Leadership in Agile: what you can do differently today
Leaders and managers who want Agile or SAFe to work play a key part. That is less about managing “the change” and more about creating space in which others dare to take responsibility. It takes different behaviour, and that starts with what you can do differently today.
1. Look at your meetings and how decisions get made
Do you still schedule every decision yourself? Start small: let one team decide on a backlog item or a customer request. Be clear about the boundaries, then let go of the execution. Set up meetings and decision-making so that teams can act on their own, within a framework where you steer on value instead of on checklists.
2. Set the example in reflection
Open your next team meeting with something you could have done yourself to make the collaboration better. Show that it’s fine to learn, and that being vulnerable is professional. It isn’t easy: middle managers feel less free to admit mistakes and doubts than both their own bosses and their own teams, while they are the ones expected to model psychological safety. Be open, approachable and reflective. Share your doubts. Show that learning matters more than being right. Psychological safety grows when you take risks in your own behaviour.
3. Ask for feedback, out loud
End a meeting with one question: “What could I do better as a leader for this team?” Listen. Sum up what you heard. Say thank you. Then act on it. Give feedback and ask for it. Back experiments, even when they don’t deliver what you hoped. And have real conversations, including about tensions and competing interests, so the collaboration improves.
Building an organisation that learns and adapts
If you really want an agile organisation, better processes or new tools won’t get you there. You need a culture in which people reflect, learn from mistakes and work on improvement together. In that culture, learning is part of everyday work instead of something that turns up now and then.
As a leader, you make or break this. By showing learning behaviour yourself, you set the example. By making room for reflection and experiment, you show that development matters more than perfection. And by keeping the conversation going with your team about what works and what doesn’t, you build a shared climate for learning.
In practice, as a leader you:
- build in regular moments for reflection, during a project as well as at the end;
- make feedback normal: asking for it, giving it and taking it;
- pay attention to what people need to learn, and make room for them to grow;
- make mistakes open for discussion without judgement, as a source of improvement;
- regularly stop with your team and ask: “What are we learning from this?”
So a learning organisation needs a rhythm of reflection, adjustment and action. You should see that rhythm in how you run meetings, make decisions and involve people. Then learning stops being an extra task. It’s simply part of how you work, and that is what makes the difference in a world that keeps changing.
Organisations that want to keep up with change have to learn how to learn. Agile is a way to get there; it was never the point in itself. Reflecting together, using data to improve and treating mistakes as input for growth: that is how a learning organisation comes about.
Endless evaluation has no place in it. What counts is organising short feedback loops, reflecting on both behaviour and results, and using what you learn to make better choices. That is what Agile is for, and that is where leaders make the difference.
Agile succeeds on leadership and behaviour
A good concept is only worth something if it’s carried out honestly and with thought. Putting the sticking points on the table and daring to question your own assumptions may be the hardest step. It’s also the step that counts most.
Models can help, but they won’t do the work for you. The work is in behaviour, courage and ownership, and in being willing to push through the discomfort.
At Leap Company we support leaders introducing Agile and SAFe, and building organisations that can adapt. We work where leadership, behaviour and structure meet, with a sharp eye, plenty of experience and an approach that puts people first. We combine structure with behavioural change and help organisations on their way to real agility.
Maarten wrote earlier about why so many Agile programmes fail, in an introductory article on LinkedIn (in Dutch).