Adaptive Leadership Tips: How to Be an Adaptive Leader

Adaptive leadership refers to changing your leadership framework to make more adaptive changes to new issues. Initially the brainchild of Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Riley Sinder, the concept of effective adaptive leadership has since inspired other business professionals and experts to contribute their own takes.

In general, adaptive leadership insists on a willingness to experiment and try new approaches to see what fits best rather than rely on traditional methods to solve technical challenges. As such, this leadership style requires an appetite for risk, a steady degree of curiosity, and a collaborative spirit to weather the challenges your organization might face.

The adaptive leadership approach requires adherents to exhibit certain key qualities. Here are just three of the most important traits for adaptive leaders:

1. 1. Flexibility: One of the paramount principles of adaptive leadership, flexibility is a soft skill you use to address adaptive problems in your work environment by whichever means seem the best at the time. Rather than trying to fall back on a rote approach to problem-solving, you can experiment and adapt to any situation.
2. 2. Openness: Adaptive business leaders must remain open to organizational change at all times. This often means seeking out possible solutions to new challenges by reaching out to all team members instead of falling back on your own understanding. The adaptive leadership model benefits from a collaborative and curious approach.
3. 3. Resourcefulness: In challenging environments, a great degree of resourcefulness is necessary to solve technical problems. By combining leadership skills with a large reservoir of knowledge about how to solve problems, you can help lead your team, no matter the circumstances.

Becoming an adaptive leader requires an open mind and a can-do attitude. Keep these tips in mind as you go about implementing adaptive leadership practices in your professional life:

• Anticipate the process of change. You’ll inevitably meet many adaptive challenges throughout your career, so prepare for them ahead of time. A business environment ready for change is one capable of implementing solutions quickly and effectively when the need arises.
• Ask for input. The adaptive approach to leadership is a collaborative one. Look for opportunities to seek your coworkers’ input on decision-making. While you might feel you know how to solve a problem, forging a partnership with other stakeholders to find a unique solution will often lead to more creative and effective solutions than implementing a decision from the top down.
• Display emotional intelligence. Adaptive work requires a greater degree of ingenuity, which can lead to an increased amount of stress for employees. As a leader, make sure to provide incentives for taking the road less traveled. In the interest of organizational justice, treat your team members as partners rather than foot soldiers. Exhibit kindness and empathy toward all your staff members.
• Experiment with different approaches. In a changing environment, one size rarely fits all. Brainstorm with your team about new strategies to innovate and solve problems rather than relying on the same approach time after time. Leadership challenges can feel daunting—and you might feel keen on returning to a tried-and-true method—but the adaptive approach requires you to think outside the box whenever improvements are possible.
• Let go of what isn’t working. The adaptive leadership model is just as much about letting old things go as trying new ones. Take a proactive look at processes currently in place you feel aren’t serving your organization. If you continually reevaluate your organization’s approaches in the interest of optimization, a self-correction will inevitably occur as better solutions replace less adequate ones.
• Take smart risks. In the adaptive leadership approach, it’s just as important to take risks as it is to do so wisely. Experiment with new initiatives, but temper this practice by evaluating which current problem-solving strategies work as optimally as possible already. Balancing risks with wisdom is a win-win situation.
• Treat rules as guidelines. When you look at examples of adaptive leadership theory in practice, you’ll see a seemingly limitless array of approaches different leaders have taken. This is because the entire approach revolves around rejecting the status quo and traditional constraints. Understand the value of rules and old processes, but remember you can always break them or try new things if a better solution presents itself.

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