I wrote "the future belongs to those who train their adaptability muscle" in 2022. The instrument has now caught up with the metaphor. Here is what over 2 million datapoints on AQ tells us about what to train, and where most leaders get the read wrong.
I wrote "the future belongs to those who train their adaptability muscle" in 2022. The instrument has now caught up with the metaphor. Here is what over 2 million datapoints on AQ tells us about what to train, and where most leaders get the read wrong.
Adaptability is not a mood, a mindset, or a personality. It is a muscle. Muscles can be measured, trained and improved.
I opened Part 1 of Decoding AQ in 2022 with a chapter titled "The future belongs to those who train their adaptability muscle". A few pages later I wrote: "Adaptability is improvable. It is not a psychometric trait, fixed and immutable. Think of adaptability like a muscle. With training, it can be strengthened."
I chose the language carefully. The reason it stuck, across keynotes, certifications, partner programmes, is that it is biologically and psychologically accurate. Adaptability is built and re-built the same way muscle is. With deliberate practice, with measurable load, with rest and recovery, with the right surrounding conditions.
Our AQai dataset has become the largest in the field of workforce adaptability. Covering over 140 countries and more than 2 million data points. Year-on-year AQme completion growth has run at +47% (2021), +30% (2022), +49% (2023), +23% (2024) and +24% (2025). The instrument is being used. The data is real.
Across that population, the current average AQ composite score is 612. The fifteen dimensions sit underneath that composite, each with its own benchmarked low, average and high band. Every score is anchored, not invented.
Two findings that surprise most leaders when they meet the dataset for the first time. Using data from 2025...
One. Seniority correlates positively with AQ.
The popular story that senior leaders are quietly less adaptable than the levels below them does not hold up against the dataset. The opposite is true at the average.
Two. The composite is the wrong place to stop reading.
Two senior leaders with the same overall AQ of 640 can have radically different dimensional shapes. One scores 80 on Unlearn and 55 on Mental Flexibility. The other scores 55 on Unlearn and 80 on Mental Flexibility. They will execute the same transformation in completely different ways, and they need completely different development plans.
The composite is the headline. The shape is the strategy.
A note on adjacent vocabulary. John Kotter and his team have written about a "change muscle", fostering a deeply ingrained organisational capability to sense, respond and lead in a constantly shifting landscape.
The change muscle, in Kotter's sense, is an emergent property of the organisation. It is what a system can do, collectively, under change pressure.
The adaptability muscle, in our AQ sense, is the human capability that sits underneath. It is what an individual brings into the room before the system even has a chance to perform. And we launched our AQ Certification programs to help train leaders, coaches and consultants back in 2020.
Both are real. Both matter. Neither replaces the other. The change muscle without the adaptability muscle is a slogan. The companies that win the next decade build both, and they instrument both.
AQ measures the second. Specifically. Dimensionally. Repeatably.
You cannot train what you cannot read. The reason most leadership-development conversations on adaptability remain vague is that they are not yet leveraging AQai.
AQ measures adaptability across three domains we call ACE. Ability, Character, Environment. Five dimensions in each domain, fifteen in total. (We do actually have 5 additional advanced metrics, but more on those in another week.)
Grit, mental flexibility, mindset, resilience, unlearning. These are the dimensions most responsive to deliberate practice.
In our data, average Ability for senior managers is 332 against a general-population average of 321. Their Resilience averages 74.7 against a general-population 70. Their Unlearn dimension averages 70.9 against 65. Senior leaders, on average, are not behind on Unlearn. They are ahead.
Emotional range, extraversion preference, hope, motivation style, thinking style.
More stable than Ability, but not fixed. These describe the texture of how an individual engages with change. A leader high on hope and broad on emotional range absorbs ambiguity differently from a leader narrow on both. Neither profile is better in the abstract. Each demands different practices.
Company support, emotional health, team support, work environment, work stress.
The conditions around the individual that either back the change or sabotage it. In our dataset, this is the domain where most transformations actually fail. The leader might well be ready. The system around them is likely not.
Fifteen muscles. One composite. The training plan changes when you read which muscle is the bottleneck.
Two shifts I expect to see by 2028.
First, the AQ score will become a leadership-development standard, alongside the way EQ became a standard after Goleman in the 1990s. Boards will expect a dimensional read-out before approving senior promotions, the same way they expect a P&L track record. The companies that have been measuring AQ for several years will have benchmark cohorts and comparative data. Their succession decisions will look sharper, because they are sharper.
Second, the cost of not measuring will rise. AI rollouts depend on adaptive uptake. Mergers depend on adaptive integration. Re-orgs depend on adaptive resilience. A senior leader without an AQ read-out in 2028 will look like a senior leader without a calendar read-out in 2008.
No. According to AQai co-founder Ross Thornley, adaptability is a muscle: measurable, trainable and improvable, not a psychometric trait that is fixed and immutable. With deliberate practice, load, recovery and the right conditions, it can be strengthened over time.
AQ is a measure of how well a person adapts to change, scored across fifteen dimensions grouped into three domains: Ability, Character and Environment. AQai's dataset spans over 140 countries and more than 2 million data points, with a current average AQ composite score of 612.
No. In AQai's 2025 data, seniority correlates positively with AQ. Executives, VPs and senior managers average AQ 640, compared with 584 for entry-level early-career staff. The common belief that senior leaders are quietly less adaptable does not hold up at the average.
ACE is AQai's framework for measuring adaptability across three domains: Ability (how and to what degree I adapt), Character (who adapts and why) and Environment (when someone adapts and to what degree). Each domain holds five dimensions, fifteen in total.
Because two leaders with the same composite score can have completely different dimensional shapes and need completely different development plans. As Ross Thornley puts it, the composite is the headline; the shape is the strategy.
Take your AQme and learn the AQ Essentials at essentials.aqai.io.
By Ross Thornley, Co-founder, AQai. Author of Decoding AQ: Your Greatest Superpower.
Copyright adaptai Ltd. All rights reserved. AQ® and AQai® are registered trademarks of adaptai Ltd.
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