At Wowledge, our experts track trends that impact organizations across the globe and across industrial sectors, and research and provide insights into HR practices that have been demonstrated to help them adapt positively and constructively to those trends. It seems to many that the sheer number and range of those disrupting enterprise strategies, operational objectives, financial goals, and associated talent requirements have multiplied in recent years. The problems emerge when those disruptions combine to make planning for and predicting business, financial, and operational outcomes difficult or seemingly impossible. As a result, the need for flexible, agile, and responsive approaches has been significant, and that naturally starts with those creating and directing strategies and operations—the leadership and management ranks of any organization. Adaptive leadership capabilities may well hold the answers to questions about how to prepare them to plan, respond, and manage through chaos.

How volatilities and turbulence are creating pressure on leadership

The sheer range and variety of uncertainties and unpredictability that leaders are forced to navigate as they attempt to steer their organizations forward is remarkable. The issues are not limited, as in prior eras, to upheavals related to financial (inflation, high interest rates), social (anti-war, ethnic or racial tensions), national and public safety (9/11), public health (COVID, HIV/AIDS), or natural disasters (hurricanes, wildfires, flooding). What is striking is how many challenges affecting the business and public sectors are occurring simultaneously, creating often unprecedented complexities for organizational leaders. 

Consider, for example, how those leaders need to plan and respond to forces and changes such as:

• Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that are rapidly emerging and creating unprecedented pressures for organizations to adopt them and generate meaningful results. 
• Geopolitical shifts that are altering global operations and supply chains, while creating social and cultural challenges within and across borders.
• Severe weather and climate events are disrupting operations, distribution, and facilities, and affecting the lives and well-being of workers and residents in the communities housing them.
• Public health threats occurring at local, national, and global levels. 
• Economic issues and downturns that, while not unexpected, create further difficulties when combined with other challenges.
• Labor shortages in general and across professional and critical skill groups. 
• Governmental policy and regulatory shifts that impact corporate financial, taxation, expense, and revenue plans and projections. 
• Multi-generational employee bases with unique needs, preferences, work styles, and requirements.

At the same time, leaders are making tough choices about expense and investment management. Consider the consistent monthly reports of corporate and governmental reductions in force (RIFs), rightsizing, and organizational “flattening” aimed at controlling operating expenses and freeing up financial resources for additional investments in advanced technologies. Each of those creates immediate changes that leaders must manage relative to how the required work gets done, who will perform it, how to create the needed efficiencies driven by having fewer (human) resources, and how to ensure that production volumes, quality, and timeliness are maintained for the benefit of their customers.

The downside of all of these is a worsening of the circumstances surrounding leadership effectiveness. Start with the finding that 67% of leaders and managers are struggling with heavy workloads, 71% report significantly higher stress levels, and over 50% experience high-to-severe burnout.

The impact flows downhill, as only 21% of workers have strong trust in their organization's leaders. The finding is due to three concerning revelations about leadership effectiveness: they are not inspired by senior leaders, observe or perceive that strategic actions do not lead to business success, and, as a result, have low confidence in the organization’s financial future. Perhaps worse, 39% prefer asking AI for advice or support over their manager.

Understanding adaptive leadership

Adaptive leadership is a set of capabilities, behaviors, and perspectives considered most effective for planning and leading organizations, operations, people, and programs amid turbulence, volatility, and uncertainty. It is a comprehensive reference on how leaders strategize, analyze current conditions, understand trends and events, communicate and direct, make decisions, and respond to environmental changes in the course of their assigned duties. Adaptive leadership is about effectively guiding organizations through the fog of shifting market conditions, competitive challenges, external environment crises, and change-resistant (and/or unprepared) managers, teams, and workforces.

A significant body of research has identified the defining characteristics of leaders who distinguish themselves from their peers by virtue of their ability to successfully guide organizations through complex, changing, and challenging barriers. Insights into those differentiating capabilities, skills, styles, and approaches that have emerged from the leading models.

Leadership on the Line

This seminal book by professors Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky of Harvard’s JFK School of Government identified key leadership behaviors and tactics that differentiate those who successfully mobilize others to respond and embrace the challenges and uncertainties they face by leveraging their own:

• Systems thinking that focuses on the big picture and significant elements of operational and human execution required to assess the current state, best levers to press, and create plans of action.
• Emotional intelligence that enables both empathy and self-awareness to understand, engage, and direct others in the midst of their experiencing human fears, anxieties, resistance, and self-protective vs. team needs. 
• Comfort with discomfort, or the ability to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflict with (relative) calm, to enable clearer views of the circumstances and engagement of others with confidence.
• Willingness to experiment is a perspective focused on finding innovative, responsive solutions by encouraging team ideation, testing, and refinement, generating either incremental or breakthrough solutions. Considers failure (from well-researched and conceived plans) an essential element of effective learning. 
• Empowering teams to develop their own solutions and proactively encouraging input from every team member. 
• Transparency with honest and open evaluations of issues, response options, and potential consequences to employees as a mechanism to develop trust and role model effective leadership behaviors.
  
  

Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)

CCL researchers found that highly successful adaptive leadership behaviors include:

• Adapting to changing external pressures facing the organization
• Adjusting their management style to changing situations
• Accepting the required changes as positive and potential difference makers
• Revising strategies and plans as necessary
• Considering other people’s concerns while responding to the change
  
  

Zenger Folkman 

Their research found that the most effective leaders build and manage organizational responsiveness to changing and volatile circumstances by: 

• Inspiring and motivating others to encourage innovative ideas and recognize individual contributions on a continuous basis
• Valuing differences of opinion and perspective 
• Prioritizing relationships by nurturing them at both the professional and personal levels
• Encouraging collaboration, unity, and a shared purpose or mission
• Being open to coaching and feedback from their subordinates and teams
• Trusting others to own their work, avoid micromanagement, and exercise the freedom to innovate
  
  

Manuel London, PhD, Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook

Developed a theoretical model of adaptive leaders' characteristics that is based on years of accumulated research that identified characteristics, including:

• Capacity (flexibility, versatility, agility, managing ambiguity)
• Readiness and openness for change (accepts feedback, continuous learning, contingency planning, goal changes) 
• Bias for action (confidence and self-efficacy)
• Takes risks and tolerates uncertainty (feels in control, confident in assessment)
• Critical and strategic thinking (anticipates issues, assesses root causes, plans ahead)
• Acts decisively in response to immediate problems (emphasizes accuracy and speed, unfreezing teams)
• Generates a collective response by directly engaging others in issue assessment, potential solutions, and activating the response 

While these are essential, success also depends on organizational support for a culture of change readiness, trust, empowerment, sufficient resourcing, and a shared understanding of the problem, root cause(s), and solutions.

How adaptive leadership has been shown to be effective

The evidence that adaptive leadership drives effective organizational responses to volatile external conditions is substantial and largely unsurprising, given the well-established observation that top leadership effectiveness accounts for between 20 and 30% of organizational outcomes on its own. Given the tumult and disruptions that simultaneous market, labor force, and financial downturns can create internally, leadership behavior during such times is observed to have an amplified effect. 

In fact, industry and academic research support that thinking. For example, CCL found that leaders who lack agility and flexibility limit the adaptability of their subordinates and peers in the workplace. Especially during challenging times, their resistance to change can stall strategically critical adaptations and needed innovations. It further found that an inability to develop or adapt to changing circumstances was the most frequently cited reason for their personal career derailment.

Zenger Folkman studied over 6,000 leaders and found that those who excelled in adaptability scored in the 90th percentile for overall leadership effectiveness, while low-adaptability leaders landed at the 16th percentile. They also noted that adaptive leadership correlates with high vs. low employee engagement levels.

Adaptive leadership has been demonstrated to lead to higher levels of organizational resilience, improved team problem-solving, and innovation. Highly adaptive leaders are associated with organizations that are more likely to be characterized by continuous learning, change self-efficacy (confidence in handling irregular and uncertain tasks), leading to higher levels of organization-wide preparedness and agility in the face of changing conditions and events. 

At the same time, those studies found that rapid, adaptive responses common to highly adaptive leadership in response to unexpected events (both crises and opportunities) are associated with teams that solve problems faster and handle stress and process uncertainty much more effectively.

Creating a cadre of change-capable leaders

Adaptive leadership has been defined and detailed by many academic and commercial experts, resulting in an exhaustive list of capabilities, skills, and perspectives that can appear overwhelming to find and develop in any single manager or leader. At the same time, experience suggests that the criteria used in many organizations themselves are stale and have not been updated to address the changing requirements and demands placed upon leaders. And the approaches and methods used to evaluate current and future leaders for selection, performance appraisal, promotion, and development need consideration, as they are often limited, unreliable, and inaccurate. As a result, evaluating the adaptive leadership performance and guiding the career development of current and potential leaders tends to fall well short of meeting enterprise requirements. Recommended actions to build a solid core and pipeline of change-capable leaders include:

Reconsider and update the leadership competency model

Many corporate leadership competency models that serve as the foundation for leadership evaluations, development criteria, and advancement standards fail to reflect the changing nature of the internal/external environments and circumstances through which their leaders must navigate and guide their teams and organizations. The competency models, even if they include behaviors and capabilities related to resilience, managing ambiguity, and change, need to be updated, reset, and perhaps most critically, prioritized. When leaders receive their performance or 360-degree feedback, the focus too often falls on the elements that receive lower scores, whereas improvement from a 3 to a 4 in decisiveness might have a greater impact.

Identifying priorities can be accomplished through an expert-facilitated session using group card-sort techniques, or, even better, through advanced analytics (e.g., statistical regression) to analyze leadership effectiveness against targeted business, financial, and talent outcomes. Either of those approaches can generate top leadership alignment on which capabilities and behaviors are most essential, given the existing external and internal challenges that leaders and managers must better respond to and guide their teams through.

Assess current and future leaders comprehensively

Relying on self- and direct supervisors’ assessments of leaders’ skills, capabilities, and strengths has proven woefully inadequate and rife with human error and resulting inaccuracy. A comprehensive, multi-modal, multi-rater, and evidence-based evaluation should be relied upon instead, as much as is considered reasonable and affordable for any given organization.

The range of evaluation techniques that can be used includes:

• Formal psychometric tests (e.g., cognitive, personality, behavioral, emotional) that evaluate leadership capabilities, behaviors, styles, preferences, and tendencies.
• Skills-based evaluations that enable evidence-based assessment based on classroom/eLearning tests, third-party testing and credentialing, performance demonstrations, and expert observations to verify skills presence and proficiency levels. 
• Behavioral observations through feedback and structured measurement scales (e.g., 360-degree, simulations, assessment centers, direct performance observation).

The advantages of using multiple types of assessment, especially across a progression of job functions and levels, business circumstances, operational characteristics (e.g., start-up, turnaround, high growth), and time periods (years), include the ability to cross-reference them to improve the accuracy and reliability of trend and evaluation results.

When related to adaptive leadership, the research discussed earlier points to certain capabilities, skills, and styles that should be considered for prioritization, including:

• Emotional intelligence (EI)
• Critical and strategic thinking
• Cognitive flexibility and anticipative thinking
• Evidence-based review and root cause analysis
• Team listening, engagement, and problem-solving
• Decisiveness and action orientation
• Resiliency and ability to manage ambiguity
• Learning ability and application of lessons learned

Adaptive leadership capabilities can be observed at the behavioral level, with experts suggesting that the most effective leaders demonstrate open and transparent communication, empathy for their employees’ discomfort, and collaboration with peers and subordinates to develop multiple solutions for different scenarios. They leverage different leadership styles to best fit the situations they face, create a safe space for disagreement and discomfort around problems and possible solutions, and empower employees to develop those solutions within the scope of their jobs and teams.

Developing and supporting a culture of adaptive leadership

Comprehensive academic reviews of adaptive leadership research have highlighted the need for organizational support and reinforcement of these capabilities and behaviors to achieve the necessary and sustainable effects on organizational agility, adaptability, and resilience in the face of external volatility and change. It is essential that HR leaders and professionals understand how to build and maintain a culture and infrastructure that encourages, enables, and supports those practices. A multitude of enterprise approaches can be used to enable a flexible, adaptable organization that encourages leaders to act more flexibly and adaptively.

1. Institutionalize collaborative and collective action

Establish an environment where employee awareness and engagement in responding to changes and challenges are integral to the organization's operations. The ability to adapt to changing circumstances can be built on enterprise-level strategies and programs that emphasize cross-functional teamwork, continuous improvement (e.g., Lean, Kaizen, Six Sigma), employee involvement (e.g., design thinking), employee listening, and employee experience (EX) approaches. Make cross-functional project team assignments standard, with contribution and development activities for employees at all levels, so they can be exposed to and participate in leveraging different viewpoints, operational perspectives, and problem-solving methods. Through these, they can become better educated about how functions work together to deliver customer value, and the unique pressures and barriers they face in uncertain times.

2. Design work process freedom

The Boston Consulting Group promotes the idea of allowing flexibility and “managing the context” of work, rather than restricting how it is accomplished. Since volatilities (external and internal) are changing the environments in which work is performed, rigidity in the rules that define precise workflows, task assignments, and work methods should be replaced with more adaptable approaches. The first is understanding the value of “equifinality”, the idea that there are many ways to achieve a common end or output using different methods. The second is adopting the principle of “freedom with a framework”, where goals, policies, and procedures define strategically critical outcome criteria (quality, quantity, and timeframe) but allow leaders to flex their approaches, teaming, and tools to achieve the required outcomes. In these ways, flexibility is leveraged as an essential means of leading, producing, and innovating in challenging and unpredictable circumstances.

3. Reinforce adaptive leadership behaviors comprehensively

The standards and criteria that define successful adaptive leadership behavior need to be applied and integrated consistently across talent management processes. This helps ensure that leaders are continually reminded of their critical strategic importance to the organization’s sustained viability, health, and ability to respond quickly and effectively to changing business and operational environments. 

The criteria should be referenced in job descriptions, success profiles, performance expectations, leadership competency models, development content and goals, merit pay and bonus decisions, HiPo and promotion/advancement criteria, and coaching and mentoring. They should be included in formal, structured assessment approaches when screening, interviewing, selecting, and verifying the credentials of managerial and leadership candidates. Behavioral data from 360-degree feedback, upward feedback, and direct managerial observations should be leveraged in ongoing coaching, development planning, and performance evaluations to reinforce the importance of these data.

Similarly, development opportunities should be established or adapted to encourage and remind leaders of the value, need, and application of these skills across situations. For example, aside from classes and online tutorials, offering live leadership forums for sharing ideas, group coaching sessions for giving and receiving non-judgmental feedback and guidance, and promoting the use of innovative techniques can make peer learning a credible and accessible source of support and improvement.

Relevant Practices & Tools

Advanced Leadership Development Practices to Drive the Business, Identify and Build Leaders Across Levels. >

Leadership Development (LD) is a business strategy-aligned approach structured around an idealized vision of how leaders will conduct themselves and the business... more »

Generating a Critical Talent Plan to Close Projected Gaps. >

A critical talent plan defines the specialized and concentrated efforts that will be undertaken for those roles deemed to be of the greatest importance to meeting the organization’s strategic objectives... more »

Driving Adoption of the Digital Future to Optimize the Return on Digital Investments. >

The digital transformation will deliver a new way of operating for the business. It establishes a new status quo for what employees expect, how they work individually or in teams, and how they run the business... more »

Developing Internal Coaching and Mentoring Capabilities through Structured Learning and Development. >

When beginning to develop an internal coaching and mentoring capability, it is best to start by training a cadre of coaches and mentors using reputable vendors whose content and trainers are well-established and experienced... more »

The Competency Rating Form: Rate Individuals on Leadership and Other Competency Models. >

A carefully considered assessment of leadership capabilities for each individual leader. It is made against the standard competency model for purposes of identifying development gaps in need of addressing... more »