Agile Leadership: From Heroic Individuals to High-Performing Teams
Do we still need heroic leaders?
The concept of heroic leadership presets leaders as romantic heroes who dedicate their lives to transformational endeavors surrounded by tribes of their followers in constant need of guidance.
Despite recent tectonic changes in business culture and practices, there's still no abundance of charismatic leaders - Bezos, Musk, and Nadella are still leading the pack of current and future business heroes.
Yet, it seems that heroism isn't everything that agile organizations really need.
If you want to know more about agile leadership, popular business media will throw on you some prefabricated attributes of the likes of "resilient," "flexible," and "curious"?
Let's better see what management science would tell us - at least, they won't feed us the reheated food.
From autocratic to shared leadership
Many people still view leadership as the vertical function embodying command and control.
Early explanations of leadership effectiveness were based on the assumption that leaders possess certain psychological traits and personal characteristics that distinguish them from ordinary people.
Traditional theories explored leaders as personalities, thereby supporting the general assumption that leadership is a virtue of a single visionary and charismatic person.
Leaders evolve in line with the business environment and cultural shifts in society.
Eventually, there appeared an understanding that leaders emerge from groups and impersonate the interests of those groups.
Some definitions of leadership assume that it refers to all aspects of influencing a group in a particular context to achieve a vision or set of goals.
As we moved from authoritarian personalities to democratic shared leadership culture, we started to value empowerment, young leader development, and team values.
Thereby, the leadership evolved the God-given uniqueness into a generic skill set that can be developed methodically.
Shared leadership
The further development of leadership theories derived from the notion of shared leadership.
That happened for several reasons:
- Managerial tasks require different personal profiles and skillsets at once, which could hardly be found in a single person;
- The moral obligations of a single leader are harder to control. Therefore, the diversity of leadership roles ensures not only the segregation of management controls but also the shared moral responsibility;
- cultural preferences of many developed countries, which run their families in a duopoly, would be better realized through shared leadership;
- risk mitigation through redundancy of leaders, improved communication, and better work-life balance are all the natural benefits of shared leadership.
Post-heroic leadership attributes and qualities
As the bureaucratic command structures transformed into networks of high-performing empowered teams, the individualistic leadership gave way to relational, democratic, and collaborative management styles.
Post-heroic leaders emerged - emotionally and intellectually agile, capable of operating different styles, caring for people's comfort and wellbeing, and collaborating rather than dominating. Their aim is to enable a stimulating environment for creative and motivated teamwork.
The following table describes key differences between heroic and post-heroic leaders.
Transactional vs. transformational leadership
Another pair of leadership attributes describe the attitude toward followers and their output.
Transactional leadership is the contractual agreement between leaders and subordinates
on expected performance for certain rewards. It is a cost-benefit exchange process leading to expected outcomes.
The modern environment demands leaders to create a motivating and productive environment in which subordinates perform beyond ordinary expectations. This is called transformational leadership.
Its ideal form creates valuable and positive change in the followers to develop them into leaders.
Transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale, and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms, e.g.,
- connecting the follower's sense of identity to the mission and organization;
- being a role model for followers that inspires them;
- challenging followers to take responsibility for their work,
- understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that optimize their performance.
The critical result of transformational leadership is that it delivers above and beyond the regular scope of responsibilities. In terms of the output, it brings the added value instead of what people are "paid to deliver."
Thereby, high-performing teams appear - they deliver not what's in the (job) contract but what's needed for the success of a mission.
Agile leadership styles
Out of dozens of leadership styles, five were identified as suitable for agile organizations.
Two of those we already discussed above - Shared and Transformational leadership.
Three more to add are:
- Servant leadership - the leader, does not view leadership as a position or status but as an opportunity to serve others.
- Emergent leadership is detached from the organizational hierarchy, and individuals can exert leadership influence on their colleagues and thus influence the organization's overall direction.
- Visionary leadership assumes that the picture of the desired organizational state is effectively described and communicated, enabling the followers to implement the vision.
Agile leadership in times of crisis
Post-heroic agile leadership proves that not all executive responsibilities and aspirations must be placed on one person.
One of its most valuable outcomes is inverted delegation when tasks are delegated upwards rather than downwards. It shifts the focus from individual leaders to collective leadership.
Agile leadership emerges when egocentric commanders give way to a network of self-managing teams of free spirits.
However, many still look habitually for the Gods and Generals when a crisis hits hard.
So, do we need legendary heroes or agile management structures operated by collective minds?
Perhaps, this depends on our willingness to take part in management actions and assume shared responsibilities instead of looking for a Superman to save Gotham from the new evil.
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