The most important ability of all is adaptability!

Many leaders are in position of authority because of their vast experience. They have been around the block a few times and whatever happens they’ve probably seen it before! They will instinctively know how each ‘crisis’ will play out and most importantly when to sit back and when to act. As employees and junior managers this fills us with confidence and reassurance that we have the right person at the helm of the ship!

Lots of leadership books talk about ‘adaptability’ as a key skill and I truly believe it is one of the greatest skills of all. Managers need to be adaptable and above all must teach their people how to be adaptable as well. Adaptability is key to self-sufficiency and staff members that are self-sufficient are vastly more productive than ones that aren’t.

Many management courses I have been on in the past taught me how to use my experience to mentor, coach or train junior members of staff. One course that I attended required the manager to decide (based on THEIR experience of the task to be done) whether to delegate, support, guide or mentor the staff member concerned. At this point I raised a question that got the trainer scratching his head!

“But what happens when the manager has NO experience in the specific task he is asking the other person to do?”

There was a puzzled silence and very little input from my fellow course attendees. I went on to explain that in the past (early on in my career) it had happened to me on numerous occasions. Newly promoted managers had tasked me with delivering work or projects that they had no idea how to execute themselves! When I asked for their help I usually got a swift rebuff along the lines of “Just get on with it.” I usually did and out of necessity (not to get fired) I scraped through each time. As I did I increasingly became more self-reliant and adaptable.

Here are my top tips for improving your ‘adaptability’:

• Think positively – It is fact that if you look at any problem with a positive frame of mind you will come up with more and better quality ideas than thinking negatively.
• Listen – To everyone involved to fully understand drivers and motivations of all stakeholders.
• Learn from success – We all analyse failure to death but we rarely analyse success. If something worked, WHY?
• Welcome change – Many people hate change, adaptable people love it!
• Work in teams – It is true that when more minds work together they will always come up with better ideas (providing they adhere to point one above) than people working alone.
• Take action – Don’t wait until you have a perfect plan before you start, the perfect plan probably doesn’t exist. As soon as you have a ‘working plan’ start. You can always ‘adapt’ as you go.

So in summary, don’t rely on your manager to give you all of the answers, all of the time, they may not know them! Instead use YOUR own skill, learn new things and adapt accordingly to deliver what is required.

Thank you for reading. 

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