Many organizations invest heavily in leadership development, communication strategies, culture-building, and employee support. If you ask leaders whether they have an Adaptability issue, most will say “no.” Yet, despite this, many leaders still report frustrations indicative of low Adaptability Intelligence: projects slowing down, teams resisting change, and innovation feeling harder than it should.
In fact, 59% of CEOs say agility and adaptability are THE MOST IMPORTANT currency for business success. And 92% say they must cultivate levels of adaptability beyond anything they previously imagined.
“There is no question that CEOs see agility and adaptability as their key resources for business success in the current environment.”
The CEO Response (EgonZehnder)
Clearly, the importance of Adaptability is recognized and the emphasis is there, so where is the disconnect?
It’s not that leaders aren’t aware, or that their people don’t care or aren’t capable. It’s that Adaptability gets stifled in ways leaders don’t always see—through outdated processes, mismatched motivators, unclear expectations, and environments that quietly undermine the very behaviors companies want to encourage. The signs don’t look like “problems” at first, but they accumulate until leaders feel like they’re pushing the same boulder up the hill over and over.
Knowing you need to cultivate Adaptability and actually doing it are two different things —and how do you know if you’re making progress?
To understand whether your organization is actively supporting Adaptability—or unintentionally suppressing it—start by asking these five key questions:
1. Are we constantly putting out fires, always stuck reacting instead of leading and executing proactively?
If your days feel more reactive than strategic, that’s not “just the way things are.” It’s a sign that your team’s Event Response is overloaded. When teams live in firefighting mode, their Adaptability is compromised. People aren’t just reacting to change—they’re bracing for impact. They’re adopting, not adapting. The symptoms:
- Projects stall because no one has the bandwidth to think ahead.
- Leaders default to short-term fixes instead of visionary decisions.
- Employees quietly disengage, assuming tomorrow will look exactly like today.
This kind of chronic reactivity drains energy because staying in an adapted behavioral style all day (high urgency, high pressure, constant pivoting) is exhausting. Over time, that drain becomes burnout.
Assessment insight:
An AQai Adaptability Assessment can help identify exactly where Event Response is breaking down—whether it’s low Resilience, low capacity to Unlearn, or Environment stressors. A DISC assessment can add valuable visibility into whether people are operating too far outside their natural style for too long.
2. Do our people fear failure and default to conservative, “safe” strategies?
When innovation stalls and pushing the envelope feels too risky, it’s rarely because people lack ideas. It’s because they don’t feel safe experimenting. High performers begin asking themselves:
- “Will I be punished for trying something new?”
- “What happens if this doesn’t work?”
- “Is moving fast rewarded, or will I get burned for it?”
These fears tell you a lot about two Es: Emotional Regulation and Engagement Activation.
Teams stuck in “play to protect” mode are often in low-EQ environments where emotional range, psychological safety, and impulse control aren’t well supported. They become overly cautious because the consequences of failure feel high, and what constitutes success feels ambiguous: is it actually improving? Or simply not breaking things?
Further, when people can’t connect their work to what motivates them (purpose, impact, achievement, or autonomy), Engagement breaks down. Why take a risk when there’s no perceived upside?
Assessment insight:
Motivators Map™ data can show which drivers you’re unintentionally ignoring or suppressing, and EQ data can illustrate where emotional dynamics undermine experimentation. The combination can reveal exactly how to help your team feel safe to push boundaries and rekindle innovation and creativity.
3. Do we struggle to get people on board with new ideas or initiatives?
Change resistance is rarely about the change itself. It’s usually a combination of Event Response and Environment. When employees hesitate, drag their feet, or quietly wait for a new initiative to blow over, it often signals:
- They don’t understand the “why.”
- They lack the resources to adapt.
- Their bandwidth and cognitive load are already maxed out.
- They don’t trust the process because communication is thin or inconsistent.
In a low-support environment, even highly adaptable people will disengage. They may appear to be on board, but quietly stall. They might be nodding along but not fully committed.
Assessment insight:
The AQai Environment dimension can pinpoint which organizational factors—company support, work stress, team safety, or unclear processes—might be sabotaging Adaptability. With this knowledge, leaders can then make adjustments to better support their team and get them on board and enthusiastic.
4. Does every initiative seem to hit a roadblock?
Does it seem like initiatives rarely work out the way you expect? It can be incredibly frustrating when every change starts with a feeling of dread, your team doing a mental (or physical!) “eye roll,” or having thoughts like, “Here we go again. What’ll it be this time?”
When execution consistently derails, there’s usually a misalignment in Energy, Engagement, and/or Event Response, and soon people will start to put up their armor before they even give the change a chance.
Maybe your analytical, high-Compliance employees are being asked to operate in a high-urgency, ambiguous environment, draining their energy and slowly whittling away at their willingness to adapt.
Perhaps your high-Innovation employees aren’t given enough space or psychological safety to explore, so their Engagement deactivates and they start “going through the motions.”
Or maybe your teams have the enthusiasm but not the Adaptability muscle they need to navigate uncertainty, so projects jump the track at the first unexpected turn. Before long, that repeated derailment saps their enthusiasm.
More often than not, roadblocks and misfires aren’t a capability problem. They’re an Adaptability problem. And finding the root cause is critical to getting over the hump.
Assessment insight:
Using DISC + Motivators + AQai can reveal why teams break down in execution—whether it’s misaligned behavior, motivators, or conditions…or perhaps all three.
5. Are people leaving—or worse, checked out but still here?
Turnover gets attention. When people start leaving, leaders get worried. But disengagement and job hugging quietly eat your organization from the inside, not only costing you money but also lost opportunities.
Even if they’re not leaving, your team might be mentally “done.” They stay because leaving feels risky. They disengage because trying harder feels pointless. And that’s arguably worse than leaving because it hinders productivity, saps morale and can bring everyone else down with them.
This problem lies in the combination of Energy Management + Engagement Activation + Environment.
- Energy is depleted because people are working in a chronically adapted style. They’re putting on a happy face when they’re anything but.
- Engagement deactivates because motivators don’t align with the workload or the culture.
- The Environment suppresses Adaptability because stress, communication, or support are poorly managed.
Assessment insight:
The 4Es Assessments (DISC, MotivatorsMap, AQai and EQ) provide a nonjudgmental vocabulary for addressing disengagement. Instead of “You seem checked out,” leaders can say, “Your assessment shows you’re working too long in an adapted style, and your engagement is low. Can we explore what might be causing that? And what can we do to correct it?”
That opens the door to recovering a job hugger before you lose them entirely.
Where to go from here
If you answered “yes” to even one of these, it could be a sign your Adaptability challenges aren’t random—they’re systemic.
Each one points to observable behaviors, but underneath is something deeper: a misalignment in one or more of the 4Es (Energy Management, Engagement Activation, Event Response, Emotional Regulation).
And that misalignment is measurable.
The 4Es Framework—DISC for Energy, Motivators for Engagement, AQ for Event Response, and EQ for Emotional Regulation—gives leaders empirical evidence to diagnose the real issue without judgment, blame, or assumptions.
It’s not about finding fault. It’s about finding clarity.
When leaders use data to understand what’s happening beneath the surface, they can intervene earlier, support people more effectively, and build an environment where Adaptability isn’t something employees struggle with—it’s something the organization actively enables and cultivates.
To get started with an honest, data-driven assessment of whether your organization is supporting Adaptability or inadvertently hindering it, give us a call today!