What is Adaptive Leadership and How to Implement It Effectively in Your Organization

Business leaders are traditionally viewed as the chief decision-makers. Yet, adaptive leadership champions a shift towards shared responsibility, fostering teamwork to navigate challenges and embrace change collectively. This innovative approach refreshes the conventional leadership paradigm.

If you're keen on mentoring the next generation of leaders within your organization, consider delving into the adaptive leadership style. Curious about its core principles and essential elements? Continue reading, as this article offers an in-depth exploration of this leadership approach. Here, you'll discover whether it aligns with your team's needs and objectives. Without further ado, let's get started.

What is adaptive leadership?

A leadership model introduced in the 90s, adaptive leadership is a set of strategies and practices businesses can use. It’s meant to conquer obstacles, achieve meaningful change, and adapt to challenging and compound environments. Just as plants and animals adapt to changes in their environment, living conditions, and other factors for survival, so should leaders, regardless of the business size. Adaptive leaders are not only highly malleable. They also make great use of the skills, values, and knowledge taken from past circumstances for the benefit of the future.

Should the concept be something new to you, let this article be your adaptive leadership toolkit. We have a detailed guide that you can use in your adaptive leadership skills development. How do you know if it’s something you should try? You might want to consider implementing adaptive leadership if you:

• Want to train your team to be better problem solvers

• Are looking to identify the future leaders in your team

• Want to become a better boss

• Are seeking out new workarounds and troubleshooting methods

While the theory might sound intimidating or labor-intensive, think of it as a new team-building exercise that can solidify your group. Plus, who knows which skills you’ll end up acquiring in the process? Adaptive leadership can also potentially aid in reinforcing your relationship with clients, external stakeholders, and the community.

The best part about adaptive leadership is that it encourages delegation, and sharing the load, so to speak. You’re giving your employees a peak behind the curtain to see what it means to lead, to be part of a group that can enforce change, and to improve current practices. All of these are aimed at making the business more stable and your teams more solid as a whole.

Key aspects of adaptive leadership

Adaptive leadership helps companies survive the highs and lows of the market by enabling managers and their teams to explore ways to make the business better overall. If you’re keen to try but not sure how to practice adaptive leadership, take note that you should start how you mean to go: strong. You can accomplish this by following the key aspects of adaptive leadership:

Observing everything and everyone surrounding the business

This encompasses every aspect of the business. Observing the…

• Business environment

• Behaviors of employees

• Loopholes in processes and procedures

• Problem areas in the business systems

• Redundancies in workflows

• Silos between teams and departments

This principle is meant to scope out and pinpoint anything in the workplace, company structure, and business systems that should be changed to allow your brand to succeed. Anything that impedes seamless teamwork, flawless operation, and unmatched customer service should be eliminated.

Interpreting research results and developing hypothesis

The next key aspect of adaptive leadership is two-pronged. The first of the two is interpreting: compiling all of your findings from your observations for interpretation. You can use any kind of data or information that you can get your hands on whether it’s productivity reports, time-motion studies, CSAT surveys, contact forms, and the like. This is the part where you break down everything that you have surveyed so far into usable, more manageable chunks. Keep in mind that this is best done as a team, so you have more data to brainstorm with.

The second is developing. It’s the part where solutions are conceptualized and saved in rough drafts. These are ideas – in every shape or form – thrown around the room by whoever during the brainstorming session. The objective is to come up with as many conceivable answers to every identified obstacle or issue. Nothing is set in stone at this point. You and your team are just exploring, discussing, and finding ways to solve a dilemma.

Designing every possible solution

This is the part where all your pistols are firing, and your gears are in full throttle. This is when you need every person to brainstorm in the room and work at full capacity. The designing stage is where you’re formulating plans, developing workflows, and tweaking existing SOPs and policies to make them better. Everything has the purpose of diminishing, if not eliminating, the cause of delay or issues in the workplace.

Let’s say you’re about to be a hybrid company, allowing for remote work under certain conditions and requirements. Before rolling it out, it’s best to design the whole plan. Which collaboration tools are you using? How will you be monitoring productivity? What do you need to include in the company knowledge base for team members who may not be as well-trained as the rest?

These three steps are continuous. They’re designed to be used in a never-ending cycle. Since business environments and market climates constantly change, so should your innovative solutions. Feel free to repeat the process anytime. If you notice that your newly implemented solution is not doing much, call the team together and go back to the planning table. If you see a problem area in your sales and marketing initiatives that impedes your revenue growth, apply these three methods to come up with an absolute fix.

Principles of Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership in business is made up of four fundamental truths that should be observed and adhered to if you want to be successful with it. This is where we will be exploring these principles along with the skills and possibly tools you will need for each one.

The principles of adaptive leadership are:

Innovating with the help of the team

In business, there are a lot of blind spots and uncertainty. Adaptive leadership means embracing ambiguity. It also means adopting new approaches to be able to thrive in shifting conditions. To be effective in innovating ways to enable your company to withstand the ever-changing business world, you need to do the following:

• Gather input from your team at every level of the company. Don’t discriminate. Rank-and-file have a lot of experience in the trenches, so to speak. You don’t know who or what can be valuable. You’ll be surprised at what you can learn from your employees, especially the customer-facing ones. Since they have a lot of experience, you can count on them to ask hard questions, challenge norms, and propose new methods you can try.

• Share the leadership by allocating responsibility and delegating tasks. Find the person best suitable for the task at hand and allow them to make decisions that contribute to the overall well-being of your business.

• Explore the world. Test your limits and assumptions. Push the boundaries. Use this time to stretch yourself and your team to maximize what you can accomplish together. This is the only way for you to find out how far your team is willing to go to get your brand to the top.

• Keep your wits about you. Mistakes often spring from panicking and freaking out. If every issue or problem fazes you, there is a big chance you will lose your team’s trust and confidence in you. Strive to remain objective and methodical in your approach to new things, and don’t keep your head.

Empathizing with everyone they come across

For employees, there is no sense in trusting, remaining loyal, and working faithfully for leaders who do not see them as people. Empathy is what humanizes a business and gives it heart. Adaptive leaders have no problem with letting go of the need to command and control. They can inspire, motivate, and influence people without diminishing their value. To be an empathetic leader, you should:

• Look at the world from the perspective of other people. There is no better way to understand customers, competitors, and the current business climate. Realizing that adaptive leadership means it’s not just about you and respecting other people’s journeys and viewpoints is life-changing.

• Build rapport with your team. To effectively influence and connect with your team, you should have an understanding of their values, beliefs, and concerns. All of this can be easily achieved by developing rapport with your team.

• Share your vision and goals with your team. Nothing rivals the motivator of being able to visualize the end goal. Make sure everyone in your team is aligned with your vision and goals for the business.

• Reward your best people and coach your weakest links. Drive improved performance by demonstrating recognition and rewarding excellence. Rewards do not even have to be significant or have monetary value. A simple appreciation badge can sometimes be more than enough. At the same time, watch out for those in your team who are trailing behind. They need some coaxing, encouragement, and attention. Adaptive leaders know that no one should be left behind in terms of performance.

• Establish trust and respect. No one will have the confidence to voice their opinions and give their recommendations if they’re not confident that what they say will be valued and they will not be ridiculed. Teach your team that it’s perfectly acceptable to have differing viewpoints and healthy debates without tempers and insults flying. Always deal with conflicts with empathy.

Knowing and practicing the meaning of self-awareness

The adaptive leadership style is as much about taking care of yourself as it is about taking care of your team. You have a lot of eyes on you. While it may not always be easy, you should also make it a point to show your team that you can manage yourself and that you do it well. Then, they will learn it too. To be an adaptive leader who is self-aware, you need to:

• Practice the pause. Burnout is a beast no one should have to contend with. There’s a lot to be said about one’s dedication to their job, but it’s equally admirable when someone knows when to stop. Knowing when a rest is due is the key to keeping yourself motivated to work, your mind refreshed with new ideas, and the quality of your output.

• Honor your strengths and weaknesses. Adaptive leadership is all about tapping your team to pitch in, most especially in areas where you know you need help as a leader. It does not make you less of a manager or business owner if you admit to needing some assistance. We all have the best that we can offer. The source of the best – that’s what your team is for.

• Regulate your emotions. Sometimes you’re so hyped up and strung out that it’s just too easy to lose your head. Respect the boundaries between personal and professional. Although you may be in the middle of a heated discussion in a team meeting, remember to keep a cool head. Count to ten, practice calming breathing techniques, and think about your words before you speak.

• Seek support and feedback. Your team will learn from you that seeking support and feedback is nothing to be ashamed of. We can’t possibly know everything, and we can only correct ourselves if we’re able to see who we are to other people.

Solving issues and problems head-on

Being an adaptive leader means you’re able to look at a problem or a troublesome area somewhere in your business, undo it, and come up with a solution for it. And you’re able to solve issues within the workplace by rallying the troops or getting your team together. In adaptable leadership, being a problem solver means you:

• Cultivate a learning environment where there are no stupid questions or ignorant opinions. As a leader, you recognize that alternative and innovative solutions can come from anywhere or anyone.

• Give ideas a test drive through experimentations and tests. You’re bound to come up with more than one remedy especially if you have a lot of contributors in your team. To decide on the best one, you need to conduct experiments.

• Be brave in the face of challenges. Many people fear the unknown but an adaptive leader thrives in uncertainties because they’re able to think purposefully and act deliberately.

• Prioritize win-win solutions. The peak of adaptive leadership, innovation, and creativity is being able to walk away from a problem with everyone involved satisfied with the resolution.

How to practice adaptive leadership

If you’re ever faced with complex and uncertain situations without a clear way out, adaptive leadership just might be the answer. By following the steps below, you’ll be able to identify challenges, assemble people to tackle them, test various potential approaches, and learn from the experience.

Here are the steps to follow for how to practice adaptive leadership:

1. Identify the problem that needs solving

Identifying the nature and scope of the challenge is the first step to adaptive leadership. There are two types of challenges you may come across: technical and adaptive. Technical challenges involve skills, knowledge, and resources. Adaptive challenges have to do with behaviors, values, mindsets, and the like.

2. Deploy your team to help in tackling problems

Pick your troops among those who are most affected by the problem since they have a bigger stake in the situation. Adaptive leadership is about coming up with solutions through collective action, ownership, and accountability. Make sure you communicate the importance and urgency of the matter at hand. Encourage trust and collaboration.

3. Explore various solutions to have more than one option

A true adaptive leader recognizes that the first solution to be brought forward is not enough. Test out the different solutions your team may propose. Challenge boundaries, test hypotheses, and create backup upon backup of every potential fix.

4. Learn from results for future use

Adaptive leadership is about continuous learning. Experiment with outcomes from perceived solutions. Take the time to identify where you may have failed and what could have been done better. Measure and evaluate the impact of your proposed solution and then make the necessary adjustments. Share your insights and everything you learned with the rest of the team so you can all exchange ideas.

5. Look after yourself and teach your team about self-care

You are just as important as the job itself. Teach your team how valuable self-love is by looking after yourself. It can be just as simple as taking actual breaks, eating healthy, and being comfortable in idle times or lean seasons. Keep your eye on your stress levels and those of your team as well. Show them the best ways to manage the workload and deliverables daily so they can thrive on their own.

6. Share the knowledge and train your team

Adaptive leadership also happens to be about developing your company’s future leaders. Show them how it’s done, give them comprehensive instructions for how to go about things, and make sure they have all the resources that they need to succeed. A company knowledge base, for example, can help a lot in making sure your people are informed and updated when it comes to changes and improvements to tools and current procedures.

All the adaptive leadership tools you can ever need in one place

In today's ever-changing business environment, mastering adaptive leadership is crucial. It's about navigating through uncertainties, embracing change, and leading your team towards success. But with the right tools, strategies, and support, you can turn these challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation.

With Bitrix24, not only do you gain access to a comprehensive suite of tools, apps, and integrations designed to enhance your leadership capabilities, but you can also rely on our platform to empower you on your leadership journey. By leveraging the advanced features and resources offered by Bitrix24, you'll be equipped to tackle any obstacles that come your way, foster collaboration within your team, and drive meaningful results.

Take the first step towards becoming a more effective and adaptive leader today with Bitrix24. Register now and unlock your full potential in leading your team to success in the ever-evolving landscape of modern business.

FAQs

The core components of adaptive leadership are:

• Innovation: Encouraging creative problem-solving and new approaches.

• Empathy: Understanding and valuing others' perspectives and feelings.

• Self-awareness: Recognizing one's own strengths, weaknesses, and biases.

• Solutions: Focusing on finding effective responses to challenges.

Adaptive leadership can be effectively implemented in an organization by providing teams with a creative and innovative way to tackle issues and solve problems in the workplace. This is done by following these steps:

• Identify the problem

• Deploy the team

• Explore various solutions

• Learn from results

• Look after yourself

• Share the knowledge

The challenges organizations might face when adopting adaptive leadership and how they can be overcome are:

• Differing Values: Encourage open dialogue and ensure mutual respect among team members to bridge gaps in values and perspectives.

• Development Pace (Too Slow or Too Fast): Maintain transparency with your plan and adopt a staged development approach to manage pace effectively.

• Transition: Assign clear roles and manage expectations to give everyone a sense of purpose during changes.

• Maintenance: Establish weekly goals and targets to maintain momentum, and provide constant encouragement to keep the team motivated.

• Creativity: Foster a creative environment by avoiding micromanagement and allowing time for free-thinking and innovation.