NOT AN MBA CHEAT SHEET
Flexibility
Flexibility is the core leadership skill for all strategic leaders. It helps you thrive in change and ambiguity.
You've probably been working for a while now, and have some fixed ideas about right, wrong, good, and bad. Many of those ideas have been hard-won, and are useful - but not all of them.
If you're not careful, you will stiffen over time and become that out-of-touch leader you swore you'd never be. It happens to the best of people, because as you ascend in your career, you lose many of the touch-points that kept you aware and learning - including truthful feedback and accountability from your peers.
Signs you need to be more flexible
You’re facing change or transition.
You’re feeling stuck or out of your depth.
Your normal response isn’t working anymore.
Not An MBA curriculum sneak peek
Flexibility in brief
Flexible leaders are awesome at responding to change - they relish it. This flexibility provides them and their organisations with a huge sustainable advantage as the world continues to shift.
Being flexible as a leader is about staying attuned to your environment, taking responsibility for your behaviour and learning from your experiences so we can keep adapting.
You stretch by embracing the paradox of boundaries and openness: committing to your values and bottom-lines, then wholeheartedly embracing change and all the risk and failure that brings.
How to be more flexible
Every interaction, disruption or problem is an opportunity to build your awareness, agency and resilience.
Legend has it that Benjamin Franklin made a point of focusing on one virtue each week and practising it daily. Cultivating flexibility can be handled in the same way.
Questions to ask
What’s going on here?
What do I have the power to change?
What can I learn from this?
Things to try
Be more curious. Read a different article daily and start a conversation with three strangers. When you have ideas, notice them. Write them down.
Be more confident. Speak up in meetings or question things that don’t make sense.
Build awareness. Talk to people you trust to get a new perspective on your environment and behaviour.
Ask more questions. Next time you read something, question what might be missing.
Reflect. At the end of your next project, do a post-moterm.
Reframe. Next time something negative happens, think of three different interpretations of the facts.
Ready to be more flexible?
Flexibility is one of five core skills you’ll learn on Not An MBA.
In week one, we explore how assumptions and ideas are formed and embedded in our identities, organisations, and society - and consider what it means to challenge the status quo.
In week two, we consider change responses and explore personal and collective responsibility.
In subsequent weeks, you’ll learn the other four skills - how to make better decisions, elevate from operational problem-solving to systems-thinking, drive performance through focus, and have more influence.