With discussions on the ‘death of agile’ circulating and many calling for a ‘return to basics,’ it’s essential to recognise the pivotal role leadership plays in either accelerating or impeding agile success. Agile, at its core, is about fostering an environment ripe for innovation, with high talent density and rapid delivery of customer value. However, without leadership fully committed to understanding and applying agile principles, transformations risk becoming empty gestures. 

Adaptability and resilience are now cornerstones of success in a post-COVID world, where hybrid work, digital transformation, and people-centric business models are the new norms. Amidst this shift, Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Emotional Agility are essential skills across all levels of leadership and team dynamics.

In these times of tech entrepreneurship and a "move fast, break things" mentality, it's not surprising that there are some high-profile examples of companies that, in their quest to push the envelope and drive innovation, have neglected the need for EI in their company cultures. In this article, we look at toxic companies built by maverick leaders who failed to develop their own EI and lacked the emotional agility to succeed, sometimes flatlining their own careers and, in other cases, causing their businesses to crash and burn.

As most of us do over summer, I took some time to catch up on my reading, listening, and watching lists, especially reading Diana Larsen's book 'Lead without Blame'. This got me thinking about the environments where teams truly thrive. I started reflecting on how cultures of blame and fear can deeply impact organisations. In my latest article, I dive into some of the most extreme examples and explore the consequences when "Profits over People & Product" becomes the driving force in business.

There are some key reasons why high EI is important for leaders. These may seem obvious however, I’ve seen too many times individuals promoted quickly up the ladder who have excellent professional acumen, but poor emotional agility and little self-awareness.

A highly capable leader who feels they are doing their job to the highest level of excellence can still fail themselves, their company and their team if they lack the essential skills of high emotional intelligence.

The main impediment to agile adoption is often the behaviour and mindset of executives and leaders in an organisation. There is a need to understand, embrace, and support agile principles to enable its successful adoption and reap its benefits. Here I’ve covered some of the impediments to a successful adoption of agile, which leaders should tackle when implementing agile ways of working.

As detailed in the excellent HBR article by Darrell Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, and Hirotaka Takeuchi ‘Embracing Agile’, innovation is what agile is all about.

In this article I summarise the six practices Rigby et al discerned through their study and analysis, that are crucial in capitalising on agile’s potential.

I am part of the ‘Agile Industrial Complex’. However, I’ve always had the same frustration - knowing that what works will only be determined by listening to teams, and frequently seeing this not happen.

In this article I explore what is meant by ‘The Agile Industrial Complex’, and how we can shift the needle back towards the true principles of agile, and away from off-the-shelf models.

Rebecca explores the correlation between the commoditisation of people in business, to organisation’s failing to adopt agile. Catching up on ACN (#AgileCoachingNetwork) podcast episodes, I was inspired to write a piece after listening to their 20 May episode ‘What about the people!!!’.