AN IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOK
Adaptability
Responding Effectively to Change
IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOKS
Aimed at managers and executives who are concerned with their own and others’ development, each guidebook in this series gives specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership problem.
| LEAD CONTRIBUTORS | Allan Calarco |
| Joan Gurvis | |
| CONTRIBUTORS | Paige Bader |
| Wilfred Drath | |
| Cynthia D. McCauley | |
| Ellen Van Velsor | |
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS | Martin Wilcox |
| EDITOR | Peter Scisco |
| ASSOCIATE EDITOR | Karen Mayworth |
| DESIGN AND LAYOUT | Joanne Ferguson |
| CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS | Laura J. Gibson |
| Chris Wilson, 29 & Company |
Copyright © 2006 Center for Creative Leadership.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
CCL No. 428
ISBN-13: 978-1-882197-92-7
ISBN-10: 1-882197-92-5
CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
AN IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOK
Adaptability
Responding Effectively to Change
Allan Calarco and Joan Gurvis
THE IDEAS INTO ACTION GUIDEBOOK SERIES
This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared—in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today’s leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL’s mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. We think you will find the Ideas Into Action Guidebooks an important addition to your leadership toolkit.
Table of Contents
Why Adaptability Is Important for Leaders
What Are Obstacles to Adaptability?
Three Elements of Adaptability
Ways to Practice Cognitive Flexibility
Ways to Practice Emotional Flexibility
Ways to Practice Dispositional Flexibility
Adaptability: A Leadership Imperative
EXECUTIVE BRIEF
In today’s business world, the complexity and pace of change can be daunting. Adaptability has become recognized as a necessary skill for leaders to develop to be effective in this environment. Even so, leaders rarely know what they can do to become more adaptable and foster adaptability in others. This guidebook contributes to a greater understanding of adaptability and the cognitive, emotional, and dispositional flexibility it requires. Leaders will learn how to develop their adaptability and to become more effective for themselves, the people they lead, and their organizations.
What Is Adaptability?
It is your first day at work—a new job, a new location. You’re a bit nervous and unsure. You leave your new apartment early and head for the train. You can’t read a single directional sign, but you practiced your route the day before. Shortly after you arrive, you go to the team staff meeting with your new boss. You are hyperaware of being new as the boss sets the agenda for the meeting and talks of how you will work with the rest of the team. While you try to focus, you know that you have moved to a new country, started a new job, gotten a new boss, and gained new direct reports. You must learn a new language. You’re preparing to manage a geographically dispersed work team whose members live in five countries, speak eight different languages, and work across six time zones.
This scenario is the leadership equivalent of being right-handed but trying to write a letter with your left hand. It feels strange. It is awkward and challenging, and you really have to concentrate on every detail. Your known strengths are being tested, your previously successful approach doesn’t apply, and you feel like a beginner again. If you temporarily lost the use of your dominant hand, you might be able to learn to write with the other hand. But at the first chance, you would return to writing with the dominant hand. Similarly, if you left your expatriate assignment and returned to your home country, you would likely relax into your old habits and patterns.
Adaptability seems to go against this natural instinct and preference for that which is known and stable. Adaptable