What Is Agile Leadership and Why Do You Need It In HR? 

Agile leadership means you can act; to make decisions that move the business forward in the face of uncertainty and change. Agile leaders are flexible, adaptable, mindful, and can take meaningful action with incomplete information—at least, that’s what this week’s guest on America Back to Work believes. 

Joe LaDuke is vice president of coaching and consulting services at award-winning leadership firm, Dion Leadership. Via a team of 50+ coaches and consultants, he helps organizations create cultures where the people come first, relationships flourish, and the outcomes are positive. 

Click here to listen to or watch the full episode on agile leadership.

The Case for Agile Leadership 

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unforeseeable form of risk for businesses everywhere. It had severe consequences in the form of financial crises (many had to close their doors for good), HR dilemmas (many had to conduct layoffs or furloughs), operational challenges (companies had to figure out how to manage completely remote workforces for the first time), and more. 

The pandemic taught business leaders worldwide one universal lesson: no matter how much you plan, things will still go wrong. No risk management plan will ever cover all the bases—especially as things continue to change at the speed they’re changing. 

Risk management planning is almost futile, between the rapid rate of technological advancement like AI, the unpredictability and heightened accountability caused by social media, the growing power of employees in the workplace, and other unpredictable forces. 

Today, the best form of defense is hidden within company leadership—in leaders’ ability to manage, pivot, and step up through times of change. It’s about training employees to expect and meet the unexpected with a resilient, positive mindset rather than setting a rigid, hierarchical plan. 

“Traditional businesses tend to be static, siloed, hierarchical. They’re slow to make decisions and authority tends to move linearly,” said LaDuke on the show. “Agile businesses have adaptability. They can reconfigure quickly since they’re network-based or matrixed. There’s more delegation, and people operate from their own authority to respond quickly to change.” 

According to LaDuke, agile businesses have healthier relationships with tech, allowing them to respond quickly and nimbly to unforeseen challenges. 

How to Spot an Agile Leader

So, what exactly does an agile leader look like? 

Spotting an agile leader is all about seeing how an employee responds to challenges and threats in the workplace. According to LaDuke, an agile leader will lean into their values and purpose during difficult times. 

“They’re going to think about how those things (values and purpose) align with the organization, their role, and what the business needs.”

An agile leader operates from a place of genuine alignment, curiosity, and exploration when things go wrong. Rather than ringing the bell and putting everyone on edge, they make decisions calmly and with composure, which has a positive, contagious effect. 

That’s not to say they don’t let emotions impact their decisions. Agile leaders have a high EQ and allow emotions to exist (productively) in decision-making, recognizing the human element of an ever-changing and tumultuous business environment. 

They’re trained up on all the latest tech and are always looking for more ways to become more efficient in their role or bring more data into their decision-making

Most importantly, after a decision is made, agile leaders tend to reflect and figure out what they could do better next time. They recognize that continued practice is imperative to manage risk better and improve their jobs. 

Agile Leadership In HR: a Must-Have 

Cultivating this kind of leadership and mindset on any team will positively affect the organization. Still, no department needs agile leadership more today than the human resources department. 

HR leaders deal with employee risk, which has become one of the biggest–if not the biggest–risk factors for employers in modern times. 

That’s because employee turnover is at an all-time high (in the face of an ongoing labor shortage), burnout is spiking, causing unfavorable drops in productivity and morale, cybersecurity attacks are increasingly being carried out by insiders, and strike activity reached record levels in 2023. 

And it’s expected to get worse. According to the Academy to Innovate HR, the most common areas of HR risk heading into the future include: 

• Workforce risks: turnover, employee burnout, lack of employee engagement, workplace harassment, labor relations, remote work, and more
• Employee data management: security breaches and data leaks of sensitive employee data 
• Compliance: adhering to all relevant labor laws, especially around compensation and workplace safety 
• Ethics: engaging in ethical employment practices like equal opportunity hiring, creating a non-discriminatory work environment, ensuring impartial termination procedures, and more
• Learning and development: ensuring the company is staffed appropriately and has the right skills to achieve business goals
• Compensation and benefits: creating pay structures that reduce the threat of financial risk (increasing salaries that fail to motivate the right behavior), talent risk (turnover), and reputational risk (negative attention from investors, customers, or future candidates) 

HR leaders must cultivate agile team leadership to remain resilient despite growing responsibilities and risk management activities. 

They need to start connecting the work to their values and purpose and practice operating from a place of alignment, curiosity, and exploration so that when things do go wrong—they’re prepared to show up with composure and a solutions-oriented mindset. 

They need to update their HR tech stack to get ahead of the curve and ensure everyone on the team knows how to use it.  

Finally, HR leaders need to start implementing a culture of reflection and learning—of collaboration and communication—so that the whole team is getting better together and is ready to work together through an obstacle when the time comes. 

For more ways to cultivate agile leadership at your organization and your HR department, check out the America Back to Work episode with Joe LaDuke here. And then check out How to Cultivate Leadership Agility At Your Organization.

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