20 | HR Connection
Adaptive Thinking: The New Superpower for 2021
By: Courtney Clark
Y
ou’ve seen the horror movie cliché: the killer is approaching, yet one clueless person runs UP the stairs instead of out the door. Now they’re trapped.
You watch, knowing what’s about to happen. You want to yell at the screen, “Get out!” “Go the other way!” But the clueless victim bumbles along, seemingly without thinking. For some people, confusion and fear leads to foggy thinking. Bad decisions. At the very worst moment, the brain seems to cloud over and keep thoughts from crystallizing together. For other people, that same confusion and fear can lead to razorsharp clarity. Quick thinking and ingenuity. Those are the characters that survive at the end of the horror movie. How can you be one of the survivors, and not the person running toward certain doom? The answer lies in our responses to these novel, changing situations. And specifically, in our EARLY responses.
At the TASPA 2020 Fall Support Staff Conference, I spoke about Adaptive Thinking, and how we can use the skills of Adaptive Thinking to help us succeed in this completely new world that 2020 has brought us. But Adaptive Thinking isn’t just useful for major crises like we’re facing now. It’s a skill that helps us navigate all kinds of change, both in our personal and professional lives, for years to come. STEP 1: DOING AWAY WITH “HOW WE’VE ALWAYS DONE IT”
The first hurdle to developing an Adaptive Thinking mindset is to let go of the first solution that pops into your mind. Many of us have become successful over the years by following the mantra “go with your gut.” There’s a belief that your “gut” intuitively knows the answer. And that may be true… IF it’s the answer to a problem you’ve solved before. Your gut only knows the answer to familiar problems. Your gut only knows what you’ve swallowed before. When you’re dealing with a new problem, or a novel environment (like a global pandemic!) research shows that your first ideas and solutions are the least creative. They’re the closest to status quo. To address an issue that hasn’t been faced before,
