I know it sounds like a ridiculous understatement but there is no shortage of pressure on leaders right now.
Across all industries, the environment is harder. Budgets are being cut and cut again. Expectations keep rising. AI and how to leverage it is being discussed in leadership teams everywhere. Teams are being asked to deliver more with less. The low-hanging fruit has already been picked. What remains is tougher, messier, more complex work.
And while all of that is happening, ambiguity is increasing. Uncertainty is constant. Change is no longer something leaders prepare for occasionally. It is the context.
If you are reading this, you know this. You are living this.
I’ve been doing adaptive leadership work for many years. But the intersection of adaptive leadership and real leadership is raising an important question for me:
Is it harder to be real when
leadership requires you to adapt?
Or is it actually the very thing that makes adaptation possible?
I’d argue it is the second.
Because real leadership is not rigid leadership. It is not performative certainty. It is not pretending to have the answer, staying polished under pressure, or protecting an image of leadership that no longer serves the moment.
Real leadership is being grounded enough in who you are, what you stand for, and how you want to show up, that you can move through change without losing yourself in it.
That matters now more than ever.
When leaders know who they are at their best, what they care about, and the values they bring to how they lead, they are far more resilient when they need it most. They are less likely to be thrown around by every shift, every setback, every political battle, and every moment of uncertainty. They have roots. And roots matter in a storm.
But being grounded is only part of the work.
Because the challenges many leaders are facing right now are not the kind you solve by simply working harder, moving faster, or applying what worked before.
These are adaptive challenges.
Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky’s work on adaptive leadership reminds us that some problems cannot be solved with technical expertise alone. Technical problems may be difficult, but they are familiar. They can often be fixed with known solutions, specialist knowledge, or established process.
Adaptive challenges are different.
They ask more of us.
They ask us to rethink assumptions.
They ask us to shift behaviour.
They ask us to challenge habits, systems, loyalties, and ways of working that
may once have served us well but no longer do.
And that is where many leaders get stuck.
Because when the pressure is on, our instinct is often to stay on the dance floor. To stay in the action. To keep moving, solving, responding, firefighting, fixing.
It feels productive.
It feels useful.
It feels like leadership.
But often, it is not the leadership the moment requires.
Heifetz and Linsky use the metaphor of getting off the dance floor and onto the balcony. From the balcony, you can see the patterns. The movement. The dynamics. The players. The gaps. The risks. The opportunities. You can see what is really going on, not just what is happening immediately in front of you.
Too many leaders are spending too much time in the action and not enough time in observation.
And when that happens, they keep solving today’s problems with yesterday’s thinking.
That is why adaptive leadership matters so much right now.
Adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilising people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. And isn’t that exactly what leaders are being called to do?
Not just survive the current
environment.
Not just hold things together.
Not just push harder.
But help people make progress on the most significant challenges in front of them.
That requires a different kind of leadership posture.
Less certainty. More curiosity.
Less control. More collective intelligence.
Less protecting silos. More leading for the whole.
Less reacting. More observing, interpreting, and intervening.
That last part is the work I would like you to pay particular attention to. The Observe and Interpret work is often the most underdone work of leaders.
Observe. Interpret. Intervene.
First, observe.
Not just the activity. Not just the noise. Observe the patterns. The tensions.
The competing priorities. The system in action. The workarounds people have
normalised. The conversations not being had. The assumptions driving decisions.
The silos. The risks people avoid naming. The opportunities that are sitting in
plain sight but buried under urgency.
Then interpret.
This is where courage comes in. Because strong leaders do not settle for a
single explanation too quickly. They resist the urge to lock onto the first
answer that feels neat or familiar. They make multiple interpretations. They
test what else might be true. They ask what they may be missing. They widen the
lens.
And then intervene.
Not with grand gestures for the sake of appearance, but with leadership moves
that help the system learn, shift, and respond. Sometimes that means asking a
better question. Sometimes it means slowing things down. Sometimes it means
surfacing tension that others are avoiding. Sometimes it means creating space
for different voices to shape the way forward. And this mean having multiple
ways to intervene rather than the tried and true way you’ve always done it.
This leadership mobilises.
These challenges cannot sit with the select few at the top of organisations. They are too complex for that. Leaders do not have all the answers, and they should not. What is needed now is leadership as a collective process. More people exercising leadership. More people thinking beyond their own team, role, or silo. More people contributing to progress.
That takes culture as much as capability.
It means leaders need to ask themselves some hard questions:
To what extent do I act from the perspective of the whole organisation, rather than protecting my own area?
When someone takes a reasonable risk and it doesn’t work out, is that treated as a learning opportunity or a personal failure?
To what extent do I create the time, space, and resources to bring in diverse perspectives on how work could be done better?
These questions go to the heart of whether your leadership is creating adaptability or blocking it.
Take Nike. For years the rallying cry was Just Do It. Strong, bold, action-oriented. But even great brands and businesses reach moments where action alone is not enough. The challenge becomes not just doing, but rethinking. Rethinking what the environment now demands. Rethinking what customers need. Rethinking what made you successful in the first place. This lead to a relaunch in 2025 of Why Do It.
Many leaders are in that moment now.
Not just do it. But rethink it and why do it.
And maybe that is the deeper invitation of adaptive leadership.
To stop assuming that more effort is
the answer.
To stop relying only on what is familiar.
To stop believing leadership means always knowing.
And instead, to lead with enough self-awareness and steadiness to stay real in the middle of change.
Because in my experience, it is not harder to be real when adaptation is required.
It is more necessary.
Real leaders are better able to adapt because they are not spending all their energy performing. They are not clinging so tightly to identity, ego, expertise, or certainty that they cannot evolve. They know what is core and what can flex. They know how to stay anchored while remaining open. They know how to hold both conviction and curiosity.
That is what this moment asks of leaders.
Not perfection.
Not posturing.
Not more of the same.
It asks for leaders who can think more expansively. Leaders who can step onto the balcony. Leaders who can observe more deeply, interpret more wisely, and intervene more courageously.
Leaders who can think outside the building, not just outside the square.
So here is the reflection:
What do you need to rethink
right now?
And how might you bring a more open, more expansive mindset to that challenge?
Because the future will not be shaped by leaders who keep repeating what used to work.
It will be shaped by leaders who are real enough, grounded enough, and brave enough to adapt.