Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research

Introduction to the special issue on developing flexible and adaptable leaders for an age of uncertainty.
It is no secret that today's hyper-competitive, fast-paced, and rapidly changing global economy puts a premium on adaptable organizations and flexible leaders. Even advertising campaigns celebrate the “agile enterprise” and channel the spirit of “constant self-reinvention.” However, what can consulting psychologists do to help managers become more flexible and adaptable leaders? In this introduction to the special issue I provide an overview of the 5 focal articles and the capstone summary article. The articles in this issue are written by respected scholars and experienced practitioners who provide evidence-based guidance to practical questions such as: Why is flexibility so important, especially in tough economic times plagued by crisis and uncertainty?; how can practitioners predict and assess a manager's degree of flexibility?; and, how can leadership training and development interventions promote greater flexibility and adaptability? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Why flexible and adaptive leadership is essential.
In this article we explain different conceptions of flexible and adaptive leadership and the reasons why such leadership is essential in today's organizations. Then we briefly describe several streams of research that provide useful knowledge about flexible and adaptive leadership. It was not feasible to provide a comprehensive and detailed review for each research stream, but we describe the primary research methods, summarize major findings, and provide some practical guidelines for leaders on how to become more flexible and adaptive. Finally, we point out limitations of the available research and make recommendations for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Acceptance of uncertainty as an indicator of effective leadership.
Research and experience continue to reveal evolving modes of leadership behavior that challenge the practice of consulting psychology. Leadership development that has taken us beyond the notion of born leaders and stable environments has suggested that flexibility is vital. This may be partly because of the constant evolution of the organization and its leadership challenges, from command-and-control to paradigms that are participatory and recognize the importance of interpersonal skills, to an emerging paradigm concerned with organizational learning. Consulting psychologists have identified a wide variety of leadership modes or ideals to fit these newer paradigms. Common to many of these is the need to be comfortable navigating ambiguous situations. One of the metrics that is indicative of this skill is the capacity to effectively process the uncertainty that often accompanies ambiguity. We present preliminary data for a potential tool for assessing this skill. We suggest that measuring an individual's “aptitude for ambiguity” should be considered when identifying high performers for leadership roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Assessing flexible leadership as a mastery of opposites.
Because flexible leadership is vital to organizational adaptability and performance, it is important to measure flexibility to identify leadership potential and to guide the development of managers. The most common method for measuring the flexibility of managers involves coworker ratings to survey items that ask about general tendencies for a manager to change behavior in response to changing situational conditions. Unfortunately, there are significant limitations to this approach. This article discusses an alternative method grounded in complexity theories of organizations and leader behavior. In this view, flexible leadership is conceptualized as the mastery of opposing but complementary behaviors in terms of how one leads as well as in terms of what organizational issues a leader focuses on. The mechanics of assessing this conception of flexible leadership are described in detail along with a demonstration of its ability to predict leadership effectiveness. Pros and cons associated with applying the mastery of opposites approach are discussed along with suggestions for how consultants and talent managers can use it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Learning agility: A construct whose time has come.
A significant consequence of today's dynamic, complex, and uncertain business environments is that leadership skills are subject to continual obsolescence and displacement. To be effective, leaders must demonstrate the flexibility and agility to adapt their behaviors as situations change. The willingness and capability to learn from experience and subsequently to apply that learning to perform successfully under new or first-time conditions becomes one of the most critical success factors for managers and executives. This article introduces and defines the concept of learning agility, reviews and discusses its theoretical and empirical background, and presents selected research findings related to the assessment of learning agility. Several areas for future research are also identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Strategic information provision and experiential variety as tools for developing adaptive leadership skills.
The development of adaptability skills is critical for organizational success and survival, yet traditional training interventions are not sufficient to promote adaptive expertise. In this article, we summarize prior research on two training techniques that develop such expertise: experiential variety and strategic information provision in the form of instructions, performance feedback, and cognitive/behavioral guidance. Prior integrative reviews have described how these strategies can promote adaptability by fostering skills in cognitive frame-switching and flexibility. We extend these arguments in the present article by reviewing prior research that supports the use of experiential variety and strategic information provision as elements of an adaptability training strategy. We examine the use of these elements not only in formal training (which was the prime focus of prior reviews), but also in developmental work experiences and in self-development. Additionally, we include a more specific focus on developing cross-cultural adaptability skills through these training techniques. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Flexible leadership: An integrative perspective.
The notion that leaders are more effective if they can flex their leadership style to deal with shifting priorities, problems, and situations is receiving an increasing amount of attention from consulting psychologists and applied researchers alike. I discuss how flexible leadership is defined with a variety of concepts in the literature and emphasized in the articles in the special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research on Developing Flexible and Adaptive Leaders for an Age of Uncertainty (Kaiser, 2010, this issue). By integrating the views of the previous authors, I present flexible leadership as a metacompetency that subsumes multiple, more narrowly defined, components (e.g., a wide behavioral repertoire, a learning orientation to develop it, an ability to remain open to learning in novel situations). A model for applying this conception of flexible leadership is discussed followed by suggestions for further research to help consulting psychologists use these ideas in their practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research - Vol 62, Iss 2