Rooted in agile software development and initially referred to leading self-organizing development teams (Appelo, 2011;[1]), the concept of agile leadership is now used to more generally denote an approach to people and team leadership that is focused on boosting adaptiveness in highly dynamic and complex business environments (Hayward, 2018;[2] Koning, 2020;[3] Solga, 2021[4]).
[6] The Agile leadership approach fits well in today's technology-focused culture in providing autonomy to employees while encouraging growth and experimentation to address the unknown needs of the future.
By enabling individuals and teams to create clarity on the objectives or desired outcome and discover the best ways to achieve Agile Leadership looks to address the near-constant complexity and change intrinsic to organizations.
It defines the purpose of agile leadership as enabling people and teams to meet performance expectations and customer demands in business/task environments that are charged with VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) and where process knowledge (knowing how to produce desired results) is weak.
The former involves enabling and exploiting a multitude and diversity of options and possibilities to boost adaptiveness, that is to say, promote responsiveness, flexibility, and speed to effectively deal with dynamic change and disruptive challenges (the 'empower' component).