Adapting To Thrive
- An exercise for reflection
The words “adapt” and “thrive” are both timeless and contemporary. They have always been essential to human existence, shaping our evolution and growth. What do these words bring to your mind?
When we think of leadership, certain dimensions remain sacred and relevant, even as they evolve in new ways.
Vision and Purpose
A leader with a compelling vision continues to attract people, as vision remains a defining trait of great leadership. However, what is the root source of a leader’s vision? Is it ambition, a surge of creativity, an expression of what they value or a challenge that creates and propels an inner drive?
Consider your own vision. It does not have to be articulated as a formal “Vision Statement”.
What is the deeper thought behind it?
What future are you aiming to create?
Beyond vision, purpose defines our existence and the actions we commit to over sustained period of time. It answers why we pursue our goals. It helps us identify what we care about and would like to champion — a cause, working on a larger, systemic challenge that extends beyond narrow confines of personal aspiration.
Reflect on your purpose:
How do you define it?
What aspects of your life are driven by a larger purpose ?
How does your vision and purpose serve your organization, community, or the world at large?
At its core, leadership is about making a bold declaration—a commitment to shaping a future that is meaningfully different from today.
Intuitive Wisdom
Great leaders don’t rely solely on data and information serving short-term goals. They have the ability to access their experience and intuition combined wholesomely with their emotions , a deep understanding of the people’s will, purpose they carry, and what is good for the environment they influence. Their decisions reflect a balance of embedded knowledge, experience, and human connection.
Ask yourself:
What are your most pressing challenges?
What important decisions are in the waiting that you must make?
Beyond facts and figures, what other considerations will guide your choices?
Leadership is not just about making analytical, rational decisions but about how those decisions unfold in reality—how they are perceived, implemented, and lived by those they affect. It is the ability to see beyond the horizon.
Shared Articulation
The ability to engage and communicate effectively is an important leadership skill. Stories, metaphors, and sharing communication space with people as a mutual and multi-lateral process help leaders create meaning and build connections across diverse groups.
Reflect about your communication style:
How do you share your vision, purpose and day to day directions?
How do you create shared context and alignment?
What areas of your work or life could benefit from clearer, more effective communication?
Deep Awareness
As a leader you influence others thoughts, emotions, behaviors and actions by operating from an awareness and regulation of your own way of being!
Self-awareness involves:
Observing your own thoughts and behaviors
Being open to feedback and self-reflection
Understanding how your values and beliefs shape your behaviors
Being vulnerable and acknowledging what you don’t yet know
Looking at these dimensions together, consider:
What will support greater self-awareness for you?
How does deep awareness shape your ability to adapt and thrive?
What shifts in mindset or behavior would you like to consider?
The Path to Thriving Leadership
Adaptive leadership is an anti-thesis to stagnation and rigidity in leadership. It is about evolving with purpose, wisdom, communication, and awareness and through that inspire and empower those around them to thrive too.
What resonates most with you? What initial steps will you take to become the adaptive, thriving leader ?
To be continued…….
