Becoming an Adaptive Leader When Faced with Constant Change

How to guide your team through hard times and change by building trust, problem solving together, and giving your direct reports a real voice.

As a middle manager, one of the things you are plagued with the most is dealing with rapid change and trying to manage your team through it.

Chances are, decisions are being made above you and you have no control over what happens. Which means that your only choice is to take the information given to you, and find a way to guide your team through the ups and downs without pissing them off and burning them out.

This. Is. So. Difficult.

I cannot overstate that enough. Trying to manage rapid change as an individual is hard enough, but trying to help others through it is 10x harder.

So how do you do it?

Try leaning into adaptive leadership.

What is adaptive leadership?

Adaptive leadership is a leadership framework that helps leaders and their teams adapt and thrive in challenging environments.

(“Challenging” is my nice way of saying chaotic.)

Adaptive leadership is not just a way to lead; it's a way to empower, engage, and evolve with your team.

Unlike traditional leadership models that focus on top-down authority, adaptive leadership emphasizes a more participative approach, engaging the creativity and problem-solving capabilities of your entire team.

Let’s get into it.

Breaking down adaptive leadership

At its core, adaptive leadership is about meeting change head-on and using it as fuel for growth. This style of leadership is less about maintaining the status quo and more about mobilizing your team to tackle real challenges together.

Being three steps ahead

As a middle manager, it’s truly impossible to know what will be thrown at you next. Maybe you’ll be asked to scrap a big project you’ve spent months working on. Maybe your team is moving to a new department. Maybe the org decided to launch a new product… next week.

Yes, there’s no way to know what’s coming. But what you can do, is pull at threads that seem to not make sense. Hunt down information and try to keep your finger on the pulse so that you’re ready for whatever challenges might be hiding around the corner.

Plan for how you would handle these changes, even if they aren’t happening. This helps keep you adaptive and ready for anything, so that you can support your team when it inevitably happens.

Spotting real challenges vs fluff

One of the most important parts of your job is knowing how to spot the tough problems — those particularly challenging issues that can’t be solved with a quick fix. These are the challenges that require new ideas, innovation, and iteration to get them done right.

When there’s a lot going on, it’s easy to get lost in the sauce. This leads to priority overload and will make your team feel out of control and overwhelmed.

It’s on you to point out the real challenges, and create a channel for them to focus on those challenge without outside noise.

Creating a safe space for your team

I’ve said this a thousand times, but creating psychological safety is the most important thing you can possibly do as a manager. Period.

If your team doesn’t feel safe to give and receive feedback, your chances of adapting to rapid change are slim.

Show your team that it’s okay to fail, and how to learn from the good ideas and the bad. This is where the sweet spot of innovation lives, and how your team learns how to lean on each other and grow together.

Keeping cool under pressure

Change can be stressful, and it’s easy for people on your team to feel overwhelmed when it happens often.

Adaptive leadership involves keeping everyone’s stress in the green. You have to help your team ride the waves of change in a way that allows them to feel heard and simultaneously motivates them to keep going.

This is hard, but the remedy is actually pretty simple: ask questions and listen.

Don’t show up to calls panicked, and always try to come to the table with a plan, or a question to pose to the group so that everyone can be apart of coming up with that plan.

Knowing how to focus on what matters

It’s easy to get distracted by minor issues or old problems when dealing with a lot of change. Adaptive leaders know how to keep everyone’s eyes on the prize, addressing the tough issues that really matter head-on. They know how to keep people focused enough on the current problems, while ensuring that people feel heard about their feelings about the past.

Focus is the key ingredient to high performing teams. And focus starts with you, the team’s manager. Carry the torch, lean into clarity, set expectations, and be direct about your goals (and don’t have too many goals).

Empowering everyone, often

As the leader of the team, you are not the hero. You’re the guide. (A subtle Storybrand reference there if you’re into that kind of thing).

Your team members are the heroes of the story. They should feel empowered to give their own ideas, share their feelings and thoughts, and cross big rocks off the list with pride.

Give your team room to innovate and solve problems by themselves, autonomously. This does so much good for the morale of your team, and makes for incredible output and team work.

And please, please, please, recognize this work publicly. It makes a difference.

The outcomes of adaptive leadership

1. Encourages flexibility

Adaptive leadership fosters a culture that is flexible, responsive to change, and ready to embrace new ideas. These teams can pivot when needed, and know when it’s time to solve problems on the fly versus really think things through. This agility is crucial in fast-paced environments like start ups. (I’m speaking from experience here…)

2. Builds a resilient team

Empowering your team and creating a culture that thrives on feedback helps your team become more resilient and reliable during the good times and the bad. Handing the mic to your team and allowing them to lead projects and be creative builds up problem-solving skills and overall confidence.

3. Fosters innovation

Since adaptive leaders rely heavily on collaboration and team-based decision-making, it naturally leads to a more innovative team. People at all levels feel empowered to share their ideas and take initiative, driving creativity throughout the organization and allowing people to work autonomously. This mean better work gets shipped faster.

4. Improves organizational health

Adaptive leadership addresses not just the technical aspects of change, but also the human emotions associated with it. By managing distress and creating a supportive, safe, and empowering environment, overall job satisfaction will improve, burnout will go down, and employee retention will go up.

5. Ensures long-term success

Teams with adaptive leaders are better prepared for future challenges, because they trust that their leader has confidence in them to problem-solve, and that they care about their ideas. This builds confidence and enables more innovative, impactful work, even when things are at their worst.

Summing it all up

TL;DR: things change quickly and as a manager you have to know how to handle it, and how to guide your team through it. This is a never ending problem in leadership, and will fluctuate depending on what organization you’re at. But no matter what, you will have to face it regularly.

As a manager, it’s your job to take care of your team and make sure that they aren’t just supported through change, but empowered to navigate through the change and be a part of the solution.

Because everyone wants to be part of the solution.