5 Ways to Showcase Your Agility on the Job

There are thousands of successful executives, and they demonstrate a nearly limitless assortment of traits, skills, and behaviors. After studying them for decades, Korn Ferry has found that they do share one quality in common. Learning agility, the ability and willingness to learn from experience and subsequently apply those lessons, is the single best predictor of executive success—above intelligence and education. Indeed, highly agile learners are promoted twice as quickly as peers with low learning agility. “Agility is the ability to adapt quickly, with grace,” says James Lewis, senior director and senior scientist at the Korn Ferry Institute.

In a world that bombards us with professional uncertainty every day, that agility is needed more than ever. The World Economic Forum reports that nearly 40% of core job skills will change by 2030, with AI being a major factor in that disruption. But only 15% of people globally are highly agile, according to Korn Ferry research. Fortunately, experts point out that nearly anyone can take steps to improve—and showcase—their agility. We’ve highlighted five steps here.

Become a better collaborator.

Great team players take on assignments and complete them successfully, without complaint. Great collaborators, however, work together with their teams to explore what’s possible. Effective collaboration leads to more innovation, better communication, and smarter decision-making. Great collaborators not only make contributions, but also enable others to feel psychologically safe so that they can themselves become better collaborators. This form of agility also gets noticed. “Team collaboration is one of the biggest drivers for culture setting, culture shaping, and culture building,” says Sarah Jensen Clayton, a Korn Ferry senior client partner and global lead of the firm’s Culture, Change and Communications practice.

Accept challenges.

Accepting a challenging work assignment showcases your agility to your bosses by demonstrating your adaptability to new, unfamiliar, or high-stakes situations. Those professional challenges can be varied. You can accept a so-called stretch assignment, taking on a role in which you might not have prior experience. Or you could volunteer to work on projects outside of your normal scope of work. You can also learn a new skill.

Take a calculated risk.

You have an idea that could save the company a lot of money. The only way to find out whether it will work, however, is to actually test it—an expensive proposition. Experts advise you to present your idea to your boss and ask for some leeway to experiment. Savvy leaders will understand that a short-term setback could fuel a big long-term gain, and they’ll appreciate your push to make the firm better. “Agility is not a gamble, but a calculated risk,” Lewis says.

Learn from failures.

We all make mistakes. But agile employees fail intelligently. For one thing, they don’t take failure personally. “When you don’t take things personally, you can look at situations more objectively, critically, and honestly,” says Guangrong Dai, senior director of research at the Korn Ferry Institute.

Instead of lamenting the failure and blaming others for it, agile employees reflect on their mistakes, review their responses, and apply what they’ve learned to future challenges. After the self-reflection, highlight what you’ve learned to both your colleagues and your boss.

Be curious around AI.

If there’s anything that exemplifies uncertainty these days, it’s AI. The jury is out on how much the technology will disrupt the world, but many business executives believe it will improve productivity, open up new lines of business, or both. Experts say that mindset should give license to experiment with AI to just about anyone at an organization. More than ever before, the latest iteration of the technology allows employees to instruct an AI agent to “go out and do this for me,” says Bryan Ackermann, Korn Ferry’s head of AI strategy and transformation. Will AI have perfect results? Probably not. Could it, with your help, devise new ideas and techniques? Maybe. Document your experiments, successes, and failures, and keep your bosses apprised of your progress. Just play within your organization’s rules around AI use.

Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Learning and Professional Development capabilities.

Read more This Week in Leadership articles