We could go on…

So, what’s the answer?

As a business owner myself, and someone who gets a daily insight into the challenges individuals and business across the UK are facing, I would go so far as to say that adaptability is the most critical skill to develop in ourselves and our employees at this time.

While many might agree with me on this, it’s a rare HR or business person who has found the time to really explore this topic.

Can you train people to be more adaptable?  

Yes. Plenty of research on this. Although let me add a little disclaimer – some people with physical or mental conditions will not be as able to choose as freely their colleagues. ADHD, for example, is a condition that is known for cognitive inflexibility. 

Back to adaptability. Our training and eLearning on this key skill explains that while we can support, encourage, set standards etc it will always be a choice as to whether someone adapts or not.

We all know someone who has a reputation for being stubborn. They won’t follow sound advice from friends and colleagues often ’just because’…they won’t try new things, or apply for a new role (even though they hate their current role because they’ve dug their heels in and don’t know how to move on). They are just plain stubborn, stuck in a rut, unwilling to change. Ultimately, this is a choice for all of us.   

Struggling with change?

So, who is choosing not to adapt in your workplace? And how can you support those who are genuinely struggling, especially as their choices are probably negatively impacting others? Here’s our starter for ten…

How to feel more comfortable with change

• Comfort with discomfort. As I so often say, we could all do with feeling a little bit more comfortable with discomfort. Let’s step out of our comfort zones in full knowledge that to grow (just to be clear, it’s not really an option not to grow and develop across our careers) we must embrace what we encounter in the fear zone. The fear zone sits between the comfort zone and growth zone. Talk to us about our 15 minute comfort zone eLearning course, if this would benefit people in your business.
• Problem solving skills. Let’s resolve to address problems promptly rather than let them sit and fester, or feed off our uncertainties.
• Seeing the positive in change. Let’s not allow ourselves to catastrophise or work ourselves into a lather over change. It’s not all negative and seldom as bad as our ‘head chatter’ tells us it might be, so let’s calm our thoughts so we can better embrace change.
• Stress management. Learn to breathe and relax and try not to allow issues to dominate or become more than they are. Meditation or mindfulness practices can really help here.
• Remain actively open to ideas and change. Let’s work on keeping an open mind as to what change looks and feels like. No more assumptions, jumping to the wrong conclusions, deciding it will be bad before you try it, and definitely no more protecting/defending what you and everyone around you knows is really not working or going well just because ‘bad old’ has got to be better than unknown and untested ‘new’ (consider a car that should have been scrapped 5 years ago, a marriage that is just toxic, a personal habit that does not serve us well, a job that we don’t like and causes us unhappiness and stress).

If I haven’t worn you out and you want to explore this topic a bit more. 

Adaptability as a competence  

Adaptability as a key workplace competence is about our ability to respond to change (often unexpected change) with a calm, positive can-do attitude. For us to be adaptable we need skill sets/behaviours such as: 

1. An understanding of our responsibility to others (the family, team members etc)
2. A desire to learn and an ability to listen
3. A growth mindset
4. Simple and complex problem solving
5. Decision making
6. Ability to communicate and/or collaborate
7. An ability to envision the future/ consider the ‘what next’
8. A personal refusal to catastrophise
9. Awareness of, and good management of your own fear
10. Knowledge of/able to use simple stress management techniques

Take a moment to consider, how many of these skills you attribute to each member of your team? Do you need a culture shift in your team’s attitude towards change? 

Whatever you have identified, with the best will in the world behaviours may not change if you don’t address the root cause.

Amygdala Hijack

Whilst the root cause of the problem will vary from person to person, it might be that Amygdala Hijack can provide some of the answers we need.

The Amygdala is part of your brain. It’s generally thought to be the central processing place for fearful and/or threatening stimuli. When fear or threat is detected, the amygdala can be over stimulated, often resulting in feelings of anxiety, fear, and anger dominating, while the logical and rational thought part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) simultaneously is suppressed. Physical symptoms may include racing heart, sweating, brain fog, poor memory, inability to make decisions, low attention, impaired social skills. This is called Amygdala Hijack. 

Look around your workplace, your family, and your friendship groups, and consider how often in the past year have you witnessed Amygdala Hijack? 

To get Amygdala Hijack under control it is recommended that you slow down, take deep breaths, refocus your thoughts. So much of which comes back to stress management.

Does everyone have an overactive amygdala?  

I read recently, that in today’s world almost everyone has an overactive amygdala, resulting in continuous amygdala hijack. I’ve seen no scientific evidence to back this up but it’s an intriguing thought that the endless fear we have been subjected to in recent years has supressed our ability to be rational and increased our tendency to react with high emotion. 

So, with all this endless fear mongering and threats, it’s not surprising that amygdala hijack is now dominating.

But where does that leave an employer when they bring in new systems, a new structure, new people to a team, a new manager, new sales models etc? People jump straight into high emotion leaving business leaders perplexed about how to have a rational discussion about change. And high emotion directly inhibits Adaptability. 

If you recognise you are an overactive amygdala kind of person (not sure that’s a scientific term but you get what I mean!) a few tips to calm it all down…

• Learn to recognise when your amygdala has been triggered.
• Learn to let go of the narrative being fed to you.
• Learn to let go of stress and tension.
• Put your feet on the ground (barefoot is perfect if you can) and ground yourself.

To sum up

People who are adaptable…

• see different perspectives
• consider different options
• easily adjust their plans when things don’t go as expected
• manage their stress well
• have cognitive flexibility, ie an awareness that each situation can have a number of solutions, resulting in them being able to switch between ideas

In contrast, people who are rigid in their behaviours…

• often live in a state of fear
• like control ie they like plans, processes, agreements to be followed to the letter, even when life has moved on
• often see things as unmoveable, unchangeable
• panic, or can even express anger when asked to do things differently – they live in a state of Amygdala Hijack

Being careful not to generalise, jump to conclusions or make decisions without understanding all the relevant information, who in your team is an adaptability role model, who in your team is struggling but improving and who in your team is making no effort at all to be Adaptable and so is negatively impacting others?

How we can help

What can the lovely team at Jaluch support you with? All of our courses can be delivered in-person or online:

• Adapting your leadership style to deliver results and lead great teams
• Adaptability in team working – a fun session for team members 
• Accountability in the workplace 
• Managing stress 
• Problem solving
• Social intelligence. Emotional intelligence. An introduction 
• Effective networking and collaboration skills 
• Managing performance, discipline and difficult people!