Lately, it seems like most of the articles I read about organizational culture and effectiveness all start the same way, “the future of work is changing…”, “the speed of change is faster than ever before…”, “globalization and social media are changing the way we work…”, “the need to be adaptable is greater than ever before…”. The message is loud and clear…the need to be adaptable is vital to succeed in today’s marketplace. But what does it really mean to be adaptable? What does that look like on an individual and an organizational level?
According the Gage Canadian Dictionary[i], “adaptability is the ability to adjust to new conditions. The capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose”. Hmmm, I find the sentence “the capacity to be modified” to be a very interesting choice of words. I do like the word modified because in order to adapt to a new situation means you are willing to experience something new, which presents a certain amount of risk. And risk presents the opportunity to fail, which many of us are not comfortable with. The ability to accept risk and even embrace it, means that you will have to modify something about yourself. It could be modifying previously held assumptions, beliefs, practices, or routines.
To illustrate I will share a very recent experience I had. Within the last year, I decided to take on a new job opportunity that I knew was going to present challenges, as most new jobs do. But taking on this job meant stepping into an arena where the challenges I was going to face were somewhat unknown. I was going to go from leading a team of five to a team of thirty. I was going to have oversight of a multimillion-dollar budget and I was going to be part of a team that was going to help an entire division transition through a change in chief executive leadership. A change that most people were scared and apprehensive about.
In spite of the challenges, I believed in myself and felt I had the confidence to overcome them. But something interesting happened during the first few weeks in my new position. The confidence I believed I had began to diminish and was replaced by an overwhelming sense of insecurity. I was presented with scenarios that I had not previously experienced and I felt unequipped to handle them, nor was I certain if I actually wanted to. I started to question if this was the career path I wanted to follow. To make things more challenging, I did not have the same social network of colleagues who I had developed trusting relationships with that I could confide in. I felt isolated, uncertain and paralyzed. I knew I had to rethink my approach of getting through this when I woke up at 3am one-night panicked that I was going down the wrong path and I had to rethink my career goals. Actually, panicked is an understatement. Nuclear meltdown encapsulates my emotional reaction more accurately. The process of developing self-awareness, if done properly, can be an agonising experience. Sometimes being blind to something about yourself can be blissful. But it can also lead to not checking assumptions until they slap you in the face, which is harder to ignore.
To come to the realization I wanted to follow a different career path and I had not entirely figured out my future, was very humbling. The self-awareness or realization I was experiencing was a significant moment in my life that taught me a lot about the importance of venturing out of my comfort zone to grow. Consequently, I decided to leave the position and return to what I was doing before. Now looking back several months later, I am confident I made the right decision. I am now exploring other opportunities that align more with my passion and expertise. However, to develop that self-awareness and growth meant I had to embrace discomfort to discover something that was hidden from me before. Bill Eckstrom, president and founder of the EcSell Institute, gave a TED talk on “Why comfort will ruin your life”. Bill says, “What makes you comfortable can ruin you and only in a state of discomfort can you continually grow”. My mentor also holds a similar belief that she shared with me once… “never waste a crisis”. Although Bill and my mentor’s quotes are inspirational, it made me think about the capabilities that are required to feel somewhat equipped to venture out into the scary abyss.
I started thinking about the emotional quotient, or better known as emotional intelligence, and wondered if there is such a thing as the adaptable quotient or intelligence? If emotional intelligence[ii] is the ability to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions in a way that encourages the development of relationships with others, what would adaptable intelligence consist of? Are some people more adaptable than others? Is adaptability something that can be learned? What are the workplace conditions that encourage and nurture adaptability?
Four Aptitudes of Adaptability
To come up with the answers I went back to my PhD research on leadership development. The managers in my study shared four aptitudes in common that made them more willing to embrace moments of discomfort or risk:
Self-awareness
Confidence
Relationship building
Self-management
First, they had the self-awareness to know they did not know everything, which in itself is a dilemma. How do you know what you do not know? Curtis, a supervisor in my study said, “You have to be willing to accept that you don’t know everything, rely on the people that know more than you. You have to be open, willing to change and accept change, know the things you can’t control like political influence and budgets, and you have to be positive. I think that is a conscious decision every day. You have to be what you want everyone else to be. Whether you want to be that day or not”.
Second, the managers in my study expressed that confidence was required in being proactive in seeking out new challenges. Taking on new challenges and confidence are interrelated in the sense that confidence is required to seek out new learning opportunities, but confidence was developed when the managers in my study successfully meet challenges. Talk about a catch 22! How do you seek out new challenges if you do not have the confidence to venture out of your comfort zone? Well, let me tell you…the ability to successfully meet challenges depended on the extent to which managers felt supported by others. Trying something new can lead to moments of stress and discomfort, as I openly shared earlier. One of the reasons I had a hard time adapting to my new job is because I did not have the same social network who I could rely on to share my feelings of doubt and insecurity.
Which leads me to the third aptitude, relationships. More specifically, the ability to develop trusting relationships with others. Rick, a manager in my study shared how the mentors in his personal and professional life were so supportive and positive he tried to model himself after them. Mentors represent “others” who can encourage and support you when you become exhausted, frustrated and are tempted to give up. Having someone in your life who provides feedback and supports you in your failures as much as they do in your successes can become the driving force you need to accept and embrace risk. Even Popeye needed a can of spinach from time to time. In my last article, “What is informal learning and why is it crucial for organizational success” I talked about Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development[iii]. The zone of proximal development is the distance between the actual developmental level of an individual and the level of potential development, which can be achieved with support and collaboration from mentors and peers that can help you in managing self-doubt and potentially destructive self-talk.
Last but not least, self-management was the fourth aptitude the managers in my study had in common. Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist who has done extensive research on self-awareness, says that introspection can lead to more stress and depression because of the negative self-talk we engage in when we ask ourselves, “why”. Sometimes asking why can lead us to come up with answers that may not be very positive. One thing that can help us break free from ruminating, negative “why” thoughts can be to seek feedback from people we trust. Asking for feedback can encourage us to ask “what can I do differently” rather than focusing on something in the past that we cannot change.
Being self-aware and managing one’s emotions was explicitly expressed during the interviews with the managers in my study. It influenced how they learned. A manager who is self-aware is more likely to be honest about the gaps in her abilities and work closely with others to request feedback and assistance in solving problems. The more adept you are in tackling challenges, the more confidence you will develop. The more confidence you develop, the more willing you are to try new things. And the more things you try, the more adaptable you become. And there you have it…the punch line.
The Organization’s Role
Self-awareness, confidence, relationship building and self-management are not mutually exclusive capabilities. They are all intertwined and are dependent on each other. Adaptability is something that can be learned and developed. Although, there are things an individual can do to develop his or her adaptable intelligence (e.g. ask for feedback, seek out mentors, take on new challenges), organizations are not exactly off the hook. One thing I find frustrating when I read books, articles and attend seminars on leadership is the focus on the individual to grow and adapt with little to no mention about the organization’s responsibility. Organizations play a vital role in nurturing adaptable intelligence in their employees. They have a responsibility in creating an environment that promotes growth in the four aptitudes I mentioned earlier.
Fuller and Unwin[iv], researchers in vocational education and training, developed a framework to categorize barriers and opportunities in the workplace, which they term expansive and restrictive. Their research has focused on the interaction between organizational context, workplace learning and individual learning. A failure to develop expansive workplace environments may result in restrictive work environments that can become a breeding ground for people management systems that rely on command and control, low trust relationships, and little tolerance for making mistakes. Hence, expansive workplaces consist of accessibility to mentors, coaches and collaborative work environments that promote trust and inclusion through authentic interactions.
Senior leaders and executives must ask themselves, “What do we value and how do we role-model it every day”? “How do we embed learning in our everyday work”? The answers to these questions will provide more insight into the type of culture that exists within your organization, which are the unwritten rules and norms that drive people’s behaviour and can impact how they show up to work. For instance, does your organization embrace risk taking and encourages people to learn from errors or does it kill it through oppressive tactics such as shaming? If you are experiencing the latter, the risk you may want to ponder about taking is finding a new job.
Below is a list of questions you can reflect on to think about how you and your organization embraces risk. These questions could also be a starting point when leading conversations with your teams about adaptability.
Time to Reflect:
Think about how you experience change. Do you embrace it or does it overwhelm you?
What is one thing you can do to increase your adaptable intelligence?
How does your organization nurture and develop adaptable intelligence in their employees?
References
[i] Gage Canadian Dictionary, 2000. Gage Educational Publishing Company
[ii] Goleman, D. (1997). Emotional intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
[iii] Kolb, D. A. (2015). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (2nd ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.
[iv] Fuller, A. and Unwin, L. (2006). Expansive and restrictive learning environments. In K. Evans, P. Hodkinson, H. Rainbird, and L. Unwin, Improving workplace learning (pp. 27- 48). London: Routledge.
