What is Behavioural Adaptability?

Adaptability is your willingness and ability to adjust your approach or strategy based on the particular needs of the situation or relationship at a particular time. It’s something  applied more to yourself (to your patterns, attitudes and habits) than to others. No one style is naturally more adaptable than another. For any situation, the strategic adjustments that each style needs to make will vary. The decision to employ specific adaptability techniques is made on a case-by-case basis: you can choose to be adaptable with one person, and not so with others. You can choose to be quite adaptable with one person today and less adaptable with that same individual tomorrow.

Adaptability concerns the way you manage your own behaviours.  You practice adaptability each time you slow down for a C or S Style; or when you move a bit faster for the D or I Styles. It occurs when the D or C Styles take the time to build the relationship with an S or I Style; or when the I or S styles focus on facts or get right to the point with D or C styles. It means adjusting your own behaviour to make other people feel more at ease with you and the situation. 

Adaptability does not mean “imitation” of the other person’s style. It does mean adjusting your openness, directness, pace, and priority in the direction of the other person’s preference; while maintaining your own identity.

Adaptability is important to all successful relationships. People often adopt a different style in their professional lives than they do in their social and personal lives. We tend to be more adaptable at work with people we know less; and we tend to be less adaptable at home and with people we know better.

Adaptability at its extreme could make you appear wishy-washy and two-faced. A person who maintains high adaptability in all situations may not be able to avoid stress and inefficiency. There is also the danger of developing tension from the stress of behaving in a “foreign” style. Usually, this is temporary and may be worth it if you gain rapport with others. At the other end of the continuum, no adaptability would cause others to view someone as rigid and uncompromising because they insist on behaving according to their own natural pace and priority.

Effectively adaptable people meet other people’s needs and their own. Through practice, they are able to achieve a balance: strategically managing their adaptability by recognizing when a modest compromise is appropriate, or, when the nature of the situation calls for them to totally adapt to the other person’s behavioural style, they do so.

Adaptable people know how to negotiate relationships in a way that allows everyone to win. They are tactful, reasonable, understanding, and non-judgmental.

Your adaptability level influences how others judge their relationship with you. Raise your adaptability level and trust and credibility go up; lower your adaptability level and trust and credibility go down. Adaptability enables you to interact more productively with difficult people and helps you to avoid or manage tense situations. With adaptability you can treat the other people the way they want to be treated.

Adaptability is an important key to success in any endeavour. Adaptable people realize there is a difference between their self (who they are) and their behaviour (how they choose to act). They consciously decide whether and how to respond to a person, a situation, or an event.

You can commit to learn to be more adaptable. When you understand yourself more deeply using the Team 8 DISC 360 behavioural assessment, you are steps ahead.  When you understand each of the four styles, how to recognize them in others, and how to adapt to them in key ways, you can have command of almost any interpersonal situation.  That is what the Team 8 DISC profile is all about and why you need it.

Or, you might be interested to read more about How to Understand and Adapt to the Different DISC Behavioural Styles.

At Team 8, we’re here to provide you with excellence in service.  If you’d like to discuss DISC or the Team 8 DISC behavioural profiles or if you have any questions, please Contact Us – we are here to help you!