In my leadership model for resilience, I have assigned leaders twenty superpowers that should aspire to master over time.

These superpowers are all traits and capabilities that leaders need to create a resilient workforce.

Using these superpowers not only increases resilience but also increases employee engagement, motivation, performance and productivity.

From my perspective, there has been a lot of talk about resilience in the workplace throughout 2019 but little action.

Firstly, let me be clear that when I talk about resilience in the workplace, I am not talking about resilience in the face of bullying and harassment, bad bosses, toxic environments and the like. Those things are the cause of low resilience in the workplace and should be eradicated.

Adaptive leaders are able to align the adaptive leadership team around a shared sense of purpose and value. Everyone then has the autonomy to take action.

Organizations now need a platform for collaboration. Employees already have the information, it just needs to be farmed and shared effectively.

Role fluidity is at the heart of total football. Every player is prepared to move into another playing position as the game dictates. No player is in a predetermined role at any point. 

Adaptive leadership teams move fluidly both horizontally and vertically across roles. 

Leadership has to be shared and be allowed to emerge given a particular context. In a VUCA world, we cannot rely on a handful of people with grand titles to lead the organization at all times and in all situations.

Perceive and play enables adaptive leadership teams to make quality decisions quickly. They process the information they are presented with and can take action quickly, as needed. They are able to change direction rapidly.

Adaptive leadership teams experiment to discover what works and what doesn't.

Adaptive leadership teams have total alignment. Just as a soccer team has a shared goal, the adaptive leadership team is completely aligned about the desired outcomes while respecting the diversity of experience, opinions, and perceptions within the team.

Information technology now allows adaptive leaders to read the signs (perceive) and react accordingly (play).

This organization has continuous learning embedded into its being.

Exploring project management success with Jeanette Cremor - Project Success Specialist.

We talked about the dynamic duo - project sponsor and project manager; common problems experienced on projects; solving the right problem at the right time; project success with the right people; and AAA organisations.

In this series of posts I am exploring Adaptive Leadership Teams.

Leadership is a team effort. Everyone has to lead and be adaptive.

The concept of Total Football encapsulates the concept of adaptive leadership teams.

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.