Harvard Business School professor Joseph Fuller has spent the better part of a decade studying and working with some of the world’s most successful people, from Fortune 500 executives to Nobel Prize winners.
Fuller found that what differentiated high achievers from others was not their confidence or business acumen but their ability to adapt.
“They are not stuck in a predetermined career path that they set when they were students or when they started their first job,” he told CNBC Make It. “They are open to unexpected opportunities and embrace change rather than fear it.”
It’s great to set career goals and create a timeline for achieving them. The danger, Fuller says, is leaning so far into your preferences that you feel closed off to sudden detours or non-linear paths.
For example: You might turn down an exciting and well-paying job at a small startup because you had always planned to work for a large, established company.
Or, even if you’re happy in your current position, you might be tempted to look for a new job because you’re not being promoted as quickly as you thought.
In both cases, “you’re ignoring your motivations or interests and instead letting rigid expectations guide your career,” Fuller says. “That stubborn mentality won’t get you very far.”
Fuller adds that if you focus on a specific career path, you risk overlooking other fulfilling options in your career.
A skill that’s in high demand but “hard to find”
Adaptability is a soft skill that is “increasingly in demand” across many industries LinkedIn recent research.
LinkedIn found that the need for flexible, resilient workers in the workplace is a direct result of changes in the post-pandemic workforce: the rise of artificial intelligence, widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work, and how five generations communicate with different styles and workplace terminology now work together.
LinkedIn Vice President Aneesh Raman said employers want to hire employees who can quickly adapt to these ongoing changes. “Adaptability is currently the best way to have agency,” he said in the report. “At its core, managing change is about increasing adaptability.”
However, “it’s a skill that’s hard to find,” Fuller said. “People are afraid of trying new things and failing. But you can’t grow without going beyond your comfort zone.”
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