Organisations are entering an era characterised by rapid evolution—in supply chains, labour markets, consumer preferences, and technology adoption. While this evolution presents challenges and growing complexity to tackle, it also presents opportunities for businesses ready to adapt with foresight and agility. The key to thriving in this complex landscape lies in recognising and responding to these shifts early.

In this context, traditional leadership models are being challenged, necessitating a transformation in leadership approaches to navigate the complexities of the modern business environment. This has made agility in thinking and decision-making paramount. Leaders are now expected to quickly make sense of a complex and ambiguous business ecosystem, leverage impactful workforce tools and solutions like  AI-driven employee experience platforms to raise employee productivity and create an engaging workplace experience.

Agile leadership traits

Speaking with Samantha Liston, CHRO, University of Sydney on how these external changes are translating into what’s expected from leaders, she recounts how it is crucial today more than ever to align business values and visions with those of its leaders. This provides the necessary guard rails to develop impactful leaders.

‘We have shared leadership principles that identify how we want our leaders to link with our strategic aspirations,’ noted Samantha, pointing out how leaders must have the right hallmark qualities like collaboration, being accountable, taking decisive action, coaching, empowering others, engaging with external stakeholders and innovating, all while focusing on creating the right culture.

In addition to this, Samantha adds that to make leaders truly agile, they need to begin with humility and openness to feedback.  “Being honest about shortcomings and supporting that with adaptability is necessary. Allowing quick response is expected of leaders while dealing with ambiguity and complexity.” The other key step that differentiates agile leadership from its traditional counterpart is the softening of the rigid top-down decision-making structures.

Transforming to an agile leadership structure

Historically, leadership in many APAC organisations has been hierarchical, with decision-making centralized at the top. However, the current climate of constant change and disruption demands a shift towards more adaptive and inclusive leadership styles. At all levels, this has pushed authority closer to the front lines to enable faster, more informed decisions. This approach requires building a culture that celebrates experimentation and learns from failure, encouraging teams to embrace change confidently.

For HR leaders, it's necessary to be a catalyst to this transformation. Ensuring the organisational culture allows for decentralised decision making, business buy-in, and overcoming resistance to change means going back to change management principles. Even rethinking organisational development and structure that makes decision making and leadership more agile. This ensures leaders across the organisation are conducive to agile leadership and can gain benefit from the it’s strengths.

Technology as an enabler

In the era of digital transformation, embedding AI, automation, intelligence, and talent analytics has become crucial for effective leadership. These tools provide leaders with data-driven insights, enabling more informed decision-making and strategic planning, while raising their ability to take the right decisions, quickly.

“HR tools are a big priority here at University of Sydney, both to raise operational efficiency and create the right experience,” noted Samantha. “But technology is an important enabler, it shouldn't be a replacement. Especially for leaders where it's important to build trust, technology cannot be a replacement.”

It is important to leverage solutions to make agile leadership more effective. AI-based workflow tools like ServiceNow’s AI-powered Predictive Intelligence and Automation Engine can help automate task assignments, track progress, and identify potential roadblocks before they hinder productivity become important tool for leaders to focus more on strategic work. Their role in raising cross-functional collaboration is also key in enabling leaders to think of more connected solutions.

While technology doesn’t replace having the right people as leaders and a culture that promotes agile decision making, it plays a vital role in navigating the complex and ambiguous business environment.

Leadership development as a strategic focus area

HR plays a pivotal role in shaping leadership pipelines by ensuring that leaders are equipped with the right skills, mindsets, and tools to thrive in a fast-evolving business landscape. HR functions must move beyond traditional talent management to act as strategic enablers of leadership development.

For Samantha, a key aspect of leadership development was going back to organisational purpose and ensuring leaders are working towards it. “Think about leadership development in line with your organisational purpose,”  recommended Samantha, adding how at the University of Sydney, “we have a key value around Leadership for Good. That drives a lot of our leadership efforts. In my other work too, I found linking leadership development with the purpose of the organisation helps to ensure leaders achieve the strategic vision.”

Robust succession planning is key and needs to prioritised. It's key for HR to work closely with business to identify high-potential employees and tailor development initiatives to prepare them for future leadership roles. Paired with a powerful skills intelligence framework within the company, HR can help predict and skill to create a robust leadership pipeline. Finally, cultural transformation efforts that aim to create an agile, innovative, and inclusive work environment are crucial for agile leaders to be successful.