Liz Tran, former venture capital executive, leadership coach, and author of AQ, examines why adaptability has become essential for leaders navigating uncertainty, rapid technological change, and non-linear careers. Drawing on her work with founders and CEOs, she argues that intelligence alone is no longer sufficient. As she explains, "It's not necessarily about how smart you are… Your IQ is not what matters. It's not the primary factor of what's going to lead you to a happy and successful life."
Tran introduces adaptability quotient (AQ) as the capacity to handle change, uncertainty, and the unknown—particularly as careers shift from linear to exponential trajectories. Reflecting on the past few years, she notes that during the pandemic, "all of us, no matter how organized, prepared, intelligent we might be, felt very unmoored by the changes and unexpected surprises." In her view, the current AI-driven moment has only intensified this reality.
She traces how traditional measures of capability emerged over time, from IQ to EQ, and explains why today's environment demands a third lens. AQ, she emphasizes, is not a fixed trait reserved for the young or naturally agile. "Being highly adaptable… is within all of us," she says. "It's just a matter of prioritizing it."
The conversation explores practical implications for senior professionals, including why leaders who insist on being right constrain learning and decision quality. Tran points to Microsoft's cultural shift under Satya Nadella, moving from a "know-it-all culture" to a "learn-it-all culture," where success depends less on having answers and more on asking better questions.
Tran also addresses burnout, arguing that it is often driven not only by workload, but by loss of agency. "One of the major causes of burnout is feeling like you do not have proactive agency over your own life," she explains, emphasizing the importance of articulating a personal future vision—especially amid layoffs that increasingly select for future relevance rather than past contribution.
On AI, she advocates active experimentation without surrendering core human skills. While she uses AI extensively for analysis, memory, and synthesis, she draws a firm line around thinking and writing: "I will never sit down and have AI just write me something… because I make a living as a writer, I cannot let that faculty slip."
Tran reframes confidence not as mastery, but as recovery. "Confidence comes from doing something that was really hard and failing at it and then actually improving," she says, arguing that repeated exposure to difficulty builds resilience over time.
The episode closes with a reflection on timing, ambition, and the long arc of a career. Challenging the belief that reinvention belongs to the young, Tran observes, "You can start anytime," adding that "your 40s are just the beginning of your life."
Get Liz's book, AQ, here: https://shorturl.at/o8fGu
AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That's Always Changing
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