A journey to agility requires all people to be on board, most importantly leaders.
Often teams would have been restructured and coached in agile ways of working but senior leadership remains set in their old ways. This creates instability in the new agile machine and the initiative ceases to exist. However, if leaders are on board they can use their special agile leadership powers to support and advise their people about how to become agile and to create an environment in which they can behave in an agile way.
Agile leaders have the skills to manage fears of failure, rejection and jealousy amongst colleagues and harness optimism, positivity and persistence as suggested by
Laura Goodrich. They can encourage employees to be creative, imaginative and to test their ideas and assumptions on a regular basis; to experiment and to make their own decisions.
With promoting a healthy attitude towards the results, continuous validation of one’s thinking or otherwise can help train that agile muscle. Ergo, employees can be taught to adapt their points of view based on actual evidence. They can do it faster and as and when required. It could also be easier for employees to accept criticism when it has been backed up by impartial opinions.