Sustained success will always hinge on the leaders ability to navigate evolving social dynamics.
“Successful team have successful leaders, but an over looked quality is social agility.
Cliques will always exist, but do you have the awareness & skills to be able to resonate with everyone on at least a fundamental level?
Sustained success will always hinge on social agilty.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Leadership is very important.
That’s common knowledge, but a far less talked about, yet equally important construct is social agility.
Social agility is essentially the ability to adapt your communication tactics and behavior in different social situations.
It’s being self-aware, flexible, and responsive enough to know when to make social adjustments.
Social dynamics exist and understanding them so that you can adjust how you approach and connect with different people & groups is critically important to the success of the collective.
How does one improve social agility?
The same way you improve anything else in life.
Practice.
But where do you start?
You start with yourself.
You start by practicing self-awareness in understanding that you’re not like everybody else.
Not everybody thinks like you, talks like you, acts like you, has what you have, or wants what you want.
You see this is the problem with many coaches and “leaders”, they lack self-awareness and are stuck so far up their own asses and belief that their own ideologies are superior to everyone else’s that they miss out on the ability to reach who needs reaching.
And it’s sad because social agility doesn’t ask you to change who you are or what you believe in. It simply asks for you to be adaptable and make adjustments.
You know, like that old head coach who always talks about making adjustments and evolving, but never does himself?
Yeah, don’t be like that guy.
The reason social agility is critical in team environments is because a team is only as strong as it’s weakest link.
This is true in sports, business, and the military (and a million other environments where one is part of a team/collective.)
That outcast over there who you’re writing off..
Guess what?
Your inability and/or lack of desire to connect and resonate with her has negative implications on not only you, but on your team.
In an ultra-competitive world where skillsets and competencies are becoming more common because of technology (yes, I understand some people still eat Tide pods) it’s important to double down on the human element.
If you don’t, somebody else is.
And that somebody else will beat you 100 times out of 100.
Social agility matters more than you think (literally).
