Adapter or innovator?
Forty years of research by Kirton’s Adaption-innovation Inventory (KAI) shows personality type influences one's approach to problem solving. People are either more adaptive and solve problems by fine-tuning the current solution rather than presenting new ideas, or they are more innovative and offer numerous ideas on how to do things differently.
Adapters focus on detail, preferring to work in well-established structures, while innovators are busy with more diffuse thinking and different perspectives. At the same time, they take less account of group compliance or rules. The KAI scale can measure how adaptive or innovative you are.
Since problem-solving style is personality-related, it's also about how you act as a leader. Neither style is better for leadership; teams usually have both adaptive and innovative members, and the average team score can be used to determine how the team prefers problem solving.
When it comes to adapting and leading in a new hybrid workplace, many leader-innovators believe the new normal is so different that minor adjustments to old ways of doing things really don't help and, on the contrary, may even create tension in the team and disrupt cohesion. More adaptive team members could respond by not always taking leaders seriously or ignoring their ideas as impracticable.
On the other hand, a more adaptive leader respects already established rules and standard operating procedures. Their pitfalls are sometimes too much clinging to outdated standards that can hamper any progress. For more innovative team members, such adaptive leaders might seem boring, narrow-minded and overly cautious. Innovators may therefore try to find ways to circumvent them and identify which rules have a greater impact if they are broken.
Building respect
Are you more of an innovator or an adapter? Agree with others on cooperation procedures. The key is to understand your own style and the styles of others, and respect the differences.
A leader who can adapt accordingly and encourage a team to share when more adaptive or innovative behaviour is needed to solve problems will be successful in improving team cohesion. And this is absolutely crucial in an age of hybrid workplaces.
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