Micro Habits for Successful Agile Leadership

Abstract

Agile leadership has become increasingly important for creating flexible, highperforming teams in today's fast-paced, innovative-driven workplaces. Even though there is not an exact leader in scrum teams, Scrum Masters are one of the key enablers of agile methods, and therefore, they can impact team their team not only by their strategic decisions, but also, they can impact team results and the dynamics by their conscious or unconscious everyday actions. Even the fact that agile leadership is becoming more and more important, most of the studies are focused on high-level approached and frameworks and daily actions of Scrum Masters and their effects continued to stay understudied. While agile leadership topics were continued to research by scholars on macro-level practices, behavioral scientists were already focusing on small habits and their effects on several study contexts. At these times, James Clear elaborated on previous hypotheses and presented his concept of micro habits in 2018 and received the attention of a broader audience compared to researchers who studied similar topics before him. Even though the topic of micro habits attracted a broader audience in personal development, the application of micro habits theory in leadership, especially in agile leadership, has remained unexplored. To make up for this research gap a mixed-method approach was used combining qualitative and quantitative data about Scrum Masters' daily routines and how they affect team dynamics by survey and diary studies by exploring the questions “How do the micro habits of scrum masters influence the performance of agile teams?”, “What are the specific behaviors or practices that have the most significant impact on team effectiveness and efficiency?”. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate how scrum masters' micro habits, which are daily routines and minor behavioral changes, can improve agile practices and team performance. The results show that Scrum Masters' micro-scale, consistent behaviors such as providing proactive feedback, encouraging psychological safety, and conducting structured reflection have a significant impact on the effectiveness of the teams. With this way, the study and its findings contribute to both agile leadership and behavioral habit theory by expanding the theoretical landscape and the organizational insights.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Kristiana Roth (Supervisor)