This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Adaptability is the competency everyone now lists and almost nobody defines. It usually means moving fast, which is how organisations end up chasing every trend they read about.

Adaptive leadership is closer to the opposite. It is knowing which changes deserve a response and which are noise.

Why leaders struggle with this specifically

The plan is invalidated before it finishes, so planning starts to feel pointless and stops happening. Fifteen trends arrive each quarter and there is no filter, so the response is either all of them or none. A change is announced with a good rationale and nothing in anyone's behaviour changes, because the rationale was aimed at the rational part of a person and behaviour lives elsewhere.

Meanwhile the team is tired of change specifically, having been through several rounds of it, and the leader is tired too and does not have a language for saying so.

Seeing clearly and thinking clearly

Thirty-eight lessons in six parts. Six on reading the environment: telling a durable shift from a cycle from hype, redesigning work around automation and agents, skills as the unit of planning, what has changed in the expectations of people entering work, the state of engagement, and the operating model question.

Then six on critical thinking, which is the underrated half of adaptability. Argument structure, weak arguments that sound strong, confirmation bias, anchoring and framing, separating fact from opinion, evaluating sources, and decision models — OODA, Cynefin, cost-benefit — that tell you which kind of problem you are actually facing.

Moving people, and holding yourself

Then six on change management: the eight mistakes, Kotter's steps, manufacturing genuine urgency, and the rider, elephant and path model, which explains why explaining never works on its own. Plus quick wins and anchoring a change so it survives the next reorganisation.

Then six on leading under real constraint — cut budgets, redundancy decisions, communicating news nobody wants, and restoring a sense of safety, which takes considerably longer than the disruption did.

Then eight on emotional intelligence, because a leader who cannot regulate themselves transmits the instability rather than absorbing it. And six on leadership itself: styles and when to switch, motivating through a task, team development stages, coaching, and holding standards without micromanaging.

Who is teaching this

Mike, the number one HR instructor on Udemy. More than 1.6 million course enrolments, over 150,000 professionals trained, PHRi and SHRM-CP certified, HRCI representative in more than 10 countries. I built the people function of the unicorn Preply and worked at Wargaming, Alfa-Bank and iDeals, through several periods where the plan stopped being useful halfway through the quarter.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all course materials

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Practical assignments and real business cases

• A section with additional courses, tools and resources

A filter to start with

List the changes your organisation is currently responding to. For each, name the owner, the metric and the first ninety-day step. The ones with a blank in any column are not initiatives, they are anxieties, and they are consuming the capacity the real ones need. Enrol now and start the first lesson today.