Adaptive leaders, while avoiding command and control management or micromanagement of employees, must ensure that the strategic intent and objectives are clear.

Adaptive leaders must embrace uncertainty and adopt new tactics if they play to win in the face of constant and relentless change.

Basically you have two choices in the face of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous change that is also constant.

Lie down and take it or step up and make it.

Making good and timely responses is at the crux of adaptive leadership. In a rapidly changing environment, the adaptive leader and their employees need to be ahead of the game. They need the capability to detect, filter, and decode signals so that they can anticipate what is coming and respond accordingly. 

Adaptive leaders teach and coach their employee that change is constant and the plans we made yesterday may have to change tomorrow. Employees feel a sense of calm when plans change because it was expected. 

Adaptive leaders encourage disagreement to ensure that assumptions are challenged. They encourage constructive conflict.

Adaptive leaders do this to keep employees open to new ideas, opinions, and potential solutions. They encourage everyone to contribute and they build an environment of mutual trust and respect so that employees feel safe to participate actively. 

Adaptive leaders know when to change the pace. In a world of relentless change, there can be increasing pressure from more and more demands. The adaptive leader knows when they need to focus on the ones that really matter.

Adaptive leadership cultivates a diversity of perspectives. The leader considers divergent and diverse options and views ideas from employees before making important decisions. It is acknowledged that the knowledge of the whole is more powerful that the knowledge of the leader. This enables complex challenges to be addressed with multifaceted solutions.

Adaptive leaders lead with empathy. They are able to see situations through the eyes of others. They are able to put themselves in another person’s shoes. The challenge for the leader is not to think about how they would feel in someone else’s shoes but how the other person feels in their own shoes. 

Adaptive leaders do not enforce rules and strict instructions on employees. When change is relentless and dynamic, we need a workforce that is empowered to make decisions and take action.

Adaptive leaders embrace failure. Adaptive leaders provide platforms that enable experimentation, learning, and opportunities to reflect on both success and failure.

Adaptive leadership is not about authority. It is about instilling a sense of responsibility for the organization across the entire workforce.

Adaptive leaders need to be able to change direction quickly based on a rapidly changing environment. Therefore, adaptive leaders need to be able to observe what is happening and make interventions when needed.

Adaptive leadership is knowing what to do, when you don't know what to do. Adaptive leaders learn through experimentation and manage the context, not the instruction set. They cultivate a diversity of views to generate a wealth of options. They lead with trust and respect and provide autonomy.

I was recently interviewed by Brian Hampton - co-founder and CEO of ChangeNerd Community.

ChangeNerd is on a mission to bring diversity of thought and empowerment to professionals focused on people and enterprise change.

James Gander turns the tables on Karen and discusses organisational change management.