I spent over a decade competing at the top of BMX Racing, ranked in the top five in the world, representing the United States more than fifty times across more than twenty-five countries. I did not start out adaptable. I became adaptable, through repetition, through failure, and eventually through a crash that ended my career in a single second. Adaptability is not a trait you are born with. It is a skill you train, the same way you train strength or endurance.
Why We Keep Getting This Wrong
When someone handles change well, we call them a natural. When someone struggles with change, we call them rigid. Both labels miss the point. What we are actually watching is the output of practice, not the presence or absence of some innate quality. Athletes are not adaptable because they were born calm under pressure. They are adaptable because they have faced enough variables and enough failure that their nervous system has learned what to do when the plan falls apart. Leaders and teams can build the exact same capacity.
Adaptability Is Built the Same Way Physical Skill Is Built
Think about how you build any physical skill. You do not become strong by staying comfortable. You get stronger by applying stress, recovering, and applying it again, slightly heavier each time. Adaptability works the same way. Every time you face a disruption, whether it is a missed deadline, a reorganization, or a total loss of direction, and you work through it instead of freezing, you are laying down the same kind of pattern a muscle lays down under repeated load. The people who seem naturally adaptable are usually the people who have simply logged more reps.
What Training Adaptability Actually Looks Like
Training adaptability is not about pretending change does not hurt or acting like nothing bothers you. It is about building a process you trust when the plan disappears. In 2021, I crashed at forty miles an hour during the Tokyo Olympics, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and was unconscious for five days. That crash ended my BMX racing career permanently. I did not adapt to that moment because I am naturally tough. I adapted because I had already trained the skill of asking one question over and over throughout my career: now what? The crash did not teach me that skill. It tested it. What it left me with was gratitude, resilience, and perspective, three things I now build into every talk I give on leading through forced change.
The Three Habits That Build Adaptability
Adaptability grows from a few repeatable habits, not a personality upgrade.
Separate the event from the story you tell about it. The event is neutral. The story is what determines whether you freeze or move. Training yourself to notice the difference is the first rep.
Practice small disruptions on purpose. Change your routine. Take on a task outside your comfort zone. Put yourself in situations with some uncertainty built in. Every small, voluntary disruption builds tolerance for the involuntary ones.
Build a decision habit, not a comfort habit. When plans fall apart, people without training default to comfort, which usually means avoidance. People with training default to a decision, even a small one. Making a decision under pressure is a skill, and like any skill, it strengthens with use.
Why This Matters for Leaders and Teams
Organizations spend enormous energy trying to hire for adaptability, as if it were a trait they could screen for in an interview. It would be far more useful to train it, the same way they train technical skills or safety protocols. Teams that practice working through small, controlled disruptions build the exact muscle memory they need when a real disruption hits, whether that is a market shift, a leadership change, or a crisis nobody saw coming. The organizations that treat adaptability as trainable are the ones that recover fastest when the plan falls apart.
Adaptability Is Available to Everyone
The most important part of this idea is the hope inside it. If adaptability were a fixed trait, most people would be stuck with whatever level they started with. But because it is trainable, anyone in your organization, at any level, can build more of it. If you are looking for a resilience speaker, that is the message at the center of my keynote, Now What?, and it is the reason I talk about performing under pressure and leading through sudden, forced change as skills, not personalities.
If you want your team or your event to walk away understanding how to build this skill instead of just talking about it, visit connorfields.com to learn more about Now What? and to start the conversation about your next keynote.
– Connor Fields
