Adaptability is Genius & Generosity | #Leadership #Teamwork #LeadMorale

Adaptability is nature’s genius. Species that adapt evolve, survive, and thrive. Well it’s true of people too! Adapting to others in leadership, teamwork, customer service, and everyday life is brilliant and productive.

Yet, there are those who think adaptability in people is weak and inauthentic. To them, an adaptable person is a chameleon. Yet this is not true. Adaptability doesn’t make you a chameleon others should mistrust. What’s in your heart — your intentions — determine if you are adapting because you care or for selfish gain.



Adaptability: Image is of the plant mimosa pudica.

Adaptability is genius and generosity. Image of mimosa pudica by: Reinaldo Aguilar

Image by Reinaldo Aguilar via Flickr Creative Commons License.


The Genius & Generosity of Adaptability

With a generous heart, adaptability creates wonderful relationships and results. It is the brilliance in leadership, teamwork, customer service, innovation, career success, people skills, personal relationships, and much much more.

Adaptability is the capacity to see differences and the willingness and skill to respond for a positive result. Adaptability is not submission and surrender. Adaptability and authenticity are not opposites nor mutually exclusive.

  • Adaptability In Leadership.

    Adaptability is the keen sense of what changes will impact the organization and the skill to change appropriately. A changing workforce, competitive products, global markets, educational strengths and shortfalls, laws and regulations, political shifts, human tragedies all create the need to adapt. Adaptability is the organization’s genius to survive.


  • In Innovation.

    Innovation is adaptability in action. It requires leaders and teams to overcome comfort and love of what they previously created. Adaptability is the generosity to overcome habit and the genius to focus on what is needed going forward.


  • Adaptability In Teamwork.

    Teamwork is the practice of growth and change to achieve a shared success. Without adaptability, it doesn’t happen. Several things can derail team success: personality type differences, various learning styles, conative approaches, communication preferences, goal orientations, etc…

    Adaptability bridges these differences into collective success. It requires both the genius of how to adapt and the generosity to put the team ahead of personal preference.


  • In Career.

    No matter how great our plans, our schooling, or our intelligence, achieving career success is rarely a straight line up. Adaptability facilitates career success. Shifting gears when our dream job doesn’t materialize keeps us moving forward. Being open and adaptable to coaching and mentoring creates career fit.

    Social networking done with mutual give and take is the generosity of adaptability in action. It is the genius of tapping shared human needs for mutual success.


  • Adaptability In Customer Service.

    If we don’t adapt to customers, they become another company’s customers. Sometimes when their needs are outside of our company’s mission, this is acceptable. Companies do fail when they try to become everything to everybody. Yet adaptability to customers within our mission is essential for success.

    Adapting to customers shows our generous hearts that touch theirs. Adaptability creates memorable customer experiences that keep them coming back for more. This is the genius of shared success.

  • In People Skills.

    People skills are the outward expression of both our identity and adaptability. People skills adaptability doesn’t undermine our authenticity. It truly shows whether we are flexible and open-minded vs. rigid and closed-minded. It shows our genius in spotting others’ styles and needs. It communicates our generosity to interact (not just act).

    Mutual give and take — adaptability — is the essence of forming positive relationships with others. Those who won’t and don’t may dominate for awhile yet lose in the end. Our street smarts are a form of adaptability that protect us from those with evil intent!


Adaptability is rooted in a humble heart and an evolved mind that know life is not just about the self. Adaptability is both the genius to see we’re all on earth together and the generosity to truly live that way.




Adaptability is the genius of survival and the generosity of coexistence!


What do you think?


What stops people from adapting to changes and to others?


How can someone develop adaptability?



From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

Related Posts:
Leadership & Team Secrets: It’s Productive to Adapt to Personality Types
12 Most Beneficial People Skills to Adapt & Succeed When You Have No Power

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Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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7 Responses to “Adaptability is Genius & Generosity | #Leadership #Teamwork #LeadMorale”

  1. Khalid says:

    “If we don’t adapt to customers, they become another company’s customers.”

    That statement caught my attention 🙂
    I was asked to give a speech on customer service for my IT department and thanks to your statement Kate, I’m thinking to break the ice with asking what if there is another IT department in the company, will end users still want to reach us for providing IT support?

    Now going back to your question, I think what stops us from being adaptable is that we are the only one who provides such service! We don’t feel threaten and that’s why we are confident that users have to accept our service no matter how bad it is! That has to change! We have to adapte and customize out services to end users of else we might get outsourced 😉

    Thanks for the enlightment

    Regards,
    Khalid

    • Kate Nasser says:

      I think you are right Khalid about why internal service departments don’t think they have competition. Yet in this day of outsourcing, they do.

      And yes I think your opening for your presentation is a good one 🙂

      Thanks again for your examples that always expand these posts! Good luck with the presentation and let me know how it turns out.

      Best wishes,
      Kate

  2. Dan says:

    Kate

    I love your two questions at the end. What stops ME from adapting is almost always a variety of ego issues: somebody came up with a better answer than I did, or I’d have to acknowledge I was wrong about something. Ego represents a hardening of the mental arteries caused by anxiety I won’t be safe if I’m not right or better than. For me, it’s not so much about being weak, but about the unexamined insecurities I’d like to pretend I haven’t got.

    But I love the comment I heard somewhere from a leader, “I reserve the right to learn,” which is a way out of this hardening of the mental arteries trap. I reserve the right to get more information, to be persuaded, to rethink what’s real or what’s possible. That’s my right. I give myself permission to evolve. By giving myself permission, what I’ve done is stop, reflect, and then change courses thoughtfully as a matter of conscious choice. That, to me, always makes the adjustment easier.

    Thanks for another fantastic post.

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Dan,
      Your gut level honesty always sheds light for all to see themselves. Ego is probably the biggest obstacle and yet quite possible to overcome. Love the quote “I reserve the right to learn” to escape hardening of the mental arteries.

      Great imagery and powerful message!

      Many thanks for your adds on this post.

      Kate

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