4 more ideas on adaptability

9 - Ingenuity

The Institute for the Future's 2020 skills included novel and adaptive thinking. We’ve got to find ways to be more resourceful and clever to get more of the right things done. This means hacking ourselves, hacking our systems and processes, and quite possibly, hacking other people too!

10 - Empathy

To understand and feel what others are experiencing is a power shift to make; from caring less to caring more. Trust goes deeper, quicker, and it’s not about you, it’s about them.

11 - Creativity

The subtle art of making things up is a human capability we’re born with - ranking highly on the list of the World Economic Forum's future work skills. Creativity creeps up higher in the rankings each year! The cry of ‘I’m not creative’ is done. Time to change that script!

12 - Curiosity

Our childlike wonder has been replaced with compliance, following rules and systems without knowing why. Don't jump to solutions, deny or discount; wonder more.

There you have 12 ideas about adaptability; it's THE capability of today.

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. 

Adaptability - one of the biggest capabilities of our time

I’m posting on ADAPTABILITY; one of the biggest capabilities of our time.

It's our capacity, willingness and ability to adjust to new conditions.

Here are 4 of 12 BIG ideas about adaptability:

1️⃣ Sensemaking We need to gather, sort, filter and process information rapidly. Without making sense we’re in the dark. It gives us insight so we can decide what to do next.

2️⃣ Listening We fail to listen; Hugh Mackay says we fear we will be changed if we listen. But by entertaining ideas, information and insights, we can become willing to adapt. Oscar Trimboli says deep listening is what's required... beyond words.

3️⃣ Learning Understanding and knowledge opens us to possibility. We mature. Try, trip, fail, learn. It’s the portal to even more skills and capabilities, yet so many of us think we already know it all.

4️⃣ Collaborating We can’t go it alone. Our future requires us to work with others, engage, listen, communicate, tolerate, include, invite, welcome. It takes work and doesn’t happen naturally for some. We need to collaborate to adapt, and adapt to be able to collaborate.

What a relief! A leader who make sense

In this crazy cray-cray world, it's relieving to hear a leader explain what’s going on, talk about what we need to do about it, how it will be ok, even if there’s a challenge up ahead.

A leader who’s not sugar-coating it, bluffing, boasting or waffling on. They're not making it about them. They're frank and practical about what’s going on.

And there’s an empathy and an understanding there too.

It’s a subtle mix yet a powerful practice. And it’s relieving because it is honest, helpful. It reduces our uncertainty, relieves some anxiety and helps gain our buy-in for a new future.

✋ No more Me Monsters

✋ No more Chaos Conveyers

✋ No more Status Seekers

✋ No more Blah Blasters.

Workplaces of today - and the humans in them, creating value for the customers and clients they serve - need leaders who make sense.

Bid farewell to these four pesky characters. They’re no longer required as part of your contemporary, engaging, inspiring leadership.

Q: Who did I miss? What other bad movers are there, leaders who DON'T make sense? 

The status seeker leader

Continuing a series of posts on leaders who make sense - or in this case, don't!

Leadership is about elevation, lifting others up, not putting them down. Even if a tough topic needs talking about, a leader who makes sense makes the environment feel safe anyway.

Many leaders play status games and are unaware they do it. They try to make themselves feel better by being right, better, showing they know it all.

Compliments get turned into criticisms, praise isn’t passed on, and success gets stashed not shared.

Status seekers feel like shite and they share that shite around. (And yes, this character I've sketched looks like a poop-emoji. Unintentional originally, but oh-so suitable once I noticed it.)

Making others feel shitty is a dirty tactic; it’s hurtful and unnecessary. These leaders don’t make sense! What they say can be in contrast to how things really are. We know politicians like this when they're said to be 'removed', 'tone deaf' and ’not living in the real world’.