The current public health and financial crisis is different from earlier emergencies in its impact, severity, and most importantly, in the elusiveness of its timeframe. As one of my executive coaching clients put it, “This is not a sprint but a marathon, and the finish line is being continuously moved.” This analogy resonates with my own observations of how some of my client companies and the leaders in them are responding to this complex change.

Despite all the differences amongst our personal unique circumstances, underneath, we’re all triggered in the same basic ways. Our core needs for safety, continuity, and meaning are being challenged. We wake up every morning to find ourselves living through a longer-than-expected period of feeling unsafe inside and outside of our homes. We are grappling with uncertainty about the course the virus will take and whether or not it will eventually loosen its hold. We are struggling to make sense of what’s happening to and around us as well as inside of us.

The hardest challenges leaders face today are adaptive in nature. Adaptive challenges are different from technical challenges, which can be solved using existing solutions or new solutions based on existing assumptions—training team members to use remote collaboration tools or increasing the frequency of leader communications to keep a dispersed workforce informed and engaged are examples of simple solutions to technical challenges that use existing strategies and tools. Adaptive challenges are more complex and dynamic because they take place in a reality which is in the process of being formed. They originate in that narrow space where personal leadership approaches intersect with a changing environment to reveal risk or opportunity. As such, they are best addressed with responses, cognitive schemas, and behavior changes that enable leaders to transcend the limitations of the status quo and conditioning associated with the former reality, which is on its way out.

The first step leaders can take towards managing the current situation as an adaptive challenge is to stop resisting change, e.g. trying to wait it out or insisting that someday things will go back to ‘normal.’ The acknowledgment of the ‘need to change’ often marks the beginning of the change cycle and sets forth a search for newer, adaptive forms of leading and running a business. These new ideas can be pressure-tested through experimentation and refined to become a viable solution in the new normal. I often observe specific insights and ideas for new, more adaptive behaviors being produced as a result of a mindful period of self-introspection and later articulation, experimentation, and implementation as part of the leader’s coaching process.

While the tasks of embarking on a personal transformation and generation of new adaptive responses during this time may seem daunting to some, those who find the courage to tackle their adaptive challenges now may reap the benefits of new leadership insights, innovative business growth solutions, and early rollout of new services for their employees and customers at the time when they are most needed.

As the saying goes, there is always both a danger and opportunity in crisis, and this crisis is here to stay for a while. How can we lead ourselves and others more adaptively to help maximize opportunities and mitigate risk? That is the question.