What a Crisis Taught Me About Adaptive Leadership
There are moments in leadership when the playbook simply stops working.
The COVID-19 pandemic was one of those moments.
Across sectors, organizations were forced to respond to rapidly changing conditions, shifting consumer and community needs, operational restrictions, and significant uncertainty. Some organizations paused or closed their operations, while others quickly adapted their services and delivery models to remain relevant and viable (Pantano et al., 2020).
At the time, I remember thinking that perhaps this was what separated leaders from managers.
Looking back, I would describe it differently.
It was a lesson in adaptive leadership.
Getting Off the Dance Floor
When the COVID-19 outbreak was first announced, one of my instincts was to look backward before moving forward. I examined historical crises and previous disruptions, trying to understand what might unfold and what our organization could potentially face.
Northouse (2022) describes an important adaptive leadership practice as gaining perspective by stepping back from the immediate activity and seeing the larger system. Sometimes referred to as moving from the dance floor to the balcony, the idea is simple but difficult: leaders need enough distance from the activity to see patterns that are difficult to recognize when standing in the middle of them.
From that perspective, I began to see needs emerging around us that were different from those we had been addressing only weeks earlier.
The question changed from:
How do we keep doing what we have always done?
to:
Given what is happening around us, how can we continue accomplishing our purpose?
That distinction became increasingly important.
Purpose Is Not the Same as Practice
As uncertainty increased, members of our team understandably became concerned about the loss of familiar ways of working.
Northouse (2022) suggests that adaptive leadership becomes particularly important when people become distressed or disoriented by problems for which familiar solutions are no longer sufficient. Our response was to continually bring conversations back to the organization’s vision, values, and intended outcomes.
The goal was not to preserve every existing activity.
The goal was to preserve purpose.
That meant inviting people to think creatively about how the organization’s mission could still be advanced even when many of the traditional methods for doing so were temporarily unavailable.
This was not easy for everyone.
Some leaders were reluctant to experiment with new approaches because they believed alternatives would not adequately serve the people for whom they felt responsible. Familiar practices had become closely connected to their understanding of organizational purpose. Attempts to introduce new approaches were sometimes interpreted as moving away from the mission rather than finding new ways to accomplish it.
Northouse (2022) describes a related adaptive challenge as work avoidance, where individuals retreat toward familiar behaviours or activities rather than engage with the deeper problem requiring attention.
Vroom and Jago (2007) similarly remind us that leadership effectiveness cannot be separated from context. A leadership approach that works well in one environment may become ineffective when circumstances change dramatically.
Eventually, it became clear that some leadership approaches were no longer compatible with what the situation required. Difficult transitions followed.
That experience reinforced something I continue to believe: during significant disruption, preserving yesterday’s methods can sometimes become the greatest threat to tomorrow’s mission.
The Leader Can Adapt Too Quickly
There was another lesson from that period that was more personal.
I adapted faster than some members of my team.
At first, I thought that was a strength.
Within the first few weeks of the pandemic, I had already shifted much of my attention toward emerging community needs and new organizational responses. I could see possibilities and wanted us to move quickly.
When others continued struggling with how to proceed, I became frustrated.
Then I realized something important.
I had run ahead of them.
While I was already thinking about what came next, some members of the team were still processing what had just disappeared. Familiar routines were gone. Relationships had been disrupted. Work that had provided meaning and identity could no longer happen in the same way.
I was asking people to innovate while some were still grieving.
Adaptive leadership is not simply about seeing change faster than everyone else. It is also about regulating the pace of change so that people can remain engaged in the process.
Northouse (2022) describes this responsibility as regulating distress. Leaders must help people recognize that adaptation is necessary without overwhelming them with so much disruption that they become unable to participate constructively.
In this area, I could have led better.
Creating a Place Where People Could Think Again
Recognizing that limitation required another leadership adjustment.
Ancona et al. (2007) argue that effective leaders do not need to possess every capability themselves. Their concept of the incomplete leader recognizes that leaders must understand their limitations and create space for others whose strengths complement their own.
Rather than continuing to push the team forward myself, I asked another senior leader, who was particularly skilled at facilitating people and conversations, to create space for the team to talk openly about what they were experiencing.
Those conversations mattered.
People could name frustrations, uncertainty, loss, fear, and practical challenges without immediately being asked to solve them.
Northouse (2022) describes this kind of space as a holding environment, an environment in which difficult adaptive work can occur safely enough for people to remain engaged with uncomfortable questions.
Once people had room to process what was happening, something changed.
Creativity began to emerge.
New ideas surfaced.
People started imagining what might be possible rather than simply defending what had been lost.
That may have been one of the most important leadership lessons I took from the entire experience:
Sometimes people do not need another answer from the leader. They need an environment in which they can discover the answer together.
Leadership as Resourcing Adaptation
Path-Goal Theory also provides a useful lens for understanding what leaders can contribute during uncertainty. Northouse (2022) explains that leaders can support followers by providing resources that are missing from their environment and helping remove obstacles that interfere with their ability to accomplish important goals.
That becomes particularly important when the environment is changing faster than the organization.
As new challenges emerge, leaders must continually ask:
What is preventing our people from moving forward?
What information are they missing?
What resources do they need?
What assumptions are no longer serving us?
Where does additional clarity need to be created?
And perhaps most importantly:
What does our purpose require from us now?
Adaptive leadership is therefore not simply about making rapid decisions. It is about creating the conditions in which people can interpret change, confront uncomfortable realities, experiment with new possibilities, and learn their way forward.
The Lesson I Carry Forward
Years later, what stays with me most from that experience is not a particular pandemic response or organizational decision.
It is a leadership tension.
Leaders need enough perspective to see what may be coming.
They need enough courage to challenge practices that no longer fit the environment.
They need enough humility to recognize when they have moved too far ahead of their people.
And they need enough patience to create spaces where others can contribute their own judgment, strengths, and ideas.
Leadership during uncertainty is not about having the perfect map.
Sometimes there is no map.
The work is helping people keep their eyes on the destination while collectively figuring out how the route has changed.
And when the playbook stops working, that may be where leadership really begins.
References:
Ancona, D., Malone, T. W., Orlikowski, W. J., & Senge, P. M. (2007). In praise of the incomplete leader. Harvard Business Review, 85, 110–118.
Northouse, P. G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and practice (9th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Pantano, E., Pizzi, G., Scarpi, D., & Dennis, C. (2020). Competing during a pandemic? Retailers’ ups and downs during the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Business Research, 116, 209–213.
Vroom, V. H., & Jago, A. G. (2007). The role of the situation in leadership. American Psychologist, 62, 17–24.