In Pharma, Tech and global B2B organisations, one thing is clearer than ever: disruption is the new normal. Regulatory change, digital transformation, AI-driven innovation, global instability, new competitors emerging overnight. Leaders can no longer rely on static strategies or past success. What matters now is how quickly you adapt – and how well you stay resilient under pressure.
Adaptability and resilience in leadership are no longer “nice to haves.” They are the core drivers of agility – the ability to pivot fast while maintaining performance, engagement and wellbeing.
This article explores how adaptability and resilience work together, how leaders can cultivate both in themselves and their teams, and how Insights Discovery® helps individuals better understand their natural response to change.
Adaptability vs Resilience – Why Leaders Need Both
Adaptability and resilience are often treated as the same thing – but they’re very different strengths.
Adaptability
The ability to change quickly in response to new information or conditions
- Focused on flexibility and innovation
- Helps leaders pivot
Resilience
The ability to recover, recharge and sustain performance under pressure
- Focused on endurance and emotional stability
- Helps leaders persist
Most leaders (and teams) tend to be strong in one and weaker in the other. But in today’s volatile landscape, leadership agility demands both: Adapt quickly + bounce back consistently = sustained high performance.
Why This Matters More in Pharma, Tech and Global B2B
We work with leaders in industries facing some of the fastest and most complex forms of disruption. These sectors require exceptional agility for three key reasons:
1. Constant change is unavoidable
- Pharma: evolving regulation, clinical timelines, market access challenges
- Tech: rapid innovation cycles, AI disruption, shifting customer expectations
- B2B: complex, global supply chains, economic pressure, cross-border teams
2. Teams are more virtual and diverse than ever
Global collaboration, time zones and hybrid work mean communication and trust are harder to sustain – especially when under pressure.
3. Leaders must deliver results AND protect people
You’re expected to drive performance while safeguarding wellbeing. Burnout, disengagement and “change fatigue” are real threats.
To succeed, leaders need a structured way to build adaptability in the workplace while keeping resilience high.
Adaptability + Resilience = Agility
Agility helps teams respond. Resilience helps them endure.
According to the Agile Business Consortium¹ adaptability (agility) enables rapid response to change, while resilience ensures sustained performance when pressure increases. True resilience isn’t just technical – it’s socio-technical, meaning it depends on how people, culture, and systems work together to navigate uncertainty.
Resilience is not just for crises – it’s needed every day
We often think of resilience as something we need during major disruptions like the pandemic. But small, daily adaptations also matter. Agile ways of working already support this because autonomy allows teams to adjust quickly. Adaptability fuels resilience.
How adaptability and resilience work together:
1. Culture and social identity shape resilience. Every team or organisation has its own “island” identity. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Resilience depends on shared purpose, trust, and the ability to act independently without being blocked by external dependencies.
2. Resilient performance requires clear goals. To improve resilience, teams must define what “resilient performance” looks like. These goals help prioritise the right things (e.g. psychological safety, collaboration, continuous improvement) rather than just outputs. Without clarity, teams adapt in different directions and weaken overall resilience.
3. Not everything needs formal process. In strong cultures, trust and relationships can replace heavy documentation. Agile teams often rely on informal networks and shared understanding. Human judgment + adaptability = faster, more resilient response.
4. Preparedness beats planning. Planning assumes predictability. Preparedness accepts uncertainty and builds flexibility, trust and the ability to adapt in real time. Agile organisations prepare people to think and respond, not just follow plans.
Agility allows organisations to pivot. Resilience ensures they can keep going through sustained change.
When socio-technical resilience is intentionally developed:
- Adaptability becomes easier
- Teams recover faster
- Organisations move from reacting to leading
- They don’t just survive uncertainty -they thrive in it
Insights Discovery® for Resilience
At Zestfor, we use Insights Discovery® to help leaders understand their natural response to change, using the familiar colour energies:
- Fiery Red: Action-oriented, decisive, focused on results
- Sunshine Yellow: Optimistic, collaborative, thrives on change
- Earth Green: Supportive, values harmony, needs stability
- Cool Blue: Analytical, reflective, seeks clarity and structure
Each colour energy shows up differently during disruption:
Fiery Red
Strength in Change: Drives decisions Risk Under Pressure: Becomes forceful or impatient
Sunshine Yellow
Strength in Change: Inspires creativity Risk Under Pressure: Becomes chaotic or unfocused
Earth Green
Strength in Change: Maintains empathy Risk Under Pressure: Becomes resistant to change
Cool Blue
Strength in Change: Adds logic and order Risk Under Pressure: Overthinks or slows progress
The power of the model? It allows leaders and teams to recognise their patterns, build awareness, and choose more balanced resilience strategies. Instead of reacting unconsciously, individuals can develop agility on purpose.
The 3 Stages of Resilience
Insights Discovery® identifies the three stages needed to build resilience:
1. Coping – Managing the pressure of the present
When stress and burnout take over, it’s impossible to focus on growth. The first step in resilience is simply coping – stabilising ourselves in the moment. This requires understanding our personal stress triggers and using self-awareness to manage them effectively.
2. Learning – Turning experience into growth
Once we regain stability, we can shift into a learning mindset. Growth happens outside our comfort zone, and recent challenges have stretched us more than ever. Now is the time to extract lessons from our experience, apply them to improve performance, and build a culture where learning is central.
3. Influencing – Shaping the future of work
After coping and learning, resilient leaders move into influence. Rather than just reacting to change, we can now drive it. This means redesigning culture, supporting psychological safety, and leading proactive transformation that enables people to thrive.
Our Insights Discovery® programmes are designed specifically for science and technology professionals and include virtual and in-person training options to suit your team’s needs.
How Leaders Can Build Adaptability and Resilience in Leadership
Here are practical strategies that work in Pharma, Tech and global B2B teams.
1. Lead with clarity – then empower flexibility
In times of change, people don’t need more control—they need more clarity.
- Define outcomes, not rigid processes.
- Set the direction, and let teams find the route.
- Focus on principles over rules.
This gives people ownership and agility, while still maintaining alignment.
2. Build psychological safety – your agility multiplier
Teams cannot adapt if they fear making mistakes. Leaders should:
- Encourage experimentation
- Normalise “learning fast” rather than “failing”
- Ask for feedback – and act on it
- Admit when they don’t have all the answers
When people feel safe to speak up, innovation accelerates.
Research by Google² shows that teams with high psychological safety are 27% more likely to report higher performance, 50% more likely to retain top talent, and 76% more likely to engage in strong collaboration practices.
3. Balance speed with wellbeing
According to Heather Craig, BPsySc in Positive Psychology³, resilient people don’t just “push through.” They:
- Build strong relationships and social support – connection buffers stress and increases collaboration during high-speed change.
- Use self-awareness to manage stress early – they recognise triggers and adjust before burnout hits.
- Introduce play and positive emotions – this keeps morale high and fuels creativity even under pressure.
- Practice self-care and recovery – they detach, rest and reset so they can perform at high pace again.
- Stay authentic and purpose-driven – meaning protects motivation when work is intense.
- Show grit – they persist towards long-term goals but adapt their approach when obstacles arise.
Resilience isn’t the absence of stress – it’s the ability to renew energy while moving forward.
Resilient employees hold three core attitudes (the “3 Cs”):
- Commitment: stay engaged rather than withdraw.
- Control: focus on what they can influence.
- Challenge: view change as growth, not threat.
These mindsets prevent panic and help maintain clarity when work is fast and demanding because adaptability without wellbeing is unsustainable.
4. Strengthen cross-functional relationships
In Pharma and Tech especially, innovation happens across functions. Resilient, adaptable organisations collaborate beyond silos. This happens via:
- Cross-team projects
- Knowledge sharing sessions
- Shadowing or rotation
- Peer coaching
You can find out more about building cross functional teams in this article.
5. Build adaptability in the workplace with learning habits
The most adaptable teams are learning teams. Embed habits such as:
- Regular retrospectives (“What did we learn?”)
- Curiosity over certainty
- Continuous skills development
- Open conversations about change and mindset
Make learning part of the culture, not just training.
Personal Adaptability: What Agile Leaders Do Differently
Most leaders operate in a reactive mindset, responding to events and pressures from the outside. But agile leadership requires shifting into a creative mindset, where we lead from our values, purpose and possibility. This “inner agility” allows leaders to shape their reality instead of being shaped by it.
McKinsey⁴ cities three essential reactive-to-creative shifts that build personal agility and enable innovation, collaboration and value creation:
- From certainty to discovery – Stop playing it safe and controlling the past; start experimenting, embracing risk and seeking new ideas.
- From authority to partnership – Move from top-down control to networks of empowered teams built on trust and accountability.
- From scarcity to abundance – Replace competition and limitation with opportunity, co-creation and customer-centric thinking.
When leaders make these shifts, they develop personal agility -the ability to adapt, respond intentionally and lead change from the inside out.
Team Resilience: What High-Performing Teams Have in Common
Resilient teams aren’t just tough – they’re prepared. They:
- Have shared purpose
- Communicate with transparency
- Support each other proactively
- Review and learn after setbacks
- Celebrate wins (big and small)
Leadership isn’t about removing stress – it’s about building collective strength to handle it.
From Surviving to Thriving: Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity
Change doesn’t have to be draining. With the right leadership, it can become exciting, unifying and full of potential.
Agile leaders make the following mindset shift: from “How do we protect what we have?” to “How do we evolve into what we could be?”
They don’t wait for disruption to force change; they build adaptability and resilience in leadership proactively.
Frequently Asked Questions About Adaptability and Resilience
Adaptability and Resilience Are the New Leadership Advantage
In a world where disruption is constant, strategy alone is no longer enough. The leaders who will thrive in Pharma, Tech and global B2B organisations are those who can adapt quickly, recover fully and lead their teams with confidence through uncertainty.
Adaptability enables speed. Resilience sustains performance. Together, they create true agility – the ability to pivot with purpose while protecting people, performance and wellbeing.
This isn’t just about managing change; it’s about shaping it.
By developing personal agility, building psychologically safe cultures and using tools like Insights Discovery® to understand natural responses to change, leaders can shift from reactive firefighting to proactive transformation.
The future will continue to bring volatility -but it will also bring opportunity.
The question is: Will your teams be exhausted and overwhelmed… or energised and ready?
Now is the time to build adaptability and resilience into the DNA of your leadership, your teams and your organisation – so you don’t just survive market change… you lead it.