How to Develop Future-Ready Skills Through Agile Leadership

Superman might not cut it in today’s business world. Faster than a speeding bullet? More powerful than a locomotive? You’ll need to do better than that just to keep up, let alone to lead.

“The speed of business has accelerated beyond any one person’s ability to handle all decisions on their own,” says Marc Koehler, president of Lead With Purpose Inc. and a frequent Vistage speaker. “In the past, we may have had an image in our mind of one superhero leading the entire charge. Today, it’s more like the Avengers, with each member contributing their skill set.”

Agile leadership has swooped in as a leading philosophy in developing future-ready skills for this world of kinetic disruption and innovation. The role of the leader in this collaborative environment is to tap into the team’s collective genius, says Koehler, who gained this insight as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy under 800 feet of water.

“What was taught to me in the Submarine Forces is that the organizations that are going to win are the ones that make the smartest decisions the fastest,” he says.

If that sounds like a paradigm shift in conventional leadership strategies, that’s because it is, says MaryAnn Camacho, CEO and Founder of Model Team Enterprises and a trusted Vistage speaker.

“We think about prior eras, like the Industrial Revolution, when enormous changes occurred over decades. Today, enormous changes occur within a day. Agile leadership allows you the speed to adjust with your team and the mentality to assess and manage those adjustments quickly,” she says. “Agile leadership requires an intelligence mindset for today’s intelligence revolution.”

So, how do you develop that mindset? Koehler and Camacho suggest that small and midsize business CEOs can grow their skills by understanding and adopting agile leadership principles and applying them to drive growth and resilience.

Agile Leadership Begins at the Top and the Bottom

One of the most uncomfortable spots for people learning to adapt to agile organizations is in the job description, according to our experts.

“You have to view your organization as a matrix, rather than in the hierarchical org-chart framework. And you have to view everyone in your company as a leader,” Koehler says. “That’s a massive mindset shift for people.”

This new understanding of business structure requires adaptability, flexibility and collaboration. Putting this into practice means relying on expertise and talents to tackle issues as they arise, regardless of job title or department.

Bob in HR speaks fluent Mandarin? That’s great. Tap him to record our Chinese sales pitch video, which is being shot and edited by Edna in finance, who majored in film.

“Agile organizations form a team very quickly, come to the next step in the solution and uniform very quickly,” Koehler says.

Sounds good. But if everyone is leading, what is the role of the CEO?

“Coach-mentor,” Camacho explains.

The coach-mentor guides teams through their collaborations, assesses the work and helps the team pivot quickly if shifts are needed.

“Agile leadership is a disciplined framework to break down big, hairy, audacious goals and have folks pass the rugby ball in a game where everyone is part of the team, everyone is playing,” Camacho says.

In today’s fast-changing environment, agile leadership is an especially valuable framework because it enables organizations to adapt quickly to disruptions, ranging from unexpected shifts in financial, labor, or supply chain logistics to global realities.

“When you’re faced with a massive disruption, you as the leader don’t shield your people from it,” Koehler says. “Talk with your team about it. These are learning moments. Bring people into the decision-making.”

Adopting the Key Components of Agile Leadership

Koehler and Camacho share that there are four key components for adopting agile leadership:

1. Team empowerment

Encouraging autonomy and trust fosters innovation, giving everyone a sense of ownership and leadership.

Koehler gave the example of a fire breaking out in a submarine’s engine room. “The person responsible for leading the team to put out the fire is the person closest to it when it broke out,” Koehler says. “Whether you’ve been on board for three days or been in the submarine force for 30 years, you needed to step in, step up and lead.”

Above water, that sense of empowerment comes from how leaders see everyone in the organization.

“When you start seeing people as leaders, your mindset changes. You start thinking, ‘We have to get them leadership training. We have to give them the ability to make decisions. We need to put them with a mentor,’” Koehler says.

2. Continuous improvement

Camacho says that embracing iteration and learning from feedback allows your organization to grow. The key to this component of agile leadership is active listening. By posing questions and remaining receptive to what others have to say, leaders can enable individuals to take action, learn, take action again, stumble, take action once more, and ultimately grow.

Companies that excel in this devise methods for collecting and acting on ideas and suggestions for improvement.

Camacho suggests establishing a system that enables employees to innovate in various aspects, such as customer experience and business productivity, while ensuring that no idea is lost.

However, not all ideas will stick, she says, but learning from failure is a tried-and-true method for organizations to “get it right.”

“Provide the development opportunities for people to try and fail with a coached risk approach,” she says.

3. Adaptability

Staying flexible in response to market shifts and disruptions can require an all-hands-on-deck approach that tests companies and builds leaders.

While agile leadership provides organizations with the framework to adapt to the dizzying changes, adapting to agile leadership requires flexibility in the C-suite. Leaders need to continuously learn so they can continuously adjust.

“Today is the fastest day we’ve ever experienced in our lives. It’s also the slowest day of the rest of our lives,” Koehler continues. “So if we think we’re going to continue to just try to grind it out and work more hours, we’re going to burn out.”

4. Cross-functional collaboration

Breaking down silos promotes team unity and connection, leading to better listening, more ownership of ideas, increased success and constant innovation.

During the pandemic, Koehler coached a product company that built a remote-controlled motorcycle. This company had never built anything requiring balancing on two tandem wheels. Not only did they accomplish an engineering feat, but they did it remotely.

There was something about everyone working in little Zoom boxes that freed everyone in the company from their own organizational “boxes,” Koehler says. People who didn’t typically collaborate started working together, communication moved faster, silos were broken down, and the company was able to accomplish something it’d never done before.

Applying Agile Leadership to the Development of Future-Ready Skills

So, you know you need to move fast, and you know you need to move together as a team. Now what?

Camacho and Koehler recommend taking an intentional approach to learning agile principles and applying them quickly throughout the organization.

Attend agile leadership workshops and training

The world is evolving at an accelerated pace. What worked last decade, last year, or even last month requires updating, which means our skills and tools must also grow.

“You have to practice and apply new skills, collaborate, and grow in real time. Vistage does this very well,” Koehler says. “The speakers, the one-on-ones and that collaboration. Vistage provides a great platform for organizations to understand the steps to get to where they’re trying to go.”

Foster a culture of continuous feedback

“There are many ways to get continuous feedback and learning, but it comes down to that foundational principle of trust,” Camacho says. “When people trust one another, they are more likely to share.”

Camacho reminds leaders not to take the skill of giving critical feedback for granted.

“Encouraging people to provide a solution gets them thinking about the kind of feedback they’re giving,” she says. “This allows development opportunities for people to learn how to give difficult feedback. In practical terms, the team learns how to work with each other very quickly and with clear expectations on what can be done, what’s blocking and what needs to be done.”

Promote cross-functional collaboration

Koehler endorses a collaboration structure he adopted from the U.S. Navy: the 15-minute daily huddle.

“In that huddle, we did five-minute micro-learning. Then we did five minutes of going over the vision for the day—you do quick decision-making right there. And then we recognized each other,” he says.

However, the most important aspect of the huddle, Koehler says, wasn’t the agenda; it was the rotation of the meeting leader. “If I’m running it the first day, you’re going to support me and make me look good, because you’re going to run it the next day,” he says. “So, it infuses leadership in it, too.”

Encourage flexibility and adaptability

Adopting agile leadership principles allows teams to embrace change and pivot effectively. Burnished during the pandemic, Koehler and Camacho now see this skill in many high-performing companies.

Koehler recalls when Horizon Hobby, the world’s largest distributor of hobby toys, discovered that demand for its products skyrocketed during the pandemic. The CEO had a traditional organizational framework, but with this massive increase in demand and everyone working from home, he knew this wouldn’t last long.

Sensing possible employee burnout and missed deadlines on the horizon, the CEO initiated daily meetings, empowered people to become decision-makers and encouraged his teams to step up. And step up they did.

“While the average company engagement worldwide dropped 4%, they went up 6% across their whole organization,” Koehler says.

The Long-Term Benefits of Agile Leadership

Small businesses aren’t just susceptible to technological, economic, climate and geopolitical change. Changes within their workforce can be incredibly disruptive. The average cost of replacing an employee is 50% to 200% of their annual salary.

However, the flip side is equally eye-opening, making agile leadership a crucial tool for sustained growth and long-term success.

“Organizations with high levels of engagement report 22% higher productivity. There is also a direct correlation between employee experience and customer experience,” Camacho says. “So, when you have a team that can scrum together, you’re going to have a higher probability of better profits and more growth.”

There is another reason to create an organization full of leaders: Mentors are becoming a scarce resource.

“We are in a population crunch, with 20% fewer people being born today than 20 years ago,” she says. “AI is great, but the senior leader with experience and insight will not be there in the future. So, I believe the investments we make now to create a culture of continuous feedback will make a difference between companies that continue and those that don’t.”

Agile Leadership: More Than a To-Do Item

No offense to the guy in tights, but in a world of quantum computing, cryptocurrency and geopolitical upheaval, a Superman-like leadership model has limited utility. Agile leadership will allow small business leaders — and their teams — to develop the future-ready skills they need to navigate today’s dynamic and disruptive business landscape.

That said, “Learn agile leadership” has to be more than a to-do item on a five-year plan. Implementing agile strategies today will help your small business prepare for the challenges and opportunities ahead. Through incomparable speakers, opportunities for collaboration, peer support, and one-on-one advising, Vistage stands ready as a valuable partner in building agile leadership capabilities and ensuring long-term success.

Agile leadership requires a mindset shift. It isn’t easy. But harnessing and developing individual strengths will allow organizations to empower their teams, improve adaptability, and unlock their collective genius to drive growth and resilience. There’s even a place on the team for the guy from Krypton; he just doesn’t have to shoulder all the decision-making.

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