Unleash the Full Potential of Your Agile Teams
By Ryan Fullmer
March 20, 2023
Using an Agile methodology is an effective way to deliver results in today's fast-paced, dynamic and uncertain world. This approach emphasizes value delivery, customer engagement, self-organizing teams, and the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. To be successful with Agile, teams need to demonstrate three critical traits: audacity, tenacity, and risk-taking.
Audacity
Audacity is associated with boldness, daring, and the willingness to take on new challenges. In Agile, audacity is important because it helps teams challenge the status quo, think outside the box and develop innovative solutions that meet customer needs. By daring to dream big and think differently, Agile teams can come up with ideas that others may not have considered.
Tenacity
Tenacity refers to the ability to maintain a laser focus on the end goal and having the grit to stick with it when things get hard. Agile teams need to be tenacious to weather setbacks and keep moving forward. It helps them to build resilience and the perseverance to continuously improve.
Risk-Taking
Agile teams leverage experimentation, learning and adaptation to deliver value. They must be willing to take risks to try new things, validate ideas, and make quick adjustments.
Supporting These Traits
Take these four steps to support Agile teams in cultivating audacity, tenacity and risk-taking:
- Communicate clear outcomes and success measures: This helps the team to understand the big picture and stay focused on the end goals. Leaders should encourage the team to gather feedback and data to understand the impact they are making, and their progress toward achieving the outcomes.
- Celebrate team successes: Recognize the team’s achievements and celebrate the small wins along the way. This builds confidence and motivation, and encourages team members to continue to embody the three traits.
- Encourage continuous growth and learning: This includes investing in training, offering development opportunities, supporting skill development, and providing coaching and mentoring. Team members need to know that leaders support them in stepping away from getting the work done, to spend time on learning and growth activities.
- Create a safe and supporting environment: This means fostering a culture of psychological safety, where team members feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and challenging ideas. Encourage team members to try things out, and embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and improve.
By fostering a healthy culture through these four steps, you enable the traits of audacity, tenacity and risk-taking. This will unleash your team's full potential to deliver exceptional results.
