Leadership is Adaptability

Like many millions worldwide, I am a huge fan of the TV series Ted Lasso. Originally hired by the club’s owner to deliberately tank the team in petty revenge against her horrid ex-husband, Ted wins everyone over with his folksy Midwestern manner and unconventional tactics. 

There is one memorable scene that I have watched numerous times and even adopted as a core principle for my life.

In the scene, Ted delivers a lesson about the power of curiosity over judgment. While playing darts against an overconfident opponent, Ted recalls a quote: "Be curious, not judgmental." He demonstrates that those who judged him had never bothered to ask simple questions—like whether he knew how to play darts—because they thought they had everything figured out. The scene concludes with Ted's perfect throws ('Barbeque sauce'), proving that judgment without curiosity often leads to flawed assumptions and missed opportunities.

I’ve sent the YouTube video link to numerous people to highlight how much store I place on curiosity in place of judgment in both my personal and professional lives.

Ted perfectly illustrates a fundamental truth about leadership and adaptability. Leaders who approach challenges with curiosity rather than judgment create spaces where innovation thrives, teams excel, and adaptation becomes natural rather than forced.

Research has shown that curious individuals demonstrate a greater capacity for adapting to change and finding meaning in new situations. This finding is particularly relevant for leadership. Curiosity is a trait that significantly enhances how effectively people adapt to new organisational environments.

Other research has shown that the relationship between curiosity and adaptability is more than merely philosophical but practical. One study identified eight distinct dimensions of adaptive performance in the workplace:

• Handling emergencies or crisis situations
• Handling work stress
• Solving problems creatively
• Dealing with uncertain and unpredictable work situations
• Learning work tasks, technologies, and procedures
• Demonstrating interpersonal adaptability
• Demonstrating cultural adaptability
• Demonstrating physically oriented adaptability

The research reveals that adaptive performance requires more than just flexibility; it demands active engagement and interest that stems from genuine curiosity.

The influence of curious, adaptive leadership creates measurable effects within organisations. Leaders who foster curiosity and exploration within their teams see significantly higher levels of innovative behaviour.  There are clear links between positive organisational culture and individual adaptability.

In early 2020, like every other business leader, we were confronted with the challenge of COVID-19. We were navigating uncharted waters. I recall sending an all-hands email in early March 2020 asking everyone to work at home until the end of the month, after which we’d reevaluate the situation. My hometown, Melbourne, went into lockdown for over four months, and our whole team needed to work remotely.  We worked to find ways to maintain team cohesion without physical presence, adapt our service delivery model, and support staff dealing with personal challenges. 

As a business, we were one of the more fortunate. We are a software-as-a-service company, with staff already working remotely around Australia, albeit at the time the majority were Melbourne-based. There was little in the office we relied upon. All our systems, including the telephone, are cloud-based, meaning a staff member can log into their laptop anywhere in the world and work. I feel for the many businesses not already set up like that and who were forced to scramble to patch together ad-hoc systems and processes just to survive.

Australian researchers have identified two distinct types of adaptive behaviour in successful workplace adjustment: proactive and reactive adaptation. Proactive adaptation involves initiating change and seeing opportunities in new situations, while reactive adaptation focuses on responding effectively to imposed changes. Both types prove essential for leadership effectiveness, particularly during significant organisational change.

What struck me most during this early phase of COVID-19 was how this period revealed different adaptability levels within our team. Some thrived in the new environment, quickly establishing effective work-from-home routines. Others struggled with the rapid change, requiring additional support and guidance. Proactive and reactive adaptation were crucial elements of successful workplace adjustment during this period of uncertainty and upheaval.

Cognitive flexibility—a key adaptability component—enables better decision-making, particularly in complex situations. Decision-makers who maintain cognitive flexibility make more effective adaptive choices in rapidly changing environments. Leaders must adapt their behaviour and help others develop adaptive capabilities. In other words, leadership must support the importance of creating a culture of curiosity and exploration.

Companies that support curiosity and exploration will see higher employee engagement and adaptive performance levels. Individual adaptability flourishes in positive organisational cultures. As leaders, it’s not sufficient for us to develop adaptability; we need to create a work culture and environment where adaptability can thrive for everyone.

To achieve this, we need to demonstrate empowering leadership - walk the walk and talk the talk if you like. Our leadership style must explore, support calculated risk-taking, and view challenges as learning opportunities. This approach naturally fosters the kind of curiosity that Ted Lasso sought to illustrate during the darts game in the pub.

Adaptability can be cultivated through intentional practice and exposure to changing environments - almost a sink-and-swim learning curve, where you are forced to dig deep and adapt to changing conditions and challenges. Some sink. Some float. Some break into a brisk swimming stroke. Each of us reacts in different ways, and each of us reacts differently in various situations. Individual adaptive capacity varies not just between people but within the same person across different situations. Context and environment play crucial roles in our ability to adapt—reinforcing the importance of creating organisational cultures that support adaptive behaviour.

The evidence consistently shows that curious leadership creates adaptive capability. I doubt you need to trawl academic journals to figure this out. Just look around you, watch other leaders, and yourself. Flexible and adaptive leadership isn't just beneficial—it's essential for modern organisations. The future belongs to leaders who, like Ted, maintain their curiosity in the face of judgment, approach challenges with questions rather than assumptions, and create environments where adaptation becomes a natural response to change.

True adaptability isn't about weathering individual storms like COVID-19—it's about cultivating the curiosity to see new possibilities in every challenge. In doing so, we create organisations capable of surviving change and thriving in it.

Postscript

Ted Lasso says the quote 'Be curious, not judgmental' is from Walt Whitman. It seems the scriptwriters might have been taking some liberties.

More Reading

I wound up down a bunch of rabbit holes on this topic. Initially, I wanted to connect curiosity to adaptability as an excuse to quote Ted Lasso! Cranking up ChatGPT and Claude and asking for materials and references showed me there is a significant body of research around adaptability and fostering curiosity to develop adaptability.

This is a list if you are interested in exploring further.

1. Kashdan, T. B., & Steger, M. F. (2007). "Curiosity and pathways to well-being and meaning in life: Traits, states, and everyday behaviors"

Key Finding: Links curiosity to greater life satisfaction and a sense of purpose.

2. Harrison, S. H., Sluss, D. M., & Ashforth, B. E. (2011). "Curiosity adapted the cat: The role of trait curiosity in newcomer adaptation."

Key Finding: Demonstrates how trait curiosity helps employees adapt to new work environments.

3. Gkorezis, P. (2016). "Principal empowering leadership and teacher innovative behaviour: A moderated mediation model"

Key Finding: Shows how curious leadership styles promote innovation in organizations.

4. Pulakos, E. D., et al. (2000). "Adaptability in the workplace: Development of a taxonomy of adaptive performance."

Key Finding: Defines eight dimensions of adaptive performance in workplace settings.

5. Parent, J. D., & Lovelace, K. J. (2018). "Employee engagement, positive organizational culture and individual adaptability"

Key Finding: Links organizational culture to individual adaptability.

6. Laureiro-Martínez, D., & Brusoni, S. (2018). "Cognitive flexibility and adaptive decision‐making: Evidence from a laboratory study of expert decision-makers"

 Key Finding: Shows how cognitive flexibility enables better adaptive decision-making.

7. Yukl, G., & Mahsud, R. (2010). "Why flexible and adaptive leadership is essential."

Key Finding: Establishes the critical nature of adaptive leadership in modern organizations.

8. Griffin, B., & Hesketh, B. (2003). "Adaptable behaviours for successful work and career adjustment"

Key Finding: Australian study showing key behaviours for workplace adaptability.

9. Zacher, H. (2016). "Within-person relationships between daily individual and job characteristics and daily manifestations of career adaptability"

Key Finding: Research from the University of Queensland examining daily adaptability in workplace contexts.

10. DeRue, D. S. (2011). "Adaptive leadership theory: Leading and following as a complex adaptive process."

Key Finding: Comprehensive review of adaptive leadership research.