I grew up running. I competed in high school. We typically ran on tracks or well-groomed trails.

Later, I started mountain running. One of the big differences with mountain running is that the trail is unpredictable. When running down a mountain, speed and momentum don’t always allow you to stop immediately.

You must be able to make instant decisions about how to balance, where to place your feet, whether to jump or slide. A mistake can result in a fall or injury.

You must be agile

All leaders bring their own style and preferences to leadership. All leaders have their own strengths.

Some are better organizers. Others are stronger visionaries. Some are great at delegating. Others are inspiring in how they lead from the front.

As a leader, it makes sense to understand and build on your strengths. You should do this.

Many leaders build enormously successful careers out of just doing that. But….

Life doesn’t always play to our strengths

Opportunities aren’t always within our strengths. Challenges don’t always match up to our strengths. Our team doesn’t always perfectly complement our strengths.

The agile leader comes out ahead

Only a few decades ago, people routinely talked about ten and twenty-year strategic plans.

But with the ever-increasing speed of change, there are very few industries where a ten or twenty-year plan is even possible – let alone makes sense.

So that shortened to three to five-year planning.

Now, many organizations find that there is so much change in their environment, a one-year plan feels like looking a long way out.

Leaders need to be agile. Because the trail most of them are running on is unpredictable.

What is leadership agility?

Leadership agility comes from these three components:

Option Awareness + Flexibility + Practice

Option Awareness: Many leaders develop patterns. One or two good methods to manage, to negotiate, to communicate, to organize, etc.

Option awareness is when a leader is regularly aware that there are multiple ways to accomplish the same goals. That there may be various methods to accomplish the same results.

Flexibility: You might know options exist, but if you aren’t flexible you can’t take advantage of them.

In sports, flexibility is a way to describe someone’s ability to move their arm or leg or anything else through a full range of motion. When you are tight, impinged or restricted in some way, your options for movement are less even if you know they exist.

Practice: It’s one thing if I have time to think about options and adjust. It’s another if time is short and I need to rely on muscle memory. Practice is what builds muscle memory.

Knowing your options and being flexible is of limited value if I don’t have the “muscle memory” to be able to respond in a timely way.

Rigidity is usually about fear

When I see a leader with a white-knuckle grip on their preferred way of doing things – chances are high that they are wrestling with an internal fear.

Most people are surprised to discover that leaders struggle with fear —even those who often present as very confident or have big personalities). Most leaders are surprised to find out that other leaders are often afraid.

Fear is common.

Just like people everywhere, fear is a big part of the leadership experience. Fear of failure is a big one. Fear of what others think. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of not measuring up.

The most successful leaders learn to be aware of their fear and relate to it differently.

When are leaders most likely to become rigid?

While any leader can become stiff and inflexible in their approach to leadership – there are three dynamics where this is most often seen:

“Model” leaders: By model leaders, I mean leaders who follow a model of leadership. Sometimes these are ideological models. Other times they are just methods or processes.

Some prefer to try to lead exactly like how they imagine their mentor or some other respected leader led. Others have a certification in a leadership model – and try to stick to it regardless.

This is often a “rookie” or new leader error. But it can also be seen when an experienced leader is operating outside of their normal context. Or when a leader is facing a challenge or event they’ve never (or rarely) experienced before.

They freeze. They develop tunnel vision.

Apprehensive leaders: Leaders who aren’t confident in their role, their abilities or their personal self-efficacy will tend to be more rigid.

This often emerges when encountering “newness.” A new leadership role or responsibility, a new scenario, a new dynamic.

An apprehensive leader is often more afraid of making mistakes than they are focused on making a decent (I didn’t say “right”) decision.

As a result, they will often stop moving and make as few decisions as possible. Many wait for circumstances (or someone else) to make the decision for them. (“Let’s just wait to see how this will play out…”)

For some, this means they will endlessly seek consensus, more input or more permission before they decide. Analysis paralysis.

But for others, they will be very decisively indecisive.  They will make bold statements about arbitrary limits to options. They will strongly support or resist limited perspectives.

They may rush to make any decision just to get the discomfort of indecision behind them.

Successful Leaders: Occasionally, I meet someone who used to be an athlete but hasn’t competed or been particularly active in decades. But in their mind, they are still that athlete.

While they usually are aware of options (or at least the options that made sense back-in-the-day) and they often have “muscle memory,” they no longer have flexibility. And it comes as a surprise.

For example. the entrepreneurial leader, who had to be enormously creative to build their organization. This person may have achieved a certain level of stability where they didn’t have to fight to survive anymore.

They could enjoy a certain level of control and predictability to life. They could pick and choose the challenges they tackled.

They often lose their flexibility. So, when life tackles them or when a new opportunity shows up that requires some change – they are often not ready.

Three Tips to Become an Agile Leader

Be a Learner: Go find something that you aren’t good at or a natural at and try to learn it. Put yourself in the experience of not having strengths to rely on.

This doesn’t even have to be related to your leadership role. I constantly find that I’m personally challenged and grow as I train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Perhaps for you, it is a musical instrument or painting or pursuing a new degree.

This will keep your character and leadership muscles warmed up and limber.

Face fears: Find something that scares you and deal with it. Again, this doesn’t have to be at work. But learn to relate to fear differently.

This might mean learning how to constructively enter into conflict. It might mean learning to confront poor behavior or performance in a timely and effective way. It might mean asking someone how you could improve in your role.

Most people reading this will find some level of fear in any of the three suggestions above. But pick your own. Maybe it is an issue within your family, or a friendship or a neighborhood situation.

Maybe learning a new skill, like public speaking, triggers fear. This is common.

Learn to see fear as an opportunity for growth. It is an indicator that you perceive a threat. Learn other options for dealing with that perceived threat.

Get help if you need it. Hire a coach. Talk to a counselor.

Ten daily ideas: I got this idea from James Altucher. Write down ten ideas every day. They can be about anything. The goal is to become comfortable and fast at generating new ideas.

The ideas don’t have to be the “right” idea. They don’t have to be good ideas. They don’t have to be ones you’ll ever try to act on.

They just need to be ideas.

Some coaching clients freeze when I give them this assignment. They tell me “I can’t come up with ten ideas! I have a hard time coming up with one idea!”

That’s fear again. In fact, they naturally come up with thousands of ideas (usually about what is wrong with the original idea.) They are often so afraid of having the “wrong” idea that they are unwilling to present any ideas.

I find it helps to have themes: 10 ideas of articles. 10 ideas for dates with my wife. 10 ideas for where to go to lunch today. 10 ways I could double my business.

Again – it doesn’t matter what your ideas are about. It’s just the practice of creating them.

Practice Agility

Become quick like a cat.

Do you want to become more agile in your leadership and thinking? Make your first list of 10 ideas. 10 new things to learn. 10 fears to face. 10 topics to write 10 ideas about.

Then act.

You’ll already be a more flexible leader than you were 15 minutes ago.

Christian

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