(5 min read)

Follow these action steps to build resilient teams and a positive, challenge-ready work culture. 

With disruption and innovation accelerating across industries, the journey toward effective leadership doesn't merely revolve around managing operations. It hinges on empowering teams to deliver exceptional client experiences. Gone are the days when being a leader meant keeping all eyes facing up the org chart.

Leadership has evolved, and so have your goals. Today's leaders focus on building a positive work culture through authenticity, empathy, resiliency, and genuine human connections.

When leaders embrace adaptability, they not only contribute to organizational prosperity but also cultivate an environment where everyone can thrive. The organization attracts top talent who want to be here daily, attracting customers drawn to your values. Employees feel invested in company success. They feel like you share an organizational story. In this post, we look at how to become this kind of leader.

Embrace an adaptive leadership style

Adaptive leaders don't simply learn practical strategies and apply them. They know how to adapt those strategies to their own organization's unique culture, community, customers, and needs. Because you hear your teams and are focused on building a culture of growth and well-being, you can read the room—inside the organization and outside—to make agile decisions.

You learn to confidently navigate challenges because you never lose sight of what you want your business to be—its mission, values, employees, and the customer it serves.

Action steps to become an adaptive leader:

1. Track and anticipate change. Ensure you have tools to track and analyze trends in your customers, human resources, community, and industry. Learn to appreciate and work with (not against) the change process.
2. Continually ask for input. Every great leader builds a team they trust around them. But this extends beyond your "right hand team". Develop effective communication channels to gather, process, and implement ideas.
3. Showcase emotional intelligence. Here is where you're taking adapting leadership to the next level. Demonstrate how someone with a high EQ responds to the doubts and worries expressed by others. Listen and communicate the plan clearly, earning confidence in your leadership rather than demanding it.

Promote resilience in your teams

Adaptive leaders need resilient teams, and vice versa. Agility and team rigidity don't mix. By opening lines of communication in all directions and demonstrating empathy and flexibility, you can begin to build this resilience into your teams. As you increase team resilience, adapting becomes business as usual when the team is faced with:

• Changing customer preferences
• Economic shifts
• New competitive pressures
• Emerging technologies

Truly resilient teams welcome new ideas and fresh perspectives, so implementing changes is more manageable. They embrace challenges and stay focused on solutions rather than problems. Your goal is to develop a team that identifies trends to which adaptation is necessary from their own unique perspectives within the organization. You want them to feel empowered to share their insights with leadership to support your organization’s mission.

Because you hear them, these solutions are implemented, tested, tracked, and improved.

Poor wellbeing directly affects your medical costs, turnover, productivity, and burnout. 

Action steps to promote team resilience:

1. Prioritize your own well-being. Actionable steps must start here. We can't help others without taking care of ourselves first. Lead by example in acknowledging the importance of health and wellness. You'll have a greater capacity to adapt, showcasing what self-care and resiliency look like.
2. Invest in wellness and well-being. People who feel physically, mentally, and emotionally well have the capacity to adapt to change. Workplace stress and burnout are not the product of challenges, competitive pressures, or misunderstandings in the workplace. Those are stressors. Stress is how the human body responds to events. The more "well" we are, the better our bodies and minds manage stress. Poor wellbeing directly affects your medical costs, turnover, productivity, and burnout. 
3. Demonstrate empathy. Express the value you place on people through how you choose to lead. People see what you value by where you spend time, money, and effort.
4. Develop strategies that prioritize understanding team customers' needs. Support and cultivate resilience by building a workplace that works for your teams. That starts with listening to what those needs are. This is critical to building a thriving organization. According to a Gartner study, 87% of companies have wellness programs, while some have as low as a 23% participation rate. It's not enough to have employee wellness programs. They must become part of the culture. You must prioritize building a well and resilient workforce. This leads us to the next phase.

Cultivate a positive work culture

A positive work culture is one in which people genuinely feel good getting up in the morning and coming to work. They're proud to tell people where they work. They enjoy working with co-workers, bosses, direct reports, customers, and the community.

A positive culture is not a place where nothing goes wrong, or people always appear happy. That would be a toxically positive work culture. If no one can be their authentic selves or share valid concerns, you have this!

If the organization were a train's crew, they wouldn't see the blocked track in the distance. Some of them ignore it. Some genuinely don't see it because they're busy doing other things. Others are afraid to speak up because the others are busy. Collectively, they plow right through, taking damage instead of stopping while the track is cleared.

You want a culture where people speak up about their apprehensions and can do so constructively. How do you accomplish this?

Action steps to cultivate a positive work culture:

1. Equip yourself and your organization with tools for self-care and work-life balance.
2. Prove you're committed to boosting teamwork by continuing to invest in technology, training, and initiatives that make team collaboration easier, faster, and more secure. This empowers your team to deliver the highest level of customer experiences.

Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Leadership

The future belongs to those who embrace change and lead with agility. By equipping yourself and your team with the tools of adaptability, you prepare not just for tomorrow, but for the unknown challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Remember, exceptional customer experiences are the result of adaptable teams led by well-equipped leaders. Invest in both, and unlock your organization's potential for enduring success. Start your journey by asking yourself: how can I cultivate adaptability within myself and empower my team to thrive in the face of change? Start today and unleash the power of adaptive leadership within your organization.