Being Adaptable Isn’t Enough. You Have to Demonstrate It.

In today’s world of disruption, from AI and automation to remote work, market volatility, and constant reorganizations, adaptability is the new leadership differentiator. The most promotable leaders aren’t simply high performers who meet or exceed their goals. They’re leaders who embody agility, resilience, and foresight every day, showing they can lead through uncertainty rather than be derailed by it or attached to the status quo.

The challenge is that most leaders say they’re adaptable, but few know how to demonstrate adaptability consistently. To advance in senior leadership, you must not only be adaptable—you must demonstrate your adaptability clearly and visibly in meetings, enterprise initiatives, communication, and relationships.

What Makes a Leader Adaptable?

Through my executive coaching work, I’ve found that adaptability rests on three pillars:

1. Agility. Agility is the ability not only to pivot quickly when priorities shift, but also to bring others along with you. You shouldn’t blindly agree with every decision made by those above you, but instead be forward-thinking, viewing change as an opening for innovation.

I recently coached an executive who led a small market analytics team. He was blindsided when he was told that, unless he could rapidly shift the team toward more generative AI workflows to accelerate reporting cycles and decrease the need for external contractors, his entire team—himself included—would likely be laid off and all of the work offshored to save on labor costs. It seemed like an impossible task. Several of his analysts had deep institutional knowledge he knew the company needed, but limited AI experience.

At first during our coaching sessions, he wanted to push back against the change. He believed the cuts overlooked the nuance and strategic value of his team’s work and felt it was unfair to ask his people to pivot overnight to tools they barely understood. But as we explored the situation together, he quickly realized that instead of resisting, he needed to reframe the situation as an opportunity to reimagine how his team worked. He presented a comprehensive plan to senior leadership on how his team could close the skill and workflow gaps over a 60-day period. Crucially, he brought his team along with him. He acknowledged their fears openly, involved them in co-designing a pilot, and positioned the shift as an investment in their future rather than a threat to their roles.

By the end of the pilot, his analysts were confidently applying prompt-engineering techniques, and the new workflow delivered customer insights twice as fast at half the cost by pairing AI’s speed with his team’s nuanced institutional knowledge. The results spoke for themselves. The company paused the offshoring plan, preserved every job on the team, and lauded the group as a model for how AI could augment human expertise and workflows. The leader’s ability to pivot quickly and inspire his team and senior leadership to move with him illustrated a level of agility the CEO recognized during the annual employee meeting and has positioned the leader for a larger transformation role at the company.

2. Resilience. Resilience is maintaining composure under pressure and sustaining performance through turbulent times. Layoffs, restructurings, changing economic policies, and mergers all can test leaders’ emotional stability. The ones who model calm focus will more easily create psychological safety on their teams.

One senior executive I coached had to lead through layoffs five times in three years, yet they refused to let fear become the team’s dominant narrative. They shared information transparently, acknowledged the difficulty of the market and the company’s financial challenges, and consistently redirected their team to focus on what they could control: their own upskilling, cross-training, and development. This leader’s continued steadiness provided clarity and consistency that allowed their team to keep delivering results amid constant disruption.

3. Foresight. Foresight separates reactive managers from visionary leaders. The difference is being able to look beyond today’s metrics to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges. That means studying market data, tracking competitor shifts, and interpreting early signals of disruption before they hit your organization.

I coached a VP of operations and global sourcing for a midsized consumer goods company. A few years ago, she noticed early warning signs in trade negotiations, commodity pricing, and competitor inventory behavior. She used the information to model multiple risk scenarios and identify which parts of the company’s supply chain were most vulnerable. She then worked across procurement, logistics, and finance to quietly diversify suppliers, accelerate production runs, and shift a portion of assembly to lower-risk countries. She also built contingency plans so the company could pivot within days if any new government policies impacted the strategy.

This year, when tariffs were implemented, her division avoided the cost spikes that hit competitors. While their competition was likely scrambling to renegotiate contracts or absorb margin losses, her team had already secured a steady, uninterrupted flow of materials, components, and products the company needed at predictable volumes, prices, and timelines. Her foresight was recognized as protecting profitability, preserving jobs that might have been otherwise cut, and giving her company a strategic advantage in a turbulent market. It was obvious her foresight saved the company millions of dollars (and perhaps its solvency), leading to her promotion.

Foresight in market shifts is just part of the equation. Leaders also need to have foresight in technology innovations and how businesses are leveraging them. Leaders who continuously map future capability needs and upskill their teams in alignment with emerging technology will demonstrate the strategic foresight and enterprise readiness required for broader leadership roles.

How to Make Adaptability a Part of Your Leadership Brand

When you’re trying to advance up the senior-leadership ranks, you can’t shout “I’m adaptable” and expect people to just believe it. Here are three ways to make adaptability part of your brand through how you show up in everyday actions and interactions:

Model change-ready leadership every day. Projects implode. Markets shift. Critical talent leaves. Disruption is all around, and how you respond when it happens will either model change-ready behavior or rigidity. Leaders who model change-ready behavior transform panic into calm and frame unpredictability as a shared, solvable challenge rather than an existential threat.

Boards and CEOs look through the lenses of growth, transformation, and risk. To align with that perspective and show that you’re thinking like a leader, shift your language from protecting the past to shaping the future. “This is how we’ve always done it” is the easiest way to show a lack of adaptability, but language like “What might we gain if we reimagine this?” or “What would this look like if we started from scratch today?” demonstrates intellectual agility.

You can also show your leadership you’re adaptable by volunteering for transformational initiatives, no matter how big or small. One client of mine joined a cross-functional AI ethics workstream that was far outside her role (and comfort zone). Her participation immediately gained her a new level of visibility in the company, and she became known across departments as a curious and adaptive thinker. Six months later she was offered a broader leadership opportunity.

Remember, adaptability is contagious! In one-on-one conversations with your direct reports or larger team town halls, talk about how you’re approaching upcoming or current changes. Acknowledge your own discomfort when adopting new processes or technologies, then share how you’re navigating through it. That transparency creates trust and tells your team that evolving together is part of the company culture.

Display empathy and accountability. Empathy and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Demonstrating empathy means helping people process the discomfort of change while maintaining momentum. A leader who can say “I know this shift is hard and I’m here to help you through it” while still driving toward deadlines creates both psychological safety and performance consistency. That combination is exactly what senior leadership looks for when evaluating who is ready for a larger scope. They elevate leaders who can support people through uncertainty while also still holding them to clear expectations, high-quality work, and timely delivery.

Ask yourself:

• Do I demonstrate steadiness and optimism when facing market volatility or strategic pivots?

• How do I balance empathy and accountability when my team is struggling from change fatigue?

• Am I learning fast enough to lead others to what’s next?

Once you answer these questions, look for gaps, which will provide a roadmap for growth. For example, if you recognize that you’re defaulting to being solution-oriented over engaging empathetically, practice discussing the impact of change with your team before outlining changing expectations and a path forward. If you aren’t taking time to keep abreast of the latest AI technologies and you’re not sure how they could drive business, consider taking an AI business course to learn about the most recent innovations and their enterprise impact.

Ultimately, empathy keeps people engaged and accountability keeps teams moving forward. Leaders who can demonstrate both will earn trust, model maturity, and make it clear they’re already operating at the next level.

Demonstrate learning and growth. With the rise of AI, automation, and quantum computing, continuous learning is no longer optional. Leaders aspiring to advance must understand how emerging technologies will impact their teams and the overall organization.

Consider scheduling “learning audits” with your leadership team and then individually with each of your direct reports to understand which of their skills are future-relevant and which need strengthening. This shows both foresight and that you care about your team’s long-term value to the company.

Paradoxically, the higher leaders rise, the less feedback and development they receive. Being told you’re great all the time can create complacency, which prevents you from seeking out your own growth. The leaders who continue to advance intentionally disrupt that complacency by actively asking for feedback, seeking coaching, and investing in their own evolution. Because adaptability requires practice, many aspiring leaders partner with executive coaches to help them recognize when to pivot (agility), strengthen market acuity on emerging risks and trends (foresight), and navigate conflict or crisis with composure (resilience). Leaders who pursue this kind of continual development demonstrate that they’re serious about adapting to the company’s changing needs and expanding their impact, thus signaling that they’re ready for greater responsibility at the next level.

Common Mistakes That Undermine Adaptability

Even the most capable leaders can unintentionally signal rigidity or complacency. As you work to show you’re adaptable and promotion-ready, avoid these three common pitfalls I’ve observed:

Mistaking stability for adaptability. Tenure at a company doesn’t automatically equal adaptability, no matter how often your company has changed. Being steady and reliable is valuable, but evolving your mindset, processes, and capabilities in pace with change is what defines adaptability. Think of it this way: stability sustains; adaptability advances.

Equating hard work with growth. Leaders also make a mistake in believing that hard work alone indicates readiness for promotion. One leader I coached received exceptional feedback for his work but was passed over for a broader enterprise role. The reason? He needed to move from being an effective executive to a strategic leader. Working hard, solving problems, and ensuring people find it valuable to work with you are all important, but evolving your own vision and influence, enterprise thinking, executive presence, and decision-making demonstrates agility through your professional growth.

Avoiding vulnerability. Many executives fear that admitting uncertainty or past mistakes will erode their credibility. In reality, it does the opposite. Vulnerability builds connection, credibility builds confidence, and together they create influence. Sharing a story about a failed initiative you learned from demonstrates both agility and resilience while making it safe for others to do the same.

. . .

Adaptability and learning agility have become the foundation for business transformation, innovation, and people leadership. Even if agility, resilience, and foresight don’t feel natural to you, they can be developed through feedback, reflection, and consistent action. The leaders who show they’re ready for the next level amid constant change are those who demonstrate through every action and interaction that growth is always a part of who they are.

Copyright 2026 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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