Looking to Change Your Leadership Style to become Agile? Read This Before Pivoting
For a consistent leadership style — team members know what to expect and, therefore, the goals likely to be set. You have a historical set of data and a prior track record to base your future decisions. Over time, a signature leadership style became almost like “second nature,” synchronous with your identity and intertwined with the team, brand, or organizational direction that you are heading. A few caveats to this, which are being felt more strongly in the wake of the ongoing crisis:
- A consistent leadership style is, by definition, inflexible and assumes the same or recurring set of challenges that it will encounter. It is unsuited to economic or global flux.
- It places specific ways of action and operational modalities outside of the ambit of your decision-making.
- It risks becoming redundant or, worse, obsolete with time as the organization, your team members, and the market evolves.
That’s why it is crucial that decision-makers now revisit their leadership styles and scrutinize with a magnifying glass. In recent times leaders have been thrown many challenges wherein it becomes imperative that they change their natural leadership style or, in certain situations, hand over the leadership role to others. While the latter is not an option for leaders, it is a valid argument that they review their leadership style and be open to change. In current times often Agile leadership or Situational leadership is talked about, as theses style of leadership allows employees involved with the situation or the environment within which they operate. The leader must adjust to the situation in front of them, then about personal leadership skills.
The situational leadership theory holds that a leader’s most appropriate action or behaviour depends on the situation and the followers. However, agile, or situational leadership, takes people in context seriously while recommending action or making a decision. The leader evaluates the leadership style that is best suited to the situation. The leader is therefore considered agile.
Situational leadership is related to contingency theory. While contingency theory focuses on matching leadership style with the situation, situational leadership theory focuses on matching leadership style with follower requirements. The similarity between situational leadership and agile leadership is essentially the orientation rather than the means. While situational leadership takes people constraints and the problem into context, agile leadership goes further.
Agile leadership has taken situational leadership in the right direction. To my understanding, the few pillars that agile leadership takes into account are
a) Nature of the problem: During times of transition or swiftly implementing the organizational change or aligning teams to deliver new products or services to match new markets and so forth — it can be the difference between prosperity and bankruptcy. In particular problem types management objective takes precedence and in others applying right problem-solving technique will make the difference. In an article published by Wharton Business School, “Identify-the-real-problem time has shown that those who hold a single point of view or perspective on a problem have rarely succeeded. Instead, expand viewpoint to look both into and beyond the massive amounts of data available to find the root causes to prevent similar events from happening again in the future.”
b) Management objective: Unfortunately, management by objective does not leave sufficient room to be different, but a traditional leadership style is more directive to ensure that tasks are on track. However, in agile leadership, the focus is also to empower people. The empowerment process will allow flexibility, and it will thus encourage people to use their intelligence and judgement to explore alternatives. They can recommend the best solution, and thereby relaxing the controls.
c) Problem-solving approach: In a traditional leadership style, problem-solving techniques are pre-determined, and when faced with the situation, take further action. However, in agile leadership, the nature of the problem is studied from an “empirical” basis. To initiate an empirical process, it is essential to observe the project/ situation and collect the relevant data. Once empirical evidence is in hand, it will be relatively easy to define the solution approach. The observation and people involved will draw out the process to be followed. It is therefore suggested that leaders adopt the data-driven approach and seek more data when understanding is weak.
d) Applying the right leadership style: There is no playbook for the right problem-solving approach and the appropriate leadership style for a particular situation. One has to learn and deal with shades of grey. It is therefore essential for an effective leader to adjust their leadership style based on the problem-solving approach and teams competence to fit any given situation. Leadership style suits you or suits the case in hand, and more details are in the next paragraph.
What are the Common Leadership Styles to Choose From to be a successful Agile Leader?
As a decision-maker, you have likely adopted (and held onto) one of the following eight leadership styles:
● Bureaucratic — rules following and process-oriented
● Transformational — disruptive and breaking down the comfort zone
● Autocratic — top-down decision-making without involving employees
● Laissez-Faire — fully empowers employees, non-intrusive and trust-based
● Democratic — slow, cautious, and involving all stakeholders
● Transactional — with direct work to reward/recognition incentives
● Coach-style — emphasizing individual growth and development
The above approaches have their pros and cons and best-case scenario. For example, an autocratic style might be what a start-up needs in its early founding days, while a coach-style can help a team of experts find their niche and potential. It is vital to not dismiss any of these approaches as inherently good or bad but instead take an objective view without value judgment. That, I believe, is what differentiates tomorrow’s leaders.
What Does it Mean to Change Your Leadership Style?
Right at the outset, it should be clear that changing leadership styles does not mean introducing inconsistency, randomized, or ad-hoc decision-making to the team. No matter which type you choose, employees and team members must be able to fall back on your presence as a leader when needed. Therefore, changing your leadership style requires deep introspection, an honest assessment of the change in operational conditions, and the strategic response you require. In an article published in Manage magazine Vibeke Vad Baunsgaard Founder and Editor-in-Chief, wrote, “The style best encapsulating the multiple threads of this necessary reaction must guide your pivot. Research shows that leaders’ emotional intelligence does affect leadership style, and the style affects, in turn, the respective employees’ feelings regarding organizational climate to various degrees (Maamari & Majdalani 2017: 1).”
The Agenda for Tomorrow
Surprisingly, CXOs globally are now more optimistic about the future roadmap than literally ever before. According to PwC’s survey, 76% of CEOs said that global economic growth would improve, up from 22% last year or even 42% in 2019 or 57% in 2018. The right leadership style could distinguish between survival and obsolescence, between unprecedented success and staying part of the status quo. Your existing approach should serve as a directing principle towards new things and not a ceiling that holds back innovation.
Comment below with your thoughts and continue with the conversation with me at Arvind@AM-PMAssociates.com.
