Adaptability is a soft skill that we all need to master. In fact, it is a critical value sought by
most employers. It highlights your ability to manage changes and new situations with ease
and success. An adaptable person is resourceful, has strong analytical skills, and learns new
skills to meet evolving needs and circumstances.
Given the speed of change in the current world, the explosion of new careers and skillsets,
the need for business to evolve and adjust to changing consumer and market demand
simply means change is inevitable and here to stay!
How adaptable are you? An adaptable person will:
- be able to manage challenges better as they are not hamstrung by boundaries and thought limitations.
- be a better leader as they welcome and adjust to change, are open-minded and seek new solutions and paths.
- Be able to remain relevant when many fall out of favour, simply as they think laterally, adjust and re-engineer themselves, staff, and operation to stay with the current and future market needs.
Certainly, in nature, adaptability is key to survival but this rings true to business and
employees too. Being adaptable will make you more valuable as an employee, provide
greater leadership opportunity, allow you to try different career paths more easily, move to
and work in a new location or overseas with greater ease of transition and tackle difficult
situations with greater finesse.
It is essential that to develop your adaptability skill you need to be open minded, willing to
make mistakes and learn from them, listen, and engage other opinions, ask many questions,
go down new and unchartered pathways, even if they prove fruitless, and most importantly
believe in yourself and your vision.
We can all comfortably say that we know we need to be adaptable and ride the wave of
change but how do you train yourself to become more adaptable? In fact, to be adaptable
you need to develop and range other key soft skills to learn how to deal with change
positively, and successfully. Here are 5 key skills sets to work on developing.
- Communication skills. Adopt key listening techniques to ensure you are actively listening. Also consider learning and observing non-verbal communication skills.
- Interpersonal skills. Be self-aware and ensure you are in touch with both your emotions and those around you. Consider how others are feeling and why, ask and engage further for more clarity and this will lead to new ideas and considerations.
- Organisational skills. It simply is impossible to adjust to change if you are not managing the current. Ensure you have strong systems and structures in place and do not be afraid to use some of the many tools available to achieve this.
- Analytical skills. To truly take new paths one needs to have strong analytical skills to assess and evaluate data successfully to reach strong decisions. Couple this with developing your creative thinking and decision-making skills and you are on your way!
- Teamwork skills. This is a much-needed skill as you need to adapt to different personalities, points of view, and diversity. You will need to manage discussions, conflicts, and opinions to find the positive opportunities within.
Remember to consciously practice these skills, think about truly thinking differently, focus
on improving your open mindedness and new thought patterns. Be confident about being
adaptable and resilient to change. You have got this. Good luck.