How to be an agile leader

You’ve got to have been hiding under a sizeable rock to have not come across the term ‘agile’ over the past 10 years. Often we see the term (like other corporate buzzwords – think sustainability, collaboration, etc) thrown into memos, speeches or everyday conversation in a way in which people nod along (‘yep, we need that’) but there’s little to no explanation given as to what it means, why it matters and how you create it.

In this article we’ll offer our view of what agile leadership is, why it matters, why it’s hard to nurture and – importantly – how you build it. We pull out 3 core skills of an agile leader and 3 ways to develop more agile organisations.

What is agile leadership?

Unsurprisingly we find the roots of agile in tech companies in Silicon Valley, created by a group of software engineers who recognised that you can’t really know what the product is going to look like, or how it will be experienced by users, until you build and start testing it.

In a software business, agile is about moving fast, launching early (rather than waiting for the finished product to be ready), active user experience, tight feedback cycles and continuous improvement. It’s an iterative, frequent testing approach that aims to deliver value to customers faster and with fewer headaches. It’s about learning and improving as you go.

Over the past decade, the values and principles that underpin agile have been adopted in organisations across all industries in response to the increasingly fast-paced, turbulent operating environment.

Agile, stemming from the Latin word ‘agilis’, signals the ability to move quickly and easily. Agile leadership therefore is a style of leadership which helps create an environment where groups of people can quickly and easily learn and adapt. The leaders role shifts from one of command and control to that of an enabler.

Why is agile leadership important?

Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework helps leaders think about how they sense into the different types of problems they’re experiencing. Every organisation faces a daily range of simple, complicated and complex problems. And from time to time, they may experience chaos and disorder.

Simple problems require best practice – plan and implement. Complicated problems require expertise but again we can rely on tried and tested systems and processes to tackle. It’s an execution challenge.  

Complex problems (for example large scale digital transformation, post-merger integration, navigating hybrid work models, climate change risk mitigation) require a different approach. These problems are unpredictable, non-linear, dynamic in nature, involve multiple stakeholders and have several root causes. Complex problems are – by nature – emergent and require a test, learn and adapt approach. We need to see them as a learning challenge which is why this is agile’s sweet spot.

As Ron Heifetz of Adaptive Leadership fame puts it, with adaptive (read complex) problems, ‘it’s the people with the problem who need to do the work’. In the same way, agile leadership prioritises empowerment and devolved decision making – freeing up the people closest to the issue to adapt plans based on what they’re learning.

With chaotic problems (for example early stages of a cyber-attack or natural disaster), where there is no cause and effect and a rapid response is required, top-down, command and control action may be temporarily needed to stabilise the situation, but the spirit of flexibility and adaptability remains key.

Markets are increasingly volatile, unpredictable and the pace of change has significantly ramped up over the past 10 years. Managing complexity is the new normal in organisations. Success is dependent on how quickly, easily and effectively organisations are able to respond, which is why this question of how to be an agile leader is fundamental to leadership development.

Why is agile leadership tricky?

This is a question we find particularly interesting. Few are going to disagree with the need for agility but how many are doing it well? It’s actually really hard to nurture and even harder to sustain.

Two situations where it’s perhaps easier….

1) In response to a crisis – consider how, in a short space of time, the NHS responded to the pandemic. With a galvanising common goal (protect the public) and many barriers removed or relaxed (money, governance processes, data sharing protocols), people from across healthcare systems came together to learn & relearn, share data and people, experiment & innovate, adapt and drive continuous improvement. Cross functional, cross organisation collaboration became the norm. In what is a hugely complex and bureaucratic system, they did this at speed and with relative ease. Have they managed to sustain this agility? If only…

2) In a start-up or small companies – flatter hierarchies bring less layers of approval, making it easier to make quick decisions and pivot. With everyone typically closer to the customer, it’s easier to access rapid, direct feedback loops enabling you to test and iterate quickly. Start-ups are fertile ground to bake in agile principles from the start and with short term funding targets to hit, speed and experimentation create the perfect conditions for agile leadership.  Yet as companies grow, systems and structures are required to ensure alignment and efficiencies. Too much alignment and things become rigid. Too much freedom and you’ll get fragmentation. So intention and skill is required for agile leadership to thrive.

What makes agile hard to fully embrace and sustain is that it challenges the traditional norms and beliefs around leadership.

Agile leadership is exposing. It requires leaders to relinquish control, devolve decision making and empower others whilst at the same time holding accountability for the end result. There can be an understandable, innate resistance to let go of control.

Agile leadership requires leaders to acknowledge that people lower down the organisation are best placed to know what’s needed. They become the enabler, not the expert. This may trigger a loss of relevance, a threat to their identity which will again create resistance to agile leadership. 

Agile calls for experimentation, a tolerance of failure and the ability to pivot. Yet most people, and organisations are hard wired for predictability and risk avoidance which creates a natural tension which leaders need to navigate. If they’re serious about wanting an experimental, fail fast mentality then this is something they need to role model and champion for it to be believed by others.

Agile leadership demands a mindset shift – from knowing to learning, from control to enablement which may go against years (or even decades) of leadership conditioning. And even if a leader or Exec Team really embraces agile principles, their efforts may be thwarted by legacy systems, processes, incentives and metrics which reward traditional command and control behaviour. In this instance it becomes less about individual mindset and more about organisational redesign.

How do you develop agile leadership?

Developing agile leadership is about cultivating a mindset, consistent set of behaviours, and systems that thrive in uncertainty and complexity. It’s about working in tandem at the individual and the organisational level.

At an leadership level, 3 core competencies matter:

1) Strategic alignment – when the sands are continually shifting beneath your feet, a leader’s ability to clearly and consistently communicate a north star (vision, purpose, strategic direction) is key to ensuring everyone is pulling in the same direction. Agility without direction can quickly and easily become chaos. Alignment – for everyone to know what matters and why – creates autonomy, enabling teams to innovate, make decisions and pivot (if needed) in service of the broader mission.

2) Humility (and linked to this curiosity) – agile leaders know when to step out of ‘expert mode’ (giving direction, saying what you think) into curiosity – asking powerful questions that encourage thinking, input and ideas from others. They understand and acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers yet. Being transparent and showing vulnerability builds trust and encourages openness in other. Doing this skillfully fosters ownership, agency and a learning culture within and across teams.

3) Adaptability – recognising that what worked yesterday may not work today, agile leaders are able to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity, learn quickly from feedback and failure and pivot strategies and processes when needed. This means role modelling your learning mindset, being willing to challenge assumptions and constantly seeking and responding to feedback (particularly from your customers). It also means seeing your role as the enabler, removing blockers so that your teams can be more effective and productive.

At an organisational level, 3 things that we see consistently help create the conditions for agility are: 

Implement tried and tested agile practices – I’ll never forget a call from my brother one Sunday evening in which he was lamenting ‘Team Huddles’ as the latest “corporate nonsense” that had been introduced at his workplace. At the time he was working in the Internal Audit team of one of the UK’s leading financial services organisations. 4 years later, when he moved companies, the first thing he did was implement the daily huddle – a 9am, 15 minute meeting in which all team members answer the same 3 questions: what did you do yesterday; what are you doing today; and what’s getting in the way?

This simple team ritual proves time and again to significantly enhance knowledge sharing, communication, problem solving, peer support and ultimately performance. Huddles / Stand Ups are one of many agile practices that work really well. RAPID is another example – an excellent decision-making tool for creating clarity, accountability and speed – all essential for agility at scale.

Align incentives and KPIs with agility – shifting the focus from individual achievement and output to team collaboration, customer value, and adaptability. Traditional metrics often reward predictability and control, which can stifle innovation and responsiveness. Instead, agile-aligned organisations prioritise shared goals, fast feedback, and continuous improvement. This means measuring outcomes like customer satisfaction, lead time, team health, and capacity for innovation – rather than just efficiency or deliverables.

Performance management systems should also evolve to support agility. Rather than annual reviews and rigid targets, organisations can implement more frequent check-ins focused on growth, feedback, and alignment with strategic objectives. Using frameworks like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) allows teams to work toward clear business goals while maintaining autonomy in how they achieve them. Recognition and rewards should celebrate agile behaviors -such as experimentation, learning, and cross-functional collaboration – so that the culture reinforces the mindset needed for agility to thrive. When incentives and metrics reflect agile values, they become a powerful force for real, sustainable change.

Ensure leadership and OD programmes are designed to foster agility – back in 2015 we noticed that traditional leadership development centred on individualistic and hierarchical approaches to learning – an approach that felt incongruent with the fundamental reality leaders were facing. CoCreate was established with the recognition that navigating such a fast-paced and unstable operating landscape requires radically different leadership and team behaviours. Our ‘applied development’ approach emphasises networks over hierarchies, collaboration over silos, relationships over task, action over planning.

CoCreate has significant experience of working with rapidly growing businesses in the tech, life sciences and media sectors. Get in touch if you’d like a conversation about how you can develop more agile leadership in your business.