How do leaders adapt

Adaptability isn’t just a switch we flick. It’s an integrated set of thinking, learning and practical behaviors that help us change. It’s a skill and capability. We can break it down and learn it.

To support leaders and their teams, we need to provide them with this capability of adaptability.

12 capabilities of adaptability are:

1. Sensemaking
2. Listening
3. Learning
4. Collaborating
5. Facilitation
6. Visualization
7. Experimentation
8. Improvisation
9. Ingenuity
10. Empathy
11. Creativity
12. Curiosity

These are the more contemporary and impactful ways of thinking and being in today’s world of work.

I’m pleased to offer my new Leadership Adaptability Program: for leadership teams in business, community, not for profit and government.

Take one capability and then take them all. Integrate them into your existing organizational development schedule to refresh and update it. Or let’s launch a new initiative together that delivers leaders the skills, techniques and practices for the new ways of work.

Adaptability is the capability. 

The person with the most spontaneity wins

As leadership evolves from command and control to consultative/coaching and beyond to facilitative, those who can handle what happens are well placed.

We can’t predict what people will say, what will happen at a meeting, how a client will respond or what the board might ask for, so we may need to respond in the moment.

Spontaneity is a strength that's incredibly powerful in times of uncertainty. We can spend so much time though, rehearsing scenarios trying to cover all of the possibilities, to try to prepare for the future.

Do we fear we wont be able to handle things, that we will lose control?

Maybe we don’t trust ourselves to handle what happens.

But improvisers have known it for decades: we have incredible resources in us and we need to trust that we can handle so many situations. Could you be more spontaneous, you know, go with the flow? Responding to what happens rather than trying to control what happens?

🔆To build spontaneity, notice your response when things DON'T go as you hoped, expected or planned. What you do next is spontaneity. And it's a SUPER SKILL for the uncertain future. 

ISH: The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough’

It’s natural to want to do well - at work, in study, in life, to do our best But what happens when striving for the best becomes more; the pursuit of perfection?

Perfectionism is on the rise and has dire consequences for how we think and feel about ourselves and others, how we think, live, and work. It's causes over-thinking, over-working, burnout, sleeplessness and mental health issues like depression and anxiety.

We can’t keep going like this!

But what’s the alternative? In 2019 I released ‘ISH: The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough’. It uncovers how to think, work and achieve in clever ways adapted from the worlds of software development, and improvisation. How do they get things done? What can we learn from them?

In ‘ISH’, I explain:

🔅The problem with chasing perfection and why we seek it

🔅The mental loop that traps us into thinking perfection is the answer

🔅The idea of ‘ISH’ which means somewhat, near enough

🔅9 ways to think and work that provide a healthy and productive alternative to perfectionism.

Excellence, quality and continuous improvement are important. But the pursuit of perfection … not so much.

Q: Do you 'ish'?

Like Surprises

I'm posting this week on Working in Uncertainty. Once you’ve started before you’re ready and in motion, exciting things will happen. There will be unexpected, unknown and uncertain. Yes more uncertain.

You may think starting wasn’t a good idea, but you're in motion and have momentum - that's going to make you more able to respond than being at a standstill.

Welcome spontaneity into your world instead of being all control-freak on things. Spontaneity is a natural tendency or impulse of being unconstrained and unplanned. Our daily actions can't follow a script. A guide or to-do list or a structure, yes, but we can't know totally what someone else is going to say, how they'll react and what will happen when all these differences collide.

We need the capability to improvise and the first thing is to welcome surprises, unexpected things. Stay open and wondering. You'll be easier to work with, more open about what to do next, and able to find other possibilities and solutions.

Q : So, are you a bit of a control freak or willing to welcome surprises? Let me know below. 

Developing adaptability - your willingness to change

The next 4 ideas I’m posting on adaptability are:

5️⃣ Facilitation

Our world of work needs greater ease and progress, less red tape. Facilitation is about making things easier and to facilitate we'll need to give up being a control freak and be able to flex.

6️⃣ Visualisation

We're drowning in information! We need quicker and clearer ways to convey ideas and thinking. It's time to get over our ‘I can’t draw’ complex, and start making sketching, imagery and visualising an everyday kind of thing.

7️⃣ Experimentation

Do you test, try, fail and learn? That's adaptability right there! Good things are often brought about through advancing and pioneering schools of thought. Today’s workplaces need to be more laboratory than court room.

8️⃣ Improvisation

Responding to uncertainty is a daily requirement. Operating from principles rather than prescriptions can help because no two situations are the same, no two people are the same. Improv doesn’t just belong on the stage, in comedy festivals or on TV.