It is a massive responsibility to lead any team. You are not only in charge of leading your army into battle against time and external factors but also of the outcome. Let's talk about what it takes to be a successful leader in an Agile setting.
The type of leadership necessary in an Agile setting is considerably different. You must be adaptable and willing to roll with the punches to help your team flourish. So, here are five things you'll need to become a versatile, agile leader.
What Does It Take to Lead in an Agile Environment?
It's not about scrum or kanban in agile leadership. It has nothing to do with procedures or working methods. It all comes down to how you view the world and interact with others around you. An agile leader is someone who has removed their ego from the equation when it comes to working with others – someone who facilitates and models practical cooperation.
The essence of agility is enabling everyone's power and capability — to develop leaders at all levels and recognize the potential of every team member.
Other factors that are a must for every agile leader
Being Curious
Agility necessitates adaptability, which requires continuous monitoring of changing conditions and creating potential solutions. Your superpower is curiosity. If you're always curious, you'll most likely share your interest with your coworkers. Curiosity will enable you and your team to learn new things regularly. You'll find yourself adapting to new ways of implementing projects and possibly new approaches to solve old (or new) challenges.
Keep an open mind
You must keep your mind open when practicing Agile. There will be many twists, turns, and upheavals in your journey. As long as you don't get too attached to doing things a certain way, you'll be fine. Agile as a methodology is a dynamic, ever-changing system, and the techniques you've been employing don't guarantee things will remain the same after a few months. You should continuously be searching for ways to improve and streamline the process as a leader.
The three rule
Three critical leadership needs will greatly impact the organization that is adapting agility.
To begin, leaders must learn to form small, diverse, empowered, and linked agile teams.
Second, leaders must allow and encourage agile teams to work in short cycles to produce more meaningful and timely outcomes.
Third, leaders must keep agile teams focused on the client, whether external or internal, and create value by recognizing and addressing their unmet, and maybe even unrecognized, needs.
Use agile ideas and approaches
Agile leaders must have organizational-level competency to establish the organization's strategy and model using agile principles and practices. Introducing policies or practices that support agile ideas into your organization is one way to embed agile values. Using this method, the team will create a solution that they believe in and own. In this sense, agile management will support self-organizing teams.
Finally, Agile Leaders must care for their teams.
Agile leaders understand that if their workers are engaged and make a difference, they will succeed. That is why these leaders do everything they can to create an environment conducive to achievement. They should promote work-life balance and set an example by not contacting people about work outside of business hours. Agile leaders remove any obstacles in the team's path, whether it's an obsolete policy, a lack of capacity, or an inpatient stakeholder. They should be open and vulnerable so their teams may trust them to be truthful in their work.
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