Agile Leadership in the age of disruption - how to flex not fracture
Barbra Carlisle • October 2, 2025
Managing Change requires resilience and agility - how to do this and preserve yourself in the meantime
The pace of change in organisations is at an all time high. Regardless of sector and role everyone is feeling the need to adapt, adopt and reconsider their understanding on how to thrive in today, and tomorrow's workplaces.
Tree Hall CEO of Charity IT Leaders and Founder of Neuronique summed up her feelings on this very clearly when we were talking for the latest episode of The Unlikely Executive Podcast.
“Life throws odd stuff at you all the time. You either flex with it or it breaks you.”
In today’s climate, disruption isn’t a one-off it is constant. If you have a family or friends it is happening there. Change is everywhere. We have choices as to how we handle it.
The leaders who thrive from what I see are not the ones who have rigid plans 'My way or the highway' types, but the ones who flex, find humour, take people with them. Forgive themselves for mistakes they may make.
The issue is rigid plans don't work - as shown by the 44% of UK leaders that say their change programmes did not met performance goals and the 12% who said that they were able to sustain gains from change for more than three years.
If we think that 1 in 3 UK employees have left jobs due to poor management and toxic culture, when you add the layer of change and complexity on top this figure is likely to rise!
Being Flexibility Doesn't mean you are flaxy it means you are strategic
Adaptable leaders:
- Make better decisions under pressure
- Retain top talent by modelling resilience
- Create cultures that can pivot and grow
- Avoid the trap of “perpetual crisis mode”
- Share their thought processes with others around them to gain buy in
- Show vulnerability
Steps to embracing flexibility
- Pause before reacting: Flexibility starts with reflection. It is often not your first thought that matters but your second. Give yourself time to think
- Ask for help: You don’t have to lead alone. Sharing the need for a solution helps the team pull together - and innovate together - It is not all down to you
- Build range: Emotional agility, strategic adaptability, and relational depth are key. Mental toughness can help you navigate and maintain a balance during times of significant change
- Invest in support: Coaching helps you lead yourself, to talk, to debate, to rationalise what is flexible, what is forced and what is authentically you.
- Reflect on how being flexible makes you feel - note it in a journal and celebrate the small wins of being agile and flexible!
If you’re feeling the pinch and need space to think, recalibrate, or lead differently—coaching and training can help.
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Let’s explore what that could look like: barbra@gleecoaching.co.uk
🌐 www.gleecoaching.co.uk
Ideas and thoughts on how to lead well through complexity and change
The Intergenerational Advantage: Why Construction Firms Who Blend Ages Will Outperform Everyone Else
If you’re worried about not having enough young people, including women coming into construction, you’re asking the wrong question. The real risk is what happens when you don’t use the people you already have properly. The Crisis No One Is Solving Properly Across the UK, the construction workforce is ageing faster than it’s being replenished. There are 20% more workers aged 55+ than under 25. And it gets worse: 35% of the workforce is now over 50, and only 20% is under 30. Yes this presents an industry risk, but closer to home we see organisational risk. Leaders worry about recruitment, apprenticeships, T levels, Skills Bootcamps all useful, but none of them address the real issue: Experience is walking out of the door every single day, and new capability isn’t being integrated fast enough. This is exactly what my conversation with Colin McEllin MCIOB of Clan Contracting highlighted. When a 21 year old commercial graduate joined Clan Contracting, Colin didn’t roll his eyes or think, “another kid who’s never been on a site.” He leaned into it and welcomes thoughts, ideas and advice from 'young Aaron'. Massive benefits for him, and Aaron, and the wider team. Why Intergenerational Leadership Is Now a Strategic Priority The construction sector is staring at a workforce cliff edge: • 140,000+ vacancies lie unfilled. • By 2036, 750,000 skilled workers will retire, stripping the industry of vital capability. • The UK will need nearly 1 million additional construction workers by 2032. Yet recruitment alone isn’t enough. You cannot hire your way out of this crisis. We must integrate generations on purpose, not by accident. What Younger Workers Bring (That Leaders Ignore at Their Peril) Younger talent offers: • Modern thinking around sustainability and digital tooling • Analytical approaches and better documentation habits • A willingness to question processes that haven't been updated since the 90s • A commercial lens shaped by newer training systems In Colin’s words, their thinking “took him right back to when he was 21” eager, energetic, ideas driven. You want that energy before they lose it. What Older Workers Bring (That You Can’t Replace) Your experienced people have: • 30+ years of instinct • Pattern recognition that no textbook teaches • Quiet influence that stabilises teams • Technical fluency on heritage, concrete, structure, sequencing, conservation, problem solving These people are your institutional memory. Once they go, they’re gone. And currently, UK engineering employers admit they only retain knowledge effectively from 57% of retiring staff. That is a crisis hiding in plain sight. Leadership Actions That Works 1. Create deliberate two way mentoring (not hierarchical mentoring). Younger staff teach digital skills, new processes, sustainability thinking. Older staff teach technical judgment, site sense, risk spotting. Both feel valued. 2. Give young people actual responsibility, not token tasks. The CITB plans 40,000+ industry placements a year. It means nothing if leaders hide young people in the corner. Let them make decisions, with support. 3. Systemise knowledge transfer. You cannot afford to rely on “ask Dave if you need help.” You need processes, templates, technical walkthroughs, shared documentation. 4. Remove the “that’s not how we do it here” reflex. 76% of construction workers say current training doesn’t adequately prepare people for the job. So your way probably isn’t the best way anymore. Your Competitive Advantage Is Sitting Right Under Your Nose When generations work in isolation, capability leaks. When generations work together, capability compounds. The firms who win over the next decade won’t be the ones who grab the talent, it will be the ones who blend talent. Listen to the full episode of the podcast here or watch on You Tube here About me I write about topics that my podcast guests bring to the podcast. They have years of experience with challenges and opportunities along the way, highs and lows and are in the thick of leading with purpose and passion, faults an'all. As a coach and trainer I work with leaders and their times to help them thrive, laugh, enjoy their work, be productive and to build teams of all ages.
We love what we do so we grow in that role, we end up as leader with people around us but we want to stay doing the thing we love doing. Balancing leadership is hard.
