Good Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) is a dynamic leadership theory that emphasizes the unique relationship between a leader and each member of their team. In the context of organizational cultural requirements, LMX plays a crucial role in fostering a positive work environment. LMX theory suggests that leaders form differentiated relationships with their team members based on trust, respect, and mutual understanding.

In an Agile environment, where adaptability, collaboration, and quick responses to change are paramount, Good LMX is especially relevant. Agile methodologies emphasize the value of individuals and interactions over processes and tools, and LMX aligns seamlessly with this principle. A leader practicing Good LMX in an Agile setting ensures that each team member feels valued, understood, and empowered.

In Agile teams, where self-organizing groups are encouraged, LMX becomes the foundation for building strong interpersonal connections. Leaders who embrace Good LMX are better equipped to recognize and leverage the unique strengths of each team member. This individualized approach enhances communication, collaboration, and overall team performance. Furthermore, it encourages a positive organizational culture by promoting a sense of belonging and shared purpose among team members.

The agility of an organization is deeply intertwined with the quality of relationships within the team. Good LMX contributes to an open and transparent culture where feedback is constructive, and everyone feels heard. This fosters an environment where team members are more likely to embrace change, take risks, and contribute innovative ideas.

Good Leader-Member Exchange is indeed a solution to various organizational cultural requirements, and its application in an Agile environment is particularly beneficial. By emphasizing individualized relationships, trust, and collaboration, LMX contributes to creating a work culture that is adaptable, innovative, and supportive—a culture that is essential for thriving in the dynamic landscape of Agile methodologies.

Agile is a desirable adjective for any industrial or institutional organization. In the sixties of the last century the "Event Oriented" organization scheme proved to be effective.

Certainly a judicious leader-member exchange (LMX) can have a positive impact on individual and corporate organizational culture, but the promotion of strong leader-subordinate relationships is not just the result of the exchange, which is only one of the components, but rather depends on the ability of the leader to create sincere and loyal evolving relationships, across the board, in a productive sense for his collaborators and for the entire company organization. Human resources have been considered, until the times we are living in, the most important asset of a company. Elton Mayo noticed this in the 1920s during his work at the Western Electric Company in the United States. Consider that: at that time Taylorism and Fordism were dominant in society and gave an impetus to the entire North American industry which made it great for itself and for the entire world. The employees of a company identified with the company it-self, enjoyed its honor and shared its pain. The company was perceived almost as a benign mother and mistress. Today the world is no longer the same and has changed a lot; thus the kind idea of Leader and therefore of Manager developed in the School of Human Relations has also changed. But some things that were valid then remain valid today, although group psychology and sociometry tell us that the Leader does not always coincide with the Manager.

Management is not simply a set of knowledge or methodologies, even metric or operational, theoretical and/or practical, which can be applied in a rational, repetitive, incontestable way, to the point of being codified in international standards or in professional literature. There have been leading experts in the sector who have distinguished Operational Management, focused on activities, processes and results, from Strategic Management, also focused on people, their behaviors and attitudes, their knowledge and visions. This has led to the nickname "human resources", considered in the same way as other resources treated qualitatively and quantitatively in order to achieve the set objectives. Management, a term that has been overused in our time, can refer to a "apex" which is identified with the highest decision-making point; it can imply rational management of a process or project in view of a pre-established objective; it can simply refer to the direction and its management styles of the resources involved (particularly of a human, environmental, or natural nature in general) leveraging a motivational driver (of an economic, ethical, relational, emotional, transactional, safety nature, etc. .). If we reflect on this element from a historical-industrial point of view, it is necessary to point out that we have moved, especially in production areas, from a moment of Tayloristic rationality in the organizational function to a "Management of Human Relations", therefore to a "Management by Tasks”, soon after evolved into “Management by Objective”. The latter, by introducing a link with a reward system to achieve the set objectives, revealed that the reward system could maintain its effectiveness even if it did not remain so and became "precarizing". So, subsequently, it became a “Management by Fear” especially of unemployment. The process, then, was unstoppable and led us today "From Management by Fear to Power by Fear". In essence, we come to argue about a link between Management and Power, not better identified but presumably true. It can be done, in harmony with Weberian analyzes on the spirit of capitalism, through that post-war(II WW) North American Protestant ethic which had generated development and the American Dream, in which WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) figures were born dominant. Or, it can be done by looking for the reasons in the selection of the ruling class. Selection based on competence only at low and medium levels, reserving and making the highest positions dependent on social belonging, to élite or family groups, and on connivance and shared interests with the dominant classes in a "status quo" logic. As the Italian sociologist Franco Ferrarotti had shown and perhaps anticipated already in the 1970s with the publication of the conclusions of his American research in the Sociology of Work. Without going into spiritualism, we therefore ask ourselves to understand whether from what we have witnessed and still witness, a rather connected picture can actually emerge, in line with that Old Testament wisdom tradition which preaches "Initium Sapientiae Timor Domini” (Prov 1, 7). And even if we have been allowed to possess the Earth we should rediscover that the notion of possession does not coincide with that of ownership, so we should be the custodians of the Earth! Everyone! No one excluded! In practice: we arrive here naked and we leave naked; we are all just renting and no one owns it! And these concepts are excellently linked with that of sustainability in the hypothesis of a readjustment of the Global Order: the Big Reset which "conspiracy" tendencies are rumored about, but which is discussed in the meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos. At the same time, we ask ourselves whether the objective of such a change, assumed to be true, is truly the one professed, or in any case implied, of an "equity" to which sustainability appears linked, that is, of greater distributive justice in the human community, especially towards “the lasts”, the marginalized, the excluded and the discarded! Ultimately: the final realization of that universal brotherhood between humans, always preached, but never implemented, without it ultimately resulting - as has always happened in History - that "everything changes so that nothing changes".

I would then like also to point out how the exchange of Leadership and Managerial functions in different organizational and production contexts, if operated in a framework devoid of ethics and integrity, can be used against the true free market, rather than the one preached free, but not really free. In fact, through this exchange of Leaders/Managers the different companies and organizations, especially if they operate in similar sectors, can come to know through the leaders and managers exchanged, the plans and policies (especially pricing policy) of the other organizations. This makes the free market itself, and the antitrust policies to which it should be subject, ineffective in an underground manner. All against consumers and through generous compensation for Leaders and Managers. Not always all is gold what is glittering!

(Extracted from my work https://zenodo.org/records/7647578and adapted to answer your question)