Abstract
In March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic created complex and time-sensitive challenges for colleges and universities that temporarily closed campuses and restricted access to students and personnel. Given the pandemic's magnitude, there was no roadmap to resolve these challenges. Leaders drew on experience, training, and a variety of leadership perspectives. One approach, agile leadership, developed in a business environment in response to high-pressure, complex challenges. Participants in this study described pressure from the need to make significant time-sensitive decisions, modify existing policies or practices, or create something new, collaborate in unfamiliar ways with other departments and functions, and rely on unfamiliar technology.This phenomenological qualitative research aimed to identify processes, practices, policies, and strategies through interviews with eleven university student affairs directors or managers who reported using or observing in their organizations to address challenges consistent with agile leadership principles. They particularly recounted practices that are consistent with agile principles: the pressure to pivot from what they were used to doing, the development and use of a variety of communication tools to engage in a timely way with a wide array of stakeholders and approaches to adapting or creating policies and procedures to operate within the pandemic limitations. The findings of this study reveal four significant themes: (1) addressing urgency for quick decision-making, (2) prioritizing technology accommodations, (3) coordinating responses with internal and external stakeholders, and (4) integrating agile into other leadership perspectives. The results contribute to the limited research on agile leadership behaviors. This study offers a proposed solution to the contemporary challenges delineated within the study and identifies implications and solutions for further research.