Why Adaptive Leadership Starts with Changing Yourself, Not Your Team
Photo by @tamara_photography on Unsplash
"Instead of constantly adapting to change, why not change to be adaptive?" – Fred Emery, Psychologist (1925–1997)
I used to think my job as a leader was to get my team to adapt to me.
To understand my communication style. To match my pace. To operate the way I operated. After all, I was the one delivering results. If they could just align to my approach, everything would work smoothly.
Then I had a revelation: I was exhausting myself trying to control the external world around me when the real power came from adapting my internal world.
The external world will always be changing
Here's what we know for certain: the external world is constantly changing. Markets shift. Teams evolve. Priorities pivot. Unexpected crises emerge.
So instead of trying to control everything as we want it to be, what if we adjusted ourselves to best respond to external factors? What if a lack of agility is actually more of a threat than the change itself?
This is what adaptive leadership really means: changing yourself to be adaptive, rather than constantly forcing others to adapt to you.
Why we resist change (and how it shows up)
Here's the challenge: we're hardwired to resist change. Our reptilian brain sees change as a threat and will bring up all sorts of defenses to keep us "safe."
We resist change in different ways. Some of us will:
Blame others or situations to avoid changing ourselves
Feel victimised by the change to validate the threat
Criticize the impact to justify not doing it
Impose our beliefs on others so we don't need to change
Amplify the risk to turn it into a challenge we can fight
Withdraw altogether to avoid taking action
All of these are negative perceptions of handling change. We're likely to resonate with some of these patterns in different contexts when it best suits us to avoid the discomfort of adaptation.
Sound familiar?
The leadership blind spot: different minds, different needs
As leaders, we often forget a crucial truth: what motivates us is not what motivates everyone else.
Different people are motivated by completely different things:
Being recognised for their work
Doing something fun or creative
Doing something that feels meaningful
Being valued for their opinions
Being the best at something
Having autonomy over their time
Here's the uncomfortable question: Do you actually know what truly motivates you and your preferred communication style?
More importantly: How does your style impact your team?
And the really hard one: How can you meet everyone's needs when they're all different?
Most leaders have never stopped to think about this. We assume people should just "get" how we operate. But that assumption creates friction, miscommunication, and underperformance.
When good leaders become rigid leaders
I've noticed something in my coaching work: the quality of our mental health is directly linked to our capacity to adjust to others.
When we're energised and feeling good, adapting to others comes more easily. We have the bandwidth to flex, to listen, to meet people where they are.
But when we're under pressure or running out of steam, we become fixated on our own preferences. We dig in. We expect others to adapt to us. And this often clashes with what they need, leading to miscommunication or outright conflict.
Have you ever been in a conversation where you're both speaking English and yet you completely fail to understand each other?
That's what happens when neither person has the energy or awareness to adapt.
Who's responsible for bridging the gap?
To get out of this loop, one of you needs to seek to understand the other person's perspective and adapt to their communication style.
The question is: who's responsible for this?
I speak to leaders who feel they're fully responsible for motivating their teams. Others think it's about hiring self-starters who don't need motivation.
Like everything in life, isn't it a bit of both?
Here's what I believe: adaptive leadership requires co-responsibility.
As leaders, we should adjust how we communicate to make others more comfortable and productive. But team members also need to build self-awareness to understand their own needs and express them.
Sometimes we need to adapt more to others because they're not in the capacity to do so. Other times, we need to ask others to adapt to us to make things work.
But it all starts with understanding ourselves first—as leaders and as individuals.
The inside-out approach
When I work with leaders, we start by better understanding their personalities, communication styles, and what genuinely motivates them. Once they have this clarity about themselves, a remarkable thing happens: they naturally start recognizing these patterns in others.
By learning to adapt to our own needs first, we have more energy to adapt to others.
When we change inside, we change how we relate to our external world, and how it relates to us. This internal adaptability can redefine our whole experience and how we influence others from the inside out.
We aren't taught this at school or at work, and yet it's fundamental to how we:
Look after ourselves
Perform at our best
Interact with others successfully
The adaptive leadership practice
Here's what this looks like in practice:
Step 1: Know thyself Understand your communication style, your triggers, your energy patterns, what motivates you, and what drains you.
Step 2: Manage your state Recognise when you're under pressure and more likely to become rigid. Build practices (like breathwork, meditation, movement) that help you maintain the energy needed to stay flexible.
Step 3: Get curious about others Ask questions. Listen for what energizes each team member. Notice when your style clashes with theirs. Be willing to adjust.
Step 4: Create co-responsibility Empower your team to understand their own needs and communicate them. It's not all on you to figure out what everyone needs.
Your Self-Reflection
• What's your default reaction when you're under pressure—do you become more rigid or more flexible?
• Do you actually know what communication style and motivations drive each of your team members?
• When was the last time you adapted your approach to meet someone else where they are?
Remember: instead of constantly adapting to change, change to be adaptive.
Ready to develop your adaptive leadership capacity?
If you're interested in discovering your own formula for performance and wellbeing alignment, for yourself or your teams, I invite you to connect with me. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit The Self-Science Lab for more info.
Written by: Lauren Cartigny, Leadership Trainer, Executive Coach and Mindfulness Practitioner
Following a successful international corporate career in Sales for leading Tech firms, Lauren faced an unexpected burnout, life and health crisis. After re-building her life, transforming her career, and healing her body, heart and mind, Lauren has created transformative coaching and training programs to teach High-Performance from a place of Well-Being to prevent burnout, and employee churn in organisations.