Agile leadership in a crisis lets a leadership team respond to the unforeseen flexibly and pragmatically. Good crisis management is an exclusive craft that only the best master. To come out of a crisis stronger, the four pillars of agile leadership have to be applied well. A crisis shows who has been muddling through with thin leadership skills, and who proves excellent leadership. Written in June 2020, three months into the pandemic, for leaders of an agile organisation under pressure.
When the search for the culprit or the cause goes on for a long time, valuable energy fizzles out that could solve the problem. Root-cause analysis is essential; pushing ahead into a better future matters more. Taking responsibility wins over accusing behaviour. A culture of blame increases the fear of making mistakes. And only those who make mistakes learn from them.
The first pillar of agile leadership is learning. Learning from mistakes, from failed pilots and from projects with an orange or even red status. Learning starts in the leadership team and is a constant process. In an agile organisation it should go fast. Something went wrong? The learning gets applied in the next run. That is agility. Small experiments beat big projects driven into the wall. The motto is «fail fast, fail often», without getting under time pressure.
The mantra is meant to create an open, tolerant culture around mistakes. Nobody wants to fail often, but we do want to send the clear signal that mistakes may happen. Resist the temptation to find culprits for a failure and expose them. Be curious and find out what happened and why. Make debriefings and pit stops a habit and discuss right after execution what went well and what went badly. Work solution-oriented throughout.
Leaders often hold the top position because they are excellent at execution. That doesn't necessarily mean they can look ahead and anticipate. This is where the wheat separates from the chaff. Whoever can anticipate the next possible scenarios in a crisis has the advantage and navigates out of it, whatever obstacles are put in the way.
That means being prepared for several outcomes, having plans in the drawer that project possible scenarios in six months, a year or three years. Depending on which circumstances arrive, other strategies get implemented, and they are already worked out. Weigh the consequences of fast action and short-term crisis handling before you implement solutions. Analyse possible consequences systematically. And think in options. Either-or solutions close doors you may need. The second pillar of agile leadership is forward-looking thinking and action. Leading in a crisis is impossible without it.
Whoever manages to adapt quickly to new conditions has succeeded in anticipating and in learning from mistakes. The first two pillars are mastered. At the same time, adaptability is the third pillar of an agile organisation. Adapting to new realities is a virtue that some top management teams mastered this year in particular. Leadership excellence showed wherever teams reacted fast to changed markets and regulations.
Adaptability in a crisis means more than offering other services and products. It requires questioning your own values and attitudes and looking at them in the new context. When executing these new, possibly even radical ideas, a dose of pragmatism helps, because speed of implementation counts for more than perfect execution.
Top leadership shows above all in resilience. Falling is fine; afterwards you get up again right away. Resilient leadership teams stay capable of acting in turbulent situations and come out of crises stronger. Anyone who wants to stay responsive has to train resilience in order to react flexibly in any situation.
Resilience is more than a leadership skill. It is a very personal ability that also rests on physical and mental health. Whoever is rested and balanced in private radiates that as a leader as well. That gives you the strength to defy adverse circumstances and to show resilience as a top business leader. Leading by example is good in normal times. In a crisis it is indispensable.
An external view of things in your organisation shows quickly and clearly which behaviours and attitudes can stay and which ones deserve work. Executive coaching with me as a CEO coach starts there. Through an assessment you get an integral overview of your leadership skills, and you see at a glance which leadership topics deserve more attention.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Agile leadership: 14 ways leaders prepare for Generation Z · Agile leadership out of the crisis · Executive Coaching Zurich
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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