How often do you find yourself longing? Longing for the things you once took for granted like: the buzz you felt when you walked into a bustling office space, the conversations you had with peers without the fear of getting too close, the days when home-schooling was only for those who chose it (and weren’t trying to do a full time job at the same time), and the ability to participate in a large scale event without a care in the world. My, how things have changed and so have we. The level of enforced change in how we work, live, and play is unprecedented and has left us with no choice but to adapt, our survival depends on it.
The demands of a leader have shifted significantly and therefore how leaders skill themselves in adaptability to support their people needs to shift too. But how?
What if we made a conscious choice to let go of the unrealistic expectations of what we feel we should be doing (based on the way life used to be) and instead created the space to pave a new path. A path that moves our mindset and our behaviour from using adaptability as a means of surviving to one of thriving. What if we learnt to bring intention to the core of how we adapt for what’s to come?
Your Intentional Adaptability Quotient (IAQ®) is the measure of how skilled you are at making intentional change in a complex and uncertain environment that is evolving at speed. The concept of Adaptability Quotient (AQ) was originally expressed in a 2011 Harvard Business Review entitled Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage. But intentionally adapting, takes the concept one step further, and is critical in the current environment because it is about bringing meaning to the forefront of how we make decisions. IAQ® is premised on slowing down, creating the space to think, to experiment, and to unlearn.
So where as a leader might you even begin to build your IAQ® as a means for thriving and helping others to do the same? You start small with intentional practices that amplify skill in the IAQ® domains of Focus, Courage and Curiosity. The aim is to create the space daily for more of the things that truly matter and light us up as human beings.
We live in a world that is now designed to distract us. Our attention has become a highly valuable commodity so valuable in fact that companies like Netflix claim sleep as one of their biggest competitors. Productivity has become our disease, busy our default position, and every waking moment is full. Our focus on doing is compromising our state of being…human being.
Fear is the number one barrier to change (even if that change is something you’ve longed for) and yet fear and failure are two of the greatest levers you have available to you to shape the change you seek.
I am often told by professionals that curiosity is something they do in their spare time, of which they have none. Curiosity is a state of being, those who are brilliant at it (like Einstein), share that the more they explore their curiosity the less they realise they know. What an invitation to open our eyes to the world around us and possibility we didn’t realise existed.
Amplifying your IAQ® as a leader provides a navigation system for you to explore, experiment and evolve in a way that is meaningful to you and inspiring to others. Focus, Courage and Curiosity act as levers to unlock possibility and move us from a position of surviving in complexity and uncertainty to thriving.
HackingHappy.co is on a mission to teach 10 million humans how to intentionally adapt by 2025 in order to future proof happiness. We are devoted to supporting you in creating the space, self-belief and the courage to realise the happiness you deserve. Want more happy in each day? Take your free Hacking Happiness Assessment here.
