The need for agile leadership is emphasized frequently, yet, as frequently the term remains vague and abstract and thus tends to get a romantic touch. There is the vision of finally terminating the era of rigorous managers that treat their people like cattle, and to create soft leaders wearing t-shirts and sneakers building an indestructible unit with their teams. This is not completely wrong but in many cases it’s far from the reality of what a contemporary executive is supposed to be.
Agility and thus also agile leadership is always related to dynamics, complexity, and uncertainty – attributes that can be aggregated in the term ‘turbulence’. Hence, extreme turbulent conditions can teach us a lot about agile mechanisms. The corona pandemic is such a situation, and in this blog, I’d like to focus on the leadership aspects of agility.
The major difference between traditional and agile leadership is pointed out by two agile pioneers. One of them, Peter Kruse, asks: “Will leadership still be management, tomorrow, or will we have leadership without management, in future?” Niels Pfläging goes one step further and claims: “You cannot lead and execute hierarchical power at the same time!” These two statements take up an issue that has been discussed for decades but gets particular attention in context of turbulences, namely the questions about the compatibility of management and leadership. In order to clarify what we are talking about, I suggest using a simple distinction: Management is related to the rather technical aspects, while leadership is linked to people.
In a recently conducted interview, the virologist Alexander Kekulé (https://gaborsteingart.com/?podcast=430) concisely describes the challenges for politicians in the Corona crisis. These times of maximum dynamics and extreme uncertainty provide an inspiring foundation to discuss the required profile of an agile leader.
Reflecting the crisis management of the government, Kekulé outlines the original mission of a politician, namely, (a) to listen to experts, (b) to understand the mechanisms of the subject, (c) to make (fast) decisions, and finally, (d) to convince the people by communicating the preferred strategy. At a first glance, this sounds to be a simple job but probing deeper reveals that there are a lot of pitfalls.
First, we must be aware that the opinions of experts are not converging, i.e. specialists do have different hypotheses, convictions, and beliefs, even if they belong to the same discipline. As a result, there are passionate debates about the ‘truth’ and the ‘right way’. That is, the leader who is not the expert but in charge to make decisions must be able to cope with different stances. In turn, the executive is supposed to be capable to quickly understand sophisticated issues, and even more, he or she has to link the issues of different domains what additionally makes it complex. On the example of Covid-19, it’s not only taking the medical viewpoint into account, but considering economical, psychological, and other aspects, as well, what in the end, can rapidly lead into a dilemma due to emerging goal conflicts. In a highly dynamic and complex environment, the typically case is to have divergent opinions, insufficient facts, fragile data, different stakeholders, but the pressure to make a quick, and thus, simplified decision according to the motto ‘one size fits all’. Being exposed such uncertain circumstances, any decision is likely to be suboptimal, and thus, needs to be revised or adapted at a later stage (this is what we call iteration). Being aware that there is not a ‘right’ but only a ‘currently best’ decision, communication is certainly as important as the decision itself, advertising for temporary measures, convincing people and finally, creating followers.
To put it in a nutshell, an agile leader is not an all-knowing guru or prophet, rather…
- an agile leader is a smart ‘people-manager’ that is capable to compose a high-performant team of specialists what doesn’t mean to select representatives of only one ‘camp’ but to make sure that there is a vital diversity capturing a broad variety of viewpoints.
- an agile leader is an intelligent allrounder and risk-manager being able to process rapidly all kind of information and to derive a ‘currently best’ decision by developing and evaluating scenarios and to deliberate with the team about the pros and cons.
- an agile leader is a trustful ‘psychologist’, knowing how to make people to followers by addressing their deeper human needs what in turn requires to be authentic and to be ‘connected’ with the people.
Specifying agile leadership, the above-named characteristics are commonly recognized. But what’s the value of those bullet points? Referring to the introduction of this article, the new leadership paradigm is rather a declining problem, as it’s directly linked to a generation issue. Hence, time is on the side of agility, or to use other words, a large number of (younger) executives (maybe the majority) is committed to the agile leadership paradigm. But are they prepared to lead according to those principles? In ‘normal’ times, the answer is probably yes, but what happens when conditions become more turbulent? Again, Corona reveals what happens when leaders that are also in a manager role are faced extreme situations. Alexander Kekulé blamed our politicians for neglecting their responsibilities in terms of not being prepared to the current pandemic, and for not properly communicating the situation by explaining or justifying the strict but required measures. And probably, the scientist is right. How could it happen that the professional ‘communicators’ failed in a situation where it’s most crucial? There can be found several reasons, but two rationales particularly demand our attention.
The first insight: In times of crisis, leaders tend to fall back into the role of micro managers. That’s what we could observe in the recent past. High representatives of our country, as well as senior executive of hospitals and other organizations have become trouble-shooters trying to organize protective masks and clothing. Surprisingly, we don’t really question this behavior. In this context, I recently read an article illustrating the following comparison: Think of a final in the football championships. At a score of 1-1, the game is almost over, and the players are mentally prepared for an extra time. Suddenly, the referee indicates a foul and points to the penalty spot. Everyone is upset. In this decisive situation, the coach of the team enters the field and says: “I’m going to take the penalty kick!” Bizarre? Apparently, not in the world of business. Even assuming that our leaders are simultaneously the best managers, the example of Corona demonstrates that this behavioral pattern is not suited well in turbulent conditions, since the consequence is a leadership vacuum in a situation where orientation is desperately needed. To overcome this ‘natural’ fallback, it requires more than being aware of the nice sounding bullet points of agile leadership. In turbulent situations, leadership (without management) is a full-time job, and it demands established structures of a distributed leadership concept, mature personalities of all team members demonstrating a non-egocentric behavior, and also reasonable management resources, just to name some of the most important aspects.
The second factor playing a crucial role in agile leadership is trust – trust on all levels and in all directions. In this context, the communication strategy of the government regarding Covid-19 provides another important lesson. The mantra of the politicians that has been proclaimed again and again was: “The supplies of all goods for living are guaranteed.” Yet, whenever I have been to the supermarket, the toilet paper was sold out. Where does this perception gap come from? Assuming that it’s rather the fear than the naivety of the political elite, leaders must be aware that calming down the tempers for the moment using this tactic can have a dangerous side-effect in the longer run, as the gap between what we are told and what we experience leads straight away to a loss of trust. Hence, there must be very good arguments for hiding facts and keeping information. Avoiding a panic among the population might be such a strong reason. The related overarching question is, how much truth can people accommodate? Hyper-emotional reactions can emerge from a limited background of knowledge or a missing foundation of trust in their leaders, and unmatured personalities of people. If the resulting uncertainties encounter the basic needs of human triggering their fight of survival, behavior is hardly to control anymore.
Yes, it’s true, a prospering agility on a high level requires not only agile leaders but also teams that own adaptability skills, and thus, agile leadership begins long time before tackling crisis situations, namely by building highly adaptable teams. Whether the German population turns out to be an agile team, or not, depends on individual evaluations or maybe will show up soon.
Another motivation of executives ‘interpreting’ the facts in a very positive way might be hiding own uncertainties or own failures, and to hope that nobody takes a notice. This tactic is likely to destroy any agile initiatives and should be strictly avoided, if there are serious endeavors to foster agility. The root causes of this problem often go back to a poor (agile) management. Where management has failed, leadership cannot heal. Accordingly, the best starting point for an honest and authentic (agile) leadership is an ambitious and performant (agile) management what illustrates that both leadership and management are still two side sides of the same coin.
To conclude, in a short time, Corona has impressively revealed both the meaning and the mechanisms of agile leadership providing an important lesson that goes beyond the commonly used bullet points. However, the examples mentioned above also pose a crucial question, namely what are the individual aims of agile leadership? Is it just to raise the motivation of the people in normal times, or do you expect to cope with significant challenges in turbulent conditions? The answer strongly affects your agile leadership approach.