with yourself
and others that you can figure out what went wrong—and how you can fix it going forward.
#8 Being Empathetic Agile leaders demonstrate empathy in their
day-to-day lives by being kind and compassionate towards others.
Team members, bosses, clients, and everyone else around you are people too.
Try to understand people from their point of view, it will also make your life a lot
easier.
#9 Being Humble We should be humble about our own strengths
and weaknesses.
Have humility about what we know, about what others might know that we don't.
Put your ego aside, and put your goal as a team first, which requires strong teamwork
and humility.
#10 Follow the 4 pillars of Agile Manifesto Agile qualities are the core values of agility,
and they can be found in every agile organization.
The four pillars of Agile Manifesto are as follows:
First, value individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Second, prioritize, working results over comprehensive documentation
Third, focus more on customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Four, respond to change over following a plan
And there you have it; those are the 10 qualities of an Agile leader.
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I’ll see you in the next video.
Cheers!