If you can’t adapt you can’t lead
It’s more than 10 years since The Harvard Business Review first identified Adaptability as ‘The New Competitive Advantage’.
And given what’s happened in that time, it’s no surprise that thought-leaders continue to highlight it as a key leadership attribute:
- Forbes Magazine says Adaptability is ‘an essential skill for successful leaders’ here.
- Global recruitment giant Hays lists it #1 on its top 6 list of leadership traits here.
- The Wharton School states that ‘Adaptability [is] The Key to Leadership’ here.
- And a LinkedIn survey of 4,000 talent professional and business leaders ranked Adaptability in its ‘top 5 soft skills for the future of work’ here.
Adaptability consists of three things:
- The curiosity to see the need or opportunity for change
- The courage to embrace change, and
- The speed to pivot quickly
But forget adaptability for a moment. Just consider each of these three attributes in the wider context of leadership:
- Without curiosity, you’ll be the last to know – anything. And that consigns you to being a follower, not a leader. From analysing complex market intel to simply asking people how they’re doing, if you don’t seek you won’t find – at least not until it’s too late. That’s why Warren Buffet reads six hours a day.
- Without courage, you’ll be a prisoner of your own comfort zone and, by definition, no-one can follow you if you’re not going anywhere. In a tale of two presidents, world leaders have been just as surprised by how slowly the Russians are advancing into Ukraine as they were by how quickly the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year. It is notable that Zelenskyy has stayed, whilst Ghani – despite repeatedly saying he would fight to the death – fled.
- And without speed, you’ll hold up everyone who’s following you - except your competition. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix said that ‘companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly’.
So, if you or your leaders lack any of these elements of adaptability, the chances are right now that they’re struggling to be effective leaders – and not just in the face of change.
Rich Alderton from High Performance Change is an Adaptability Intelligence specialist, so why not contact him for an initial discussion?