Adaptive Leadership:
A model for meeting the
most difficult challenges
From Adaptive Leadership: Heifetz
and Linsky
The Need for New,
Adaptive Leadership


Complex,
Significant
Challenges
Myth that Better
Execution and
Improving
Operations Alone
will Accomplish
Needed Results
Leadership Level and Associated Tasks
Adaptive Leadership,
Relational Dialogue
Social Leadership
Leadership Level III
Facing adaptive challenge, creating meaning.
Innovation, change, dealing with paradigm shifts
Wholistically framing issues, creating context for
dialogue, managing creative conflict and tension.
Stimulating/consolidating organizational learning
Inter-Personal Influence
Relationship-Based
Leadership
Creating commitment, alignment, motivation, spirit,
teamwork, and political skill
Leadership Level II
Personal Dominance
Leader-Based Leadership
Leadership Level I
Setting direction, priorities, mission,
vision, goals, purpose and taking
immediate action
Adapted from Drath and Heifetz
Adaptive Leadership Challenges

“challenges for which there are no simple,
painless solutions-problems that require us
to learn new ways… uncompetitive industry,
drug abuse, poverty, poor public education,
environmental hazards…”
Leadership Without Easy Answers, Ronald Heifetz,
p. 2
Adaptive Leadership Challenges…

“Making progress on these problems
demands not just someone who
provides answers on high, but
changes in our attitudes, behavior,
and values. To meet challenges
such as these, we need a different
idea of leadership and a new social
contract that promote our adaptive
capacities, rather than inappropriate
expectations of authority.”
Leadership Without Easy Answers, p. 2
Comfortable Authoritarian “Equilibrium”
Power and trust given to an authority in
return for services that maintain tolerable
levels of stress:
 Protection


Order


Safety
Position, roles, belonging, norms, conflict
Direction

Group and individual activity, needs met
vs.
The leadership challenges are complex: there is
no one “right” answer
Real risk must be balanced against reward
The leader does not impose a solution: the final
solution emerges from the dialogue of all the parties
All parties learn from one another—and learn more
about the situation in the process
Everyone must adapt their perspective in
order for a solution to emerge
Adaptive vs. Technical Challenge
Problem/Definition
Technical
Mixed
Adaptive
clear
clear
Unclear
Solution
Known/Clear
Partially known
Unknown
Solver
Expert
Expert+group
All, but > group
Adaptive Learning
Adaptive challenge
Too hot!
Limit of tolerance
Disequilibrium
}
Productive
distress
Threshold of learning
Work avoidance
Technical problem
Time
Source: Heifetz & Linsky: Leadership on the Line, 2002
Center for Creative Leadership
Research on Problem Types



Technical Challenges: 43% solvable using current techniques
Adaptive Challenges: 37% solvable only by collectively
developing significantly different
perspectives and approaches
Critical Challenges: 10% -in which
crisis response is demanded
Albert O. Hirschman’s Rhetoric of
Reaction: Conditions versus Problems

Leadership challenge to convert
perception of immutable, “Intractable
Conditions” that cannot be modified (the
poor will always be with us) to
“Actionable Problems” that have more
palpable, definable, attackable
characteristics.
Diagnosing the Challenge



The System: Structure, Culture,
Processes
The Challenge: Cycle of Failure,
Dependency on Authority, Listen
Underneath, Examine Archetypes
Diagnose the Political Landscape:
Values, Loyalties, Who will Loose,
Where are the Alliances.
Adaptive Leadership Tasks




Discern Adaptive vs Technical Challenges
Identify and “Tag” the Adaptive Challenge
Focus and Discipline Attention
Develop/Share Responsibility
Regulate Disequilibrium
 Infuse the Work with Meaning and Promise
 Pass It On; Teach a Culture of Adaptive
Leadership, Build Adaptive Capacity

Leadership On the Line:
Pain of Change

“The dangers of exercising
leadership derive from the nature of
the problems for which leadership is
necessary. Adaptive change
stimulates resistance- it challenges
people’s habits, beliefs, and values.
It asks them to take a loss,
experience uncertainty, and even
express disloyalty to people and
cultures… loss, disloyalty, feeling
incompetent… No wonder people
resist.”
The Dangers Adaptive Leaders Face





Marginalization
Diversion
Attack
Seduction
Loss
Adaptive Leadership Strategies


Get on the balcony
Maintain
“sacred
heart”

Anchor yourself

Manage
your hungers

Think politically

Orchestrate
the process

Hold steady
“Getting on the Balcony”







Gain a wholistic perspective
Systems thinking
Technical vs. Adaptive Work
Simultaneously on the dance floor
and above it on the balcony
Observe patterns and people
Discern true meanings and feelings,
particularly of authority figures;
“song beneath the words”
Personal reflection
“Thinking Politically”






Dance the relationship dance
Encourage supporters
Stay close to opponents
Court the undecided
Acknowledge the loss- uncertainty,
disloyalty, and incompetencechange brings
Allow time for transition but leave
behind those that cannot make the
change
“Orchestrating the Process,
Particularly Conflict”







Establish safe, stress-ful holding
environment, like a pressure cooker
Moderate temperature to pace work
progress
Let issues ripen when needed
Balance pain of loss with positive
possibility of change for their future
Give the work back to the people
Make interventions short and simple
Don’t take personal attacks personally
“Hold Steady!”







Take the heat
Patiently let issues ripen
Focus attention on the issues
Ask lots of real tough questions
Suspend your reality
ENCOURAGE RISK AND EXPERIMENTATION
Do you have a domestic strength or industrial
strength pressure cooker in your community,
organization, your team, your family, or your
own ego?
“Manage Your Hungers”




Respect the ready availability of and
need for power, control, affirmation
and importance
Intimacy and delight needs must be
met appropriately
Manage your grandiosity
remembering people see you more
in your role than as a human person
Use transitional rituals to demarcate
your roles
“Anchor Yourself”





Don’t confuse one’s self with one’s
professional role
Identify a truly trustworthy
confidant who can really tell you
what you need to hear
Do not use allies as confidants
Find a sanctuary for retreat,
rejuvenation, and personal
reflection
Put yourself on the line in leading
again!
Maintaining “Sacred Heart”
Quality of Heart
Innocence
Becomes
Cynicism
Dressed Up As:
Realism
Curiosity
Arrogance
Authoritative Knowledge
Compassion
Callousness
The “thick skin” of
experience
Learning Methods for Adaptive
Leadership













“Case in point”
Classroom as “studio laboratory”
Success and failure stories sharing and analysis
Owning up to your part of the mess
“Empathic Imagination” and compassion development
Intense monitoring of feelings and reflection
Journaling
Simulations
Personal Assessments- 360 degree feedback
Coaching
Leadership Development Planning
Current situation challenge, support, re-assessment
“The Fog” and other metaphors
Your Adaptive Leadership
Challenges
 What
are two adaptive
leadership challenges you face
and what is your role in
catalyzing relational dialogue
and adaptive learning to solve
them?
Sentinel Leadership Texts:
Adaptive Learning and Dialogue

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Marty
Linsky, and Alexander Grashow 2009

Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of
Leading, by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, 2002

Leadership Without Easy Answers, by Ronald Heifetz, 1994- 13TH
Printing, multiple languages

The Deep Blue Sea: Rethinking the Source of Leadership, by
Wilfred Drath, 2001

Leadership Can be Taught, by Daloz Parks, 2005

Real Leadership, Dean Williams, 2005.