Agility: Your Team Resolution for 2021!

Agility has become the need of the hour. In order to remain relevant and maintain competitive advantage, organisations have to be quick and flexible when responding to change. Agility is the only way to achieve this successfully.

While the idea of agility has garnered popular attention owing to its relevance in current times, it has been defined in many different ways often using synonyms such as flexibility, plasticity or versatility. We find that the definition put forth by researchers like Worley, Williams and Lawler (2014), provides a concrete and meaningful description of the concept. They define agility as proactively sensing and changing direction in order to sustain competitive advantage.

Agility has become an important leadership quality. An agile leader is one who is capable of adapting to change, rapidly reallocating resources and learning quickly in the midst of new challenges and testing circumstances. Research shows that the ability to learn more effectively in new organisational environments, also known as learning agility, is the number one predictor of leadership success. This may be one of the reasons why organisations are now focusing on agility as a must have skill for new leaders.

Below are some scientifically backed practices that can empower us to start this year as more agile leaders in the workplace. Most of these have been adapted to suit remote styles of working. Developing our agility can help us lead better — now more than ever before!

Make Reflect(ion) a Reflex

As leaders, we often face the pressure of making quick decisions and acting fast. After all, the ability to respond and adapt to change swiftly seems to be what agility is all about! However, the core of having agility as a leader comes from practicing “reflective action” — a cyclical process of setting goals, planning a strategy to achieve the set objectives, and then reflecting on that experience. This activity can sometimes come from intuition in the midst of a meeting, or can be more routine and systematic.

More often than not, leaders end up in continual ‘Do Loops’ — that is, they move from one task to the next without much reflection to learn from the results. Research has shown that time for reflection holds value in that it expands our self-awareness and intelligence — both of which are essential for fostering agility. It is harder to innovate if managers remain immersed in their tasks without taking a moment to step back and consider new paths.

Try this exercise to act reflectively:

A simple framework by Rolfe and colleagues (2001) — What, So What and Now What. What represents what happened. So what helps get to more insightful information from the “what”. Now what deals with the learning aspect of the experiences and the course of action that one can take after reflecting and learning. Making this a white-board exercise with your team can make it more fun and engaging!

Growth is the only constant

When it comes to developing a mindset at work — one tends to possess either a fixed mindset or growth mindset. Employees with a fixed mindset are of the belief that their intelligence is fixed or unchangeable. Those with a growth mindset on the other hand tend to see themselves as constantly evolving and growing. This means that leaders with a growth-mindset are more likely to experiment with their choices and are willing to take risks at the cost of failing. They do this by building a safe environment for their team — one which encourages failure and promotes learning through mistakes. This does not mean allowing employees to act impulsively without critically thinking; rather, it means creating an environment that welcomes new and thoughtful ideas, tries new approaches that have merit, and responds to failure without finger-pointing and blame.

Try this to develop your mindset into one of growth and change readiness:

• Have a ‘feedback’ session with your team to welcome new ideas or approaches to going about things, debrief on what may be going well and what may not be during the course of a project.
• Remember to reward efforts and not just outcomes. This is critical when you want your team to take risks knowing full well that their hard work will be celebrated regardless of the end result.
• Reiterate the importance of learning. Irrespective of workload, prioritise time set aside for the employees’ development and training. Treat it as a valuable investment in the company’s future success.
• Treat failure as an opportunity to learn. Setting a recap time after meetings to go through what failed and why can help highlight information to that you and your team can learn from and throw light on the best practices going forward.

Agility needs Stability

When we speak of agility, we naturally think of a dynamic, fast paced and rapidly changing environment; Stability is often seen as quite the opposite. However, science shows that this is far from true! In fact, recent research has brought to light the crucial role stability plays in supercharging agility.

Stability provides a secure foundation that helps people stay focused on performance during disruptive change, rather than being worried and distracted about what may happen. This is why it is important for leaders to drive stability as much as they drive change.

The logic of why stability is important is something that all humans can relate to — When we feel tired, fearful, or insecure, we’re less able to cope with one more thing hitting us. But when we feel strong, confident, and secure, we can better withstand change. The same idea applies at work — The more we feel stable and safe at work, the more effectively everyone will be able to absorb change and recover. Creating this secure foundation helps people by removing emotional distractions such as fear and concerns about what will happen — thoughts that divert attention away from performance.

Try this to foster stability:

• Be a realistic optimist — In times of uncertainty, leaders should project behaviours such as confidence, positivity and optimism. This does not mean setting unrealistic goals or denying reality. However, openly acknowledging setbacks and being optimistic about the different ways your team can move forward has a stabilising effect and also builds trust.
• Reassure — It is only natural that your team and employees feel stressed and anxious when the future is unknown. As a leader, keep constant communication going to reassure your people. Give them clarity on their roles and how they are adding value. Sharing positive information such as details about profits and finances (whenever possible), goals that are being achieved etc. can help create a more stable atmosphere.
• Check-in’s — It is crucial, now more than ever, to keep checking in on your team members. Being empathetic, offering emotional support and providing your time to team members can help carry and brung in stability in rough times.