Change Agility
Moderate · 62%Handles normal change; slow on big novelty.
Strengths
- Functional
Watch for
- Not your edge
Try this
- Seek genuine novelty periodically
From the research: Change agility predicts long-term career growth (Korn Ferry, 2014).
Learning Agility
Primary Style:
Change Agility leading: seeks novel experience. Key engine of career-long learning.
Curiosity, experimentation, and comfort with first-time situations
Comfort with complexity, ambiguity, and making fresh connections
Skilled at understanding and getting the best from diverse people
Understanding your own strengths, weaknesses, and impact on others
Delivering results in tough, novel, or ambiguous conditions
A detailed read of each dimension at your score band, with what's likely a strength, what to watch, and where to invest.
Handles normal change; slow on big novelty.
From the research: Change agility predicts long-term career growth (Korn Ferry, 2014).
Handles normal complexity.
From the research: Mental agility predicts performance in ambiguous strategic roles (Korn Ferry, 2014).
Handles most; slows with very unfamiliar.
From the research: People agility predicts cross-cultural and senior leadership effectiveness (Korn Ferry, 2014).
Self-view tracks most of reality.
From the research: Self-awareness is the agility dimension most predictive of executive success (Korn Ferry).
Delivers in most conditions.
From the research: Results agility distinguishes high-potential from high-performer profiles (Lombardo & Eichinger, 2000).
No dimensions scored high this time. Your profile is balanced across areas.
No low-scoring dimensions — nothing stands out as a growth area from this assessment.
Learning Agility isn't a single skill — Lombardo & Eichinger (2000) split it into five. Korn Ferry's research across 500,000+ leaders consistently finds the pattern here is the strongest behavioural predictor of leadership potential we currently have, more stable than intelligence or personality taken alone.
You engage with complexity when the situation warrants, but prefer to ground novel ideas in recognisable structure. You'll solve most problems well; on the genuinely unprecedented ones, deliberately slow down and try on alternative framings before committing.
You build solid working relationships and adapt when the gap is obvious. The stretch is working well with colleagues whose style is genuinely foreign to yours — do the reading, not just the reacting.
You can engage with change when the case for it is clear, but genuinely untested approaches give you pause. That caution is sometimes wisdom; keep a small portfolio of low-cost experiments running so the muscle doesn't atrophy.
You hit your marks in familiar conditions and most new ones, though genuinely unprecedented work can stretch your delivery rhythm. Name the uncertainty early and set mid-point checkpoints so surprises don't compound late.
You know yourself reasonably well in your usual contexts. Ask for feedback after unfamiliar situations, where self-perception and other-perception drift apart fastest.
Your learning agility doesn't land evenly across situations. The grid below projects your dimension scores onto five common stretch contexts — where your profile is likely to carry you, and where it may ask the most of you.
You solve novel problems well once you've had time to explore them. Resist the urge to converge early.
You bed into new teams steadily. Plan explicit 1:1s in the first two weeks — it compresses the learning curve.
You prefer clarity, but you'll work without it when you must. Name the ambiguities out loud to get alignment early.
You keep pace with change that's signposted in advance. Build a habit of running small experiments so the 'new' muscle stays warm.
You handle senior-stakeholder pressure well when prepared. Rehearse the first three minutes — that's where confidence is won or lost.
The modes of learning your profile most strongly supports. The research consistently finds that the highest-agility learners aren't the ones with the best study habits — they're the ones who deliberately design development experiences around how they actually learn.
You gain most when you bring a new idea alongside something you already know and find the link. Deliberately read outside your field — the transfer is where the insight lands.
You consolidate best by looking back at what happened and extracting the lesson — journalling, post-mortems, and one-to-ones build your skill faster than raw experience alone.
You grow by watching and being challenged by others — mentors, feedback-rich peers, and cross-functional collaboration are your highest-yield inputs.
Learning Agility, introduced by Lombardo & Eichinger (2000) at the Center for Creative Leadership, measures how quickly you learn from experience — especially in first-time, complex, or challenging situations. Korn Ferry research on 500,000+ leaders shows it's the strongest non-cognitive predictor of high-potential leadership.
Learning agility is distinct from intelligence — it's about seeking and converting novel experience into capability. It's substantially trainable with deliberate stretch assignments.