Adaptability is Essential for Leading in a "VUCA" World

 

 "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." --Charles Darwin

Adaptability Defined  

Adaptability is essential for leading in a VUCA world — that is, one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Adaptability is the ability to read and respond to change with a wide repertoire of complementary skills and behaviors.  For instance, some circumstances call for leaders to take charge, force difficult issues, and make tough decisions, while others require leaders to enable, support, and include people. 

Similarly, organizations sometimes need leaders to focus on their future strategic direction and at other times to focus on day-to-day operations and execution.

Note that when paired, these leadership behaviors, like the Taoist concept of Yin and Yang, are opposing and yet complementary: Forceful and enabling provide a balanced blend of interpersonal behaviors for influencing others, while strategic and operational provide the range needed to address a host of organizational issues. One approach without its complementary approach is incomplete.

Adaptable leaders deftly toggle between opposing behaviors. They can step up and make a call just as easily as they can bring people together to make group decisions. They can read the room and adjust their behavior accordingly, from asking questions and listening with an open mind to pushing an unpopular view one more time. 

They can also zoom out and envision change in big-picture terms and zoom in on the tactical details of implementing change.

Adaptability Is a Meta-Skill  

This leads me to the conclusion that adaptability is not just another leadership skill but rather a meta-skill. That is, it reflects a balanced and well-rounded pattern of skills that suggests an underlying capacity to master specific skills and behaviors and enable the continual learning of new ones. 

I see it as a higher-order capability that emerges when leaders develop competence with a wide array of specific skills and behaviors, learn how to appropriately balance the opposing and complementary ones, and cultivate the wisdom and situational judgment to know when to use which behavior — and to what degree.

As leaders develop adaptability, it facilitates the acquisition of new skills in a virtuous cycle. As they expand their perspectives and repertoires, it becomes easier to continue expanding them. On the other hand, leaders who build their careers around their innate talents and playing to strengths have a narrower range and limited ability to expand it. 

When the game changes, in the words of Eric Hoffer, "they are at risk of finding themselves fit for a world that no longer exists."

Developing Adaptability

There are different routes to adaptability for different kinds of leaders, but three principles apply to all. First, adaptability requires understanding your tendencies — which behaviors come naturally and which ones do not — and this understanding can be gained with a personality assessment like the Predictive Index. 

It also helps to get feedback from coworkers regarding your behavior and its impact. This is useful for calibrating what you are doing effectively and what you could do to be more effective by adding new skills and behaviors as well as being more selective with those on which you may over-rely.

With self-awareness becoming more adaptable involves learning how to do what does not come naturally and learning how to prevent strengths from becoming weaknesses through overuse. The best way to learn these lessons is through a variety of challenging work experiences — especially those that stretch you out of your comfort zone. 

There is little learning in the comfort zone and little comfort in the learning zone. And it is not enough to go through the experience; the experience has to go through you. Reflective, humble, and nimble learners seem best able to absorb the lessons of experience.

Finally, becoming more adaptable also involves an evolution in your self-concept or identity, the story you tell yourself about who you are. Leaders who lack adaptability tend to define themselves in a polarized way — for example, “I am a hard charger, not a soft pushover” or “I believe in power through people, not power over people.” 

They over-idealize the virtue in the way of leading that they identify with while simultaneously distancing themselves from the complementary side, which they often portray in extreme, caricatured terms. The side they turn away from becomes their blind side.

In contrast, those who develop adaptability come to see themselves in a more nuanced, differentiated and yet integrated way: “I am a hard charger who believes in power through people.” They grasp the necessary interdependence of opposing ways of leading and can imagine doing both in a way that feels authentic and genuine, something they can feel good about. This mindset shift allows them to become a better, more expanded, and capable version of themselves.

No one knows what our disruptive world will throw at leaders next. They don’t know, either. 

I do know, however, that those who possess a wide and balanced repertoire of complementary competencies, skills, and behaviors — and the wisdom to know which one to use in a given situation — are likely to be most effective at leading their people, teams, and organizations through the turbulence. And we know that this meta-skill — adaptability — can be learned, coached, and developed.

Click here to read a related post: Leadership vs. Management (5 min read)

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

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