Module 6 · Adaptability & different people · Lesson 8 of 8

Adapting without losing yourself

Flexing your style is respect; abandoning your values is something else.

6 min read · Level: Practising · Free — no account needed to read

The idea

Adapting your style — more formal here, more relaxed there, slower with one person, more direct with another — is a form of respect. It is not being fake. You speak differently to a child and to a judge, and you are the same person.

The line is values. Changing your words, pace or formality is adaptation. Changing what you stand for to be liked — laughing at cruelty, agreeing with something you think is wrong — is something else. The people who adapt best tend to have the clearest sense of what they won’t change.

Why it matters

Adaptability without values makes you a chameleon no one fully trusts; values without adaptability make you hard to talk to.

See it happen

At a new job, Sadman’s team jokes cruelly about a client. He wants to fit in.

The first reaction

He laughs along; it seems like the price of being accepted.

With the idea

He stays friendly and relaxed with the team in every other way, but doesn’t join the jokes and changes the subject. Nobody minds, and one colleague thanks him later.

What changed

He adapted his style but not his values.

Easy to get wrong

• Thinking any adjustment in style is being fake.
• Giving up values bit by bit to be accepted.

Try it now: What flexes, what stays

1. Write three things about how you communicate that you are happy to adjust.
2. Write three things you won’t change, whoever you are with.

Questions to think about

• Where have you adapted in a way you later regretted?
• Where could you adapt more without losing anything important?

Your challenge this week

Notice one moment this week where you adapt your style — and one where you hold a value.