The Importance of Becoming"Highly Adaptable"

How adaptable to change are you? Really?

Change is ever-present in business. Our work environments seem to be in a perpetual state of transition where the status quo has a short life expectancy. From incremental to disruptive, change comes on its own terms. Customers come and go. Suppliers turnover. Old bosses are out, new bosses are in. Such are the forces of the free-market system, against which we strive for order, achievement and success.

Organizations need leaders who can consistently and skillfully convert change into opportunity, and then into advantage. The higher you rise in an organization, the more adaptable they expect you to be.

Executives who have publicly shown their mettle against change rife with risk, complexity, and stress, earn the designation of being "highly adaptable", the standard for which isn't whether you can deal with change - it's how effectively you can transform it into organizational successes.

How you adapt to change is dependent on your attitude toward it. In order to put some structure around the concept of adaptability, we can broadly think of our adaptability toward change as existing on four levels:

1. Denying, ignoring change (career killer)

2. Adapting like a chameleon in order to go unnoticed and avoid being directly accountable for managing change (temporary career survival)

3. Defensively counteracting change (a better approach, but with limited career upside)

4. Offensively leveraging change (big upside career potential)

Challenges to Adapting to Change

Categorizing adaptaptability into levels is a lot easier than actually responding to change. If it was so easy, we would all operate at level 4. But the reality is that embracing change is hard. And there are good reasons for it.

As professionals, we are trained to create and maintain order because routine produces predictability and efficiency. Stability reduces our stress level and produces feelings of security and comfort - we all want that.

That's why when change does arrive, many of us initially resist it in order to preserve the existing order of things. In fact, the more our comfort zone is threatened, the more inflexible some of us become. Even if we are initially open to change, we can get overwhelmed when we become fully aware of its particular dimensions. The truth is, sometimes change feels like a live hand grenade tossed in our lap. But regardless of how we label it, vilify it, or try to shift it, change keeps arriving

So, the question to ask is, "how well do we respond to change?" Let's see if we recognize ourselves in some of the following behaviors. Each is an indication that we can significantly improve our approach to change:

1. Do bosses or colleagues tell us we are too rigid?

2. Do we complain often about change and the hassles it creates for us?

3. Do we focus more on the threats change presents that the opportunities?

4. Do we continually wish things in our professional life would stop changing?

5. Do we label people and events that bring change into our life in a disparaging way?

With this self-reflection top-of-mind, let's think about change in a more constructive way.

Reasons to Become More Adaptable

We must become increasingly adaptive if we want to rise within our organization. Here are four reasons to make adaptability a priority, and ultimately a professional strength:

• Change comes as a reality, not an illusion.

• Ignoring change will not alter it's form.

• Organizations only survive and grow if gutsy professionals are willing to step out of their comfort zone in times of change.

• Only if we embrace change, can we reshape it to our advantage.

Committing a few of these to memory will help us reason our way toward adaptability - all that remains is the courage to act.

Benefits of Becoming More Adaptable

Successfully adapting to change is a career-long effort, but it is an endeavor that produces many benefits:

• Our self-confidence to face change grows.

• We become more skilled at shaping change to our advantage.

• We get better at solving multi-dimensional problems.

• We become an example of gutsy leadership to our colleagues.

• The organization places greater trust in us to manage people, resources, and the direction of the organization.

Summary:

Strong, gutsy leaders are able to manage complex, multi-dimensional change because of their attitude toward change. While they recognize inherent threats, their focus is on finding the opportunities and converting them into advantages. They see change as the only road to progress, even though they know it will be a bumpy one.

Only by embracing change, can you reshape it.

Grow Well.