252 Deploy Yourself
Lean into Your Incompetence
Leading adaptive change requires you to step beyond your default
behaviors into an unknown situation and to learn something new. That
means experiencing a period of incompetence. Indeed, if you do not feel
that you are operating at the very edge of your talents or even just
beyond that edge, then you are probably not attacking an adaptive chal-
lenge. Instead, you may be grappling with an issue that is more technical
than adaptive, or treating an adaptive challenge as a technical problem.
How do you lean into your own incompetence, so you can put your-
self into a state of discovery? Here are two ideas: find structured and
challenging learning opportunities, and reframe your truths as assump-
tions that ...