Leading without certainties in times of constant change

There are words that get worn out through overuse: resilience, agility, transformation, sustainability… In recent years, we’ve heard them endlessly in conferences, trend reports, and office chats. But there are others, less noisy yet essential for understanding the kind of leadership organisations need nowadays. One of them is adaptability.

Far from the idea of a leader who has all the answers, adaptive leadership offers something else: a way of being in the world—and in business—that is more flexible, more in tune with uncertainty, and, above all, more honest. This type of leadership is not grounded in control, but in the ability to learn, to question what was once taken for granted, and to evolve in real time alongside the team.

What am I going to read about in this article?

Adapting to the environment
The paradox of leading without certainties
Keys to strengthening your adaptability muscle

The importance of adapting to the environment

It’s said that the secret to species survival lies in their ability to adapt to their environment. Judging by today’s business context, this principle has never been more relevant.

We operate in what theorists call a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), although the BANI model (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible) now seems even more fitting. This newer framework, proposed in 2020 by American anthropologist Jamais Cascio, isn’t just about major crises—pandemics, tech disruptions, wars—but rather a cascade of micro-changes that constantly reshape the rules without warning.

In this context, adaptive leaders don’t cling to rigid roadmaps. They use a compass, yes—but they’re also ready to change direction. Rather than defending the status quo, they act as catalysts for change. They understand that adapting isn’t surrender, but evolving with purpose. And that complex challenges aren’t solved with a manual, but through experimentation, active listening, and humility.

The paradox of leading without certainties

One of the key ideas in adaptive leadership, as described by Harvard scholars Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, is distinguishing between technical and adaptive challenges. The former can be solved with expertise. The latter, however, lack clear answers—they require learning, mindset shifts, and the engagement of the entire system.

This is where traditional leadership often wavers. Because how do you guide a team when you yourself don’t have all the answers? How do you maintain authority without becoming rigid?

The solution isn’t to fake certainty, but to build trust. An adaptive leader isn’t infallible, but indeed transparent. They share their diagnosis, invite collaboration on solutions, and create safe spaces for trial and error.

Keys to strengthening your adaptability muscle

Adaptive leadership is not only something to be learned—it can (and should) be trained. Here are a few ways to start practising:

From the balcony to the dance floor (and back again)

Heifetz and Linsky say leading is like dancing on the floor while also stepping up to the balcony to observe the bigger picture. In the bustle of daily tasks, it’s easy to get stuck in urgency and endless action. But adaptive leaders train themselves to zoom in and out: they engage actively but also pause to reflect on the system, identify patterns, tensions, resistance, and hidden alliances.

From the balcony, leaders can see beyond the symptoms and understand root causes. Why is this team resisting change? What’s really at stake in this decision? Who feels threatened by this new strategy? Only by alternating action with reflection can leaders act with purpose instead of out of habit.

Managing the temperature of change

All change creates friction. And that’s not a bad thing—well-managed tension fuels transformation. Adaptive leadership requires knowing how to manage that temperature: turning up the heat when it’s time to act, and lowering it when the system risks collapse.

This involves a fine-tuned awareness of the team’s emotional climate. The aim is to maintain a productive level of stress that keeps people engaged, without pushing them beyond their capacity to learn and adapt.

Giving the work back to the people

In traditional organisations, when a problem arises, everyone turns to the captain. But in complex contexts, that no longer works. There are no superheroes with capes or ready-made solutions. That’s why adaptive leaders do something counterintuitive: they give the work back to those who face it. They don’t abandon the problem, but they don’t hoard it either.

They facilitate the process, ask the right questions, bring the key players together, and create the conditions for new solutions to emerge. It’s a more horizontal, distributed, and participatory form of leadership. Because adaptive challenges aren’t solved in isolation—they require collective learning. Because playing as a team is playing to win.

Listening to dissent

Every organisation has dissenting voices. People who challenge, who make others uncomfortable, who ask tough questions. Sometimes they’re marginalised, silenced, or labelled as negative. Adaptive leadership, however, protects them. Because these voices help us see what others don’t.

This isn’t about romanticising conflict, but recognising that disagreement is a driver of progress. Adaptive leaders listen to dissent because they know evolution comes not from comfort, but from contrast, friction, and creative tension. Here’s where critique becomes a lever for growth.

Adaptive leadership doesn’t promise easy answers. In fact, it demands that we let go of many traits long seen as virtues of good leadership: always having a plan, giving clear instructions, staying in control. Maybe no one has the route mapped out anymore. But adaptive leaders know that if we move with awareness, curiosity, and courage, we can keep moving forward. Even if it’s one step at a time. Even if the compass wavers now and then.

Sources: