Are leaders born or made? That’s a question that seems to pop up whenever someone mentions the topic. Some groups of people argue that leaders are born, while others claim that anyone can be a leader with proper training. No matter which group you fall into, learning more about leadership is going to make a difference.
Agile leadership is the newest trend when talking about the biggest corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Since they are the best-performing companies we have today, it pays off to do what they’re doing, because it obviously works. Agile leaders have the ability to balance a myriad of challenges on their shoulders, which can sometimes be contradictory. Click here to read more about it.
Leaders of this kind know that one type of leadership tactic will not work for all kinds of people. They have a mindset that allows them to react differently to a changing environment and respond efficiently. Instead of being a boss or manager, these people take every problem into their own hands and lead the way.
Connecting in the workplace
No one likes being told what to do by a bad boss or a bad manager. We’ve all seen and worked with these kinds of people, at least once in our lives. They think they know everything, and it’s either their way or no way at all. Sometimes they don’t even look at facts and reports because they’re blinded by the little power that they have.
That’s why good leaders need to have the ability to connect with their team. They’re the same as everyone else. Being in a leadership position doesn’t make them any more valuable than the rest of the workforce. Instead, they try to be the pillar that holds the workforce together. They use the method of leading by example, and they hope that everyone else follows.
If you’re in a managerial position, you could try doing it too. That means you should have personal integrity. The way you act needs to be consistent. You can’t allow one sector of the company to slack off, while another sector does its work. Your relationship with every employee needs to be the same. Personal integrity also means honoring commitments.
On the other hand, if you don’t have any personal integrity, you’re going to have a hard time influencing anyone to listen to your demands. Not being consistent with your actions will get you nowhere, even if you have the best ideas and strategies in the world. Focus on building trust, and the results will come tenfold.
Adapting to change
The free market could be the best invention that humankind has come up with. It’s so good that we still don’t know everything about it. We might never know everything about the free market because it’s always changing, every hour of every day. That means that using the same strategies over and over again is going to be the first step towards downfall.
You need to understand the changes that are happening outside the enterprise, and changes that are happening on the inside. There could be a higher demand, so you would need to increase the supply. Some sectors of the company might not be performing well, and that could trigger a chain reaction. One delay leads to another, and that can cause the entire business to delay its actions.
This is especially true in big corporations. That’s why a great leader needs to make constant adjustments and focus on both short term and long-term goals. You can read more at agile.coach. Putting too many resources into one of those isn’t effective. Instead, they opt for a balance between both, and they often make the decisions without complete information and many unknown variables.
Delivering results
Doing all that we mentioned above is great, but that would be nothing without getting results. Effective agile leaders continuously need to prove themselves. They need to find ways always to improve results and keep company morale high. Unless the leaders follow through with their actions, the rest of the teams will have trouble doing it.
Sometimes, the way to do it is to step back and take a look at the big picture. When you look at single processes, it’s tough to see how they are all connected. Taking a step back will open your eyes to a new perspective, and you’ll see how each action complements another one. This will result in better cohesion between similar teams.
As well as cohesion, it will also help in prioritizing. You will see which activity is crucial for the results needed at hand, and you could invest more yourself. Combining the three components of agile leadership: connecting, adapting, and delivering results are the keys to a successful strategy.