Affective Leadership in Agile Teams

Agile management prescribes a set of structures and processes to help teams respond to change. This article presents an in-depth case study examining how high- and low- agility nursing teams differed in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizational restructuring, and floods. It unveils the crucial role of "affective leaders" in high-agility teams during those crises. These leaders constructed positive emotional experiences for their teams to successfully respond to adversity. The findings remind scholars and practitioners that agile management's founding tenet of "valuing individuals and interactions" implies understanding, working with, and actively recalibrating emotions.