The current study examined whether or not the Adaptive Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) was a valid and reliable measure of adaptive leadership. Moreover, the relationships between adaptive leadership, communication competence, job satisfaction, and leadership effectiveness were explored. Survey respondents were 203 individuals from three ROTC detachments in the southwestern United States. The findings conclude that the ALQ, when broken down into a 16-item scale, does have reliability, though its validity has mixed results. Moreover, adaptive leadership was found to have a positive and significant correlation with communication competence, while communication competence exhibited multicollinearity with leadership effectiveness. Lastly, leaders’ communication competence was found to account for 32 percent of followers’ job satisfaction. These finding help move the ALQ toward being the first valid measurement of adaptive leadership and provide insight into its relationship with other constructs.