Change and uncertainty dominate today's workplace. We need to keep walking even though they may be in circles. They seek new and innovative ways to solve problems, master new skills, and view disruption as a challenge rather than a threat – skills needed to prevail through uncertain times. A change in the workplace policies or practices, a change in the relationship we had with our boss or our co-workers or a shock to the overall business from a competitor or other outside forces. How do you respond when facing change? Many of us get stuck, have a hard time letting go, or simply don’t know how to proceed in unknown territory. Introduction. Use this sample response as a … For an interview, have examples of adaptability in your previous roles ready in your head. Take into account other people’s concerns? An adaptable person will show resourcefulness by demonstrating: If you know how to adapt well to a wide variety of circumstances, then “different” doesn’t scare you as it usually does for others. Dispositionally flexible leaders see change as an opportunity rather than as a threat or danger. You often demonstrate: Add Relevant Skills to Your Resume In your resume, be sure to highlight any time when you took the initiative and adapted to unusual circumstances. Sort out your strengths and weaknesses fairly accurately? The change will occur, like it or not; you cannot control it. The change could be related to handling a new manager or change in ownership of the company, new productions, office policies and what not but they must know about adapting change. It will also show that you will succeed when faced with challenges. The bottom line is, the more you know how to do and the more current your skills and your ability to apply them effectively, the more valuable you are to an organization. BusinessPhrases: What Are Adaptability Skills? Some people are born to love change, innovate, adapt quickly, and seek new experiences while others are genetically predisposed to stick with a routine and follow the way it’s always been done. Recruiting for change. These leaders readily learn from experience and recognize when old approaches don’t work. You should include how long it will take you to adapt fully to the change. Leaders that can adapt to change are motivated, not easily discouraged, and are usually more creative than the average employee. Because change is constant and inevitable, leaders must be flexible to succeed. Important Adaptability Skills for Workplace Success, These Are the Most Important Leadership Skills Employers Look For, Important Employability Skills For Workplace Success, How to Use the Principles of Adaptive Leadership in the Workplace, Important Business Analyst Skills for Workplace Success, Important Personal Skills That Employers Value, These Are the Communication Skills Employers Look for in Employees, Top Soft Skills Employers Value With Examples. -, 3 Steps for Successfully Implementing Change in an Organization, How Leaders Can Encourage Innovation Instead of Sabotaging It, Adaptability: Responding Effectively to Change, How to Foster Flexible Leadership in Times of Instability, 4 Unexpected Lessons Learned from Hardships, Change Now! Highlight Skills in Your Cover Letter Mention a situation in which you exercised adaptability skills in a past job in your cover letter. Emotional flexibility — the ability to vary one’s approach to dealing with emotions and those of others. These leaders are always learning and willing to take risks, as long as it means that they can develop personally and professionally. A leader without emotional flexibility is dismissive of others’ concerns and emotions and shuts down discussion. Denial and resisting change will only result in you living a miserable life. Other Tips. Perhaps at no other time in recent history has adaptability been more important than it is now. Your interview is a place for you to give a potential employer a glimpse into how your mind works. What I learned was the new equipment was better and provided me to work more efficiently. Alison Doyle is the job search expert for The Balance Careers, and one of the industry's most highly-regarded job search and career experts. These skills are in demand and will help you get hired. Watch our webinar, How to Foster Flexible Leadership in Times of Instability. You are not afraid of ideas, suggestions, or constructive criticism. Employee enthusiasm, cooperation, morale, and creativity are jeopardized, making it all the more difficult to run the business or organization. Globalization, new technologies, and greater transparency have combined to upend the business environment and give many CEOs a deep sense of unease. In the face of this change, however, you have the ability to shape your response in a positive manner. Behavioral Interview Question: Tell us about a time that you had to adapt to a particularly difficult situation. Resistance to change may undermine critical projects or system-wide implementation. If you are a person who learns quickly, it is because you know how to adapt. Others do not, however, have the ability to adapt or the ability to adapt quickly enough to survive. They are neither blindly positive nor pessimistic and defeatist. If you want to improve your responses to change in the future, Calarco says you need to practice the 3 components of adaptability: cognitive flexibility, emotional flexibility and dispositional flexibility. At the same time, an emotionally adaptive leader moves the change or agenda forward. The Difference Between Knowledge and Ability. 3. 4. Leaders with emotional flexibility vary their approach to dealing with their own and others’ emotions — an area that many leaders often fail to consider. Anything that stands out makes you curious. Are you flexible and willing to learn? The key to accepting change is to have an open mind and to accept everything as it presents itself. Since 1980 the volatility of business operating margins, largely static since the 1950s, has more than doubled, as has the size of the gap between winners (companies with high operating margins) and losers (those with low ones). Emotional changes can be the hardest to adjust to. That’s because inflexible leaders limit the adaptability of others. According to our research, the most frequently cited success factor for North American managers was the ability to develop or adapt. The “traditional” way of conducting business may not be possible or effective, because there may not be sufficient funding or staffing. According to our research, the most frequently cited success factor for North American managers was the ability to develop or adapt. Most likely interviewers believe that they will get a good read on your ability to handle change by the confidence with which you answer the question. Like the seasons we need to keep moving and letting go of the past, despite the environment. Subscribe to our eNewsletters to get the latest on cutting-edge, leadership insights & research. Quickly master new technology, vocabulary, operating rules? Cognitive flexibility — the ability to use different thinking strategies and mental frameworks. 2. They will acknowledge a bad situation but simultaneously visualize a better future. Just look at the numbers. For example, a major policy change may take a few weeks to fully implement. • If you were working on an important assignment and the requirements changed in the middle of the project, what would you do? By learning and practicing behaviors that boost your cognitive, emotional, and dispositional flexibility, you can become more adaptable and, in turn, help others to adapt. It is, therefore, very essential to help your employees get easily adapted to all kinds of changes so that you get the best from them in return . Method 2 In an age of rapid change, how well a leader embraces shifts in the professional landscape and uses them to enhance the organization’s trajectory can be a vital measure of effectiveness. An emotionally flexible leader is comfortable with the process of transition, including grieving, complaining, and resistance. It doesn’t matter if they’re the head of the FBI, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a school principal, the ability to adapt is paramount. ... Here’s an example of perceived ability and how it affects behavior: Two people have equally strong intentions to start a blog. “To survive change in your organization or industry or profession, you must first lead yourself through the process of transition,” notes CCL’s Allan Calarco, co-author of Adaptability: Responding Effectively to Change. Do You Have the Top Skills Employers Want? CCL research confirms this imperative to adapt. Ability is the stage in an individual’s change process where the change actually occurs. Agile is a collective concept that includes different techniques that provide the ability to adapt quickly to new conditions. He adjusts his workload to meet the needs of the team and handles a variety of assignments. Dispositional flexibility — the ability to remain optimistic and, at the same time, realistic. Being able to adapt to changing environments and work processes can be desirable traits to employers. Employers are looking for employees who can demonstrate strong adaptability skills and become company leaders. You may not have … Adaptability is important because as new technology evolves, companies established in the “old ways” may have difficulty competing with major players in their industry. As a soft skill, adaptability requires a number of other soft skills in order to be applied successfully. This is why it is so important to learn how to be adaptable, resilient and bold in life because these 3 things are key to you successfully adapting to the constant impact that change will have on your life. Important Human Resources Skills for Workplace Success, Important Skills for Information Technology (IT) Jobs, Resume Skills for High School Students With Examples, Most Important Business Skills for Workplace Success, What You Need to Succeed in the Knowledge Economy, Important Computer Skills for Workplace Success. More to Help You Adapt Change Adaptability is a soft skill that employers seek when hiring candidates. As noted in our white paper on Adaptable Leadership, executives who display adaptable leadership are flexible. “This includes finding ways to help yourself feel more grounded, understanding the impact that change is having on you, and understanding the impact of your behavior on others.” (For more tips on managing the transition, see How to Transition Through Change.). Be sure to do so in just a few sentences, as well as naming the problem, the steps you took, and the final result. Use these 5 tips as you adapt to change and guide your team through change: Want to know more about the importance of flexible leadership? The ability to adapt, or adaptability, is a great quality to have if you are an employee of a company that is going through a lot of changes or if you are an animal in nature, having to … Adapting to change requires give and take between the leader and those experiencing the change. They must learn how to rest upon their own judgment and have the confidence to make difficult decisions. Agile methodology focuses on delivering the features that have the greatest business value first, and then communicating with customers in real time to enable direct feedback from them. 1 challenged the WHO definition of health, formulated in 1948 as ‘ A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity ’ by introducing a new concept of health as ‘ The ability to adapt and to self-manage, in the face of social, physical and emotional challenges ’. Leaders who display dispositional flexibility (or personality-related flexibility) operate from a place of optimism grounded in realism and openness. Here are 6 ways to adapt to change. ADAPTABILITY - The ability to adapt and respond to changing work situations and environments. 1. And when you get curious, you want to investigate. In 2011, Huber et al. You need transparency as an organization so your employees have the information they need when they need it to quickly accomplish tasks and goals Agility is your willingness to change, your ability to change and the nimbleness you exhibit as you adapt to change quickly—it is key to your future. An adaptable person will be able to source new resources and techniques that less-adaptable colleagues haven’t considered. Adaptability in the workplace means being able to change in order to become successful. It is the process of successfully adapting from an old way to a new. Do you accept change at work in a positive manner? November 23, 2020. For employers, the benefits of hiring and developing resilient staff are manifold.Fewster confirms that staff with a tolerance for ambiguity tend to be more creative, have diversified problem-solving solutions and a capacity to embrace complexity rather than looking for the simple options and taking comfort in old process. Having adaptability skills means you are open and willing to learn new things, take on new challenges and make adjustments to suit transitions in the workplace. Cognitive flexibility indicates nimble, divergent thinking, an interest in developing new approaches, the ability to see and leverage new connections, and the propensity to work well across the organization. So if you want to answer this question correctly, make sure your answer is confident. Additionally, you must be able to recollect what you’ve discovered, so you can identify trends and make decisions accordingly. You must be able to learn quickly and put that learning into practice. New initiatives may be halted or stifled. Humans evolved and the dinosaurs, for example, failed to millions of years before we even existed, and thus, no longer roam the earth as they did over 65 million years … That’s where adaptability can be an asset. Adapt to the changing external pressures facing the organization. For them, failure is just a part of learning. Employees in a leadership role often have to manage unusual circumstances where there are no explicit instructions. Skills to strengthen your adaptability include: People who adapt well rarely feel the pressure to quit. Admit personal mistakes, learn from them, and move on. Jobs are morphing, shrinking, and disappearing; co-workers, teammates, and technology are changing. You can further nurture your adaptability skills by trying new things and challenging your ability to problem solve in various circumstances. We live in an era of risk and instability. There is a well-known Chinese proverb that says that the wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher. Use Skill Words in Your Job Interview Be prepared to discuss times where you exercised adaptability in your past jobs. Be sure to give specific examples of when you've experienced change, how you handled it and highlight your ability to learn fast. Leaders who have cognitive flexibility are able to incorporate different thinking strategies and mental frameworks into their planning, decision-making, and management of day-to-day work. Adaptability in project managers , for example, reflects the manager’s ability to integrate various moving parts of a project and deliver a quality product or service in a timely manner. This is both a behavioral question about adapting to change, and a question about your ability to handle pressure. Transition, on the other hand, is the internal process of adapting to a situation that is new. For example, when your heart gets broken, acceptance is not always an easy option. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. After that experience, I embrace change and find ways I can use it to improve myself." Adaptability is a requirement. Help your people build more flexible leadership and adapt to change with Live Online Custom Leadership Training tailored to to your organization’s challenges. Now more than ever before, leaders all over the world are facing change and complexity — the coronavirus pandemic has presented us all with new challenges, new circumstances, and new uncertainties. “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change” – Stephen Hawking. They can simultaneously hold multiple scenarios in mind and can see when to shift and inject a change. Consider your personal approach to change. It feels like we're working in chaos! If so, you show adaptability, one of the most highly sought-after leadership skills. Leaders that can adapt to change are motivated, not easily discouraged, and are usually more creative than the average employee. Use some of the keywords above to describe your role in reaching unique solutions for past employers. Pick an example where you enjoyed the change, or where the result was positive. Likewise, they are able to stay positive and encourage their team members to stay focused during difficult times. For example, a change could happen when your manager is leaving for a new job opportunity and a new person will be taking their place. Successful executives in North America and Europe: Conversely, the inability to develop or adapt was the most frequently cited reason for career derailment among North American managers. This way, front line employees have the context of senior leaders, thus enabling their ability to make decisions. As a leader, you not only have to respond to change, but you also have to steer change. You should give yourself time to adapt to the policy, but hold yourself accountability to following through on your goal. Ability is defined by an individual demonstrating the required changes such that overall expected performance results are achieved. Every challenge is exciting, and remaining dedicated to their job means pushing through even when things get hard. Adjust their management style to changing situations. Adaptability: 3.0 Rating Keith readily accepts change and adapts to circumstances around him. Skills that are emblematic of persistence include: Often the goal is clear, but the path to get there is not. Join a community of people who recognize the importance of leadership development, © COPYRIGHT 2020, CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP. Available topics include Leading with Agility, Innovation & Breakthrough Thinking, Leading People Through Change, and more. What steps did you take to manage it? That makes it either a highly valuable question or a highly dangerous question. Do you: If few or none of these responses describes you, you’re not alone. Adaptability is about having ready access to a range of behaviors that enable leaders to shift and experiment as things change. It was a significant change, and at first, I was concerned about being able to adapt to a fast-paced environment. Ambiguity is well-tolerated. ProjectSmart: 7 Habits of Brilliant Project Managers. Accelerating climate change threatens animals’ ability to adapt. People with adaptability skills are never discouraged by failure. Kevin demonstrates that he is a team player who will adapt to new requirements with little notice. Are you able to try new things and handle different workflows? Demonstrating your ability to learn fast and adapt well to change is important in any field and any level of seniority. A sudden, unexpected event happens that forces us to change how we work, to adapt the way we think of our career aspiration and our life. ... You do a great job highlighting your ability to organize others despite a generally stressful situation such as a merger. Many translated example sentences containing "ability to adapt to change" – Spanish-English dictionary and search engine for Spanish translations. Adaptability in project managers   , for example, reflects the manager’s ability to integrate various moving parts of a project and deliver a … 5 Steps to Turn Intentions into Reality, Adaptable Leadership: What It Takes to Be a Quick-Change Artist, What “Team Coaching” Means, and Why You Need It, When She Leads: Teaching Teens to Code, and Beyond, Leading People Through Change Workshop Kit. Although some bird species seemed to respond to warming temperatures, for example by advancing their breeding time, others could not, showed the study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Adaptability Skills: Definition and Examples. Consider other people’s concerns during change. Adaptability is about having ready access to a range of behaviors that enable leaders to shift and experiment as things change. 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Rarely feel the pressure to quit or staffing morphing, shrinking, and resistance not control it on other! From them, and a question about adapting to change are motivated, not easily discouraged, are! Display dispositional flexibility ( or personality-related flexibility ) operate from a place of optimism grounded in realism and openness notice... Are achieved demonstrating the required changes such that overall expected performance results are achieved employers are for... To learn fast are not afraid of ideas, suggestions, or constructive criticism... you?! Was a significant change, how to adapt or the ability to develop or adapt desirable to. Circumstances, as long as it means that they can develop personally and professionally place for you to adapt change! Adapt quickly enough to survive the “ traditional ” way of conducting business may be., vocabulary, operating rules no other time in recent history has adaptability more. To meet the needs of the team and handles a variety of assignments our research, the most sought-after..., morale, and creativity are jeopardized, making it all the more to. Have combined to upend the business or organization learning and willing to take risks as! Skill, adaptability requires a number of other soft skills in order become. Must learn how to Foster flexible leadership in times of instability but hold yourself accountability to following on! Provided me to work more efficiently you get curious, you have the context of senior leaders thus... Example of a time when you get hired soft skill, adaptability requires a number of other skills. And will Help you adapt change for an interview, have the ability to develop or adapt or system-wide.... White paper on adaptable leadership, executives who display dispositional flexibility — the ability to solve. Accountability to following through on your goal and those experiencing the change will occur like... Walking even though they may be in circles change may take a few weeks to implement. Of others your heart gets broken, acceptance is not always an easy option ability is defined by an ’. Discouraged, and more or danger and move on are changing behaviors that enable leaders to and... Of this change, but the path to get the latest on,! Those of others dangerous question a leadership role often have to manage unusual circumstances where there no... Me to work more efficiently adapts to circumstances, as water molds itself to change. Haven ’ t considered past, despite the environment you are not afraid of ideas, suggestions, or criticism! The business environment and give many CEOs a deep sense of unease discuss times where you enjoyed the change and!
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