Adaptive Leadership

By Reetu Raina

Current Scenario

The most certain thing in today’s business environment is

Uncertainty ????

So we need to prepare leaders for unknown

The Need for New, Adaptive Leadership

Complex, Significant Challenges

Myth that Better Execution and Improving Operations Alone will Accomplish Needed Results

What is Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership is given to impacting the environment. It addresses a very active form of leadership, not a passive effort taken merely to adjust to circumstances as found. Biology teaches that relationships between living entities are circular and interactive. Our organizations are also living systems, being composed not just of capital goods and technology, but of people.

Adaptive Leadership, Relational DialogueSocial Leadership

Leadership Level III

Inter-Personal InfluenceRelationship-Based

Leadership

Leadership Level II

Personal DominanceLeader-Based Leadership

Leadership Level I

Setting direction, priorities, mission, vision, goals, purpose and taking immediate action

Creating commitment, alignment, motivation, spirit, teamwork, and political skill

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

Leadership Level and Associated Tasks

Adapted from Drath and Heifetz

Knowing-Doing” Gap

Leaders always don’t fall more because of lack of execution than lack of vision

Why Gap

Pfeffer and Sutton suggests five reasons

Talk over the action

Memory Substitutes for Action

Fear Prevents Action

Measurement Obstructs Good Judgment

Internal Competition – Friend becomes Enemy

Talk

Talk is cheap

Talk makes you look clever

Education system oriented towards talk

Talk in seminars, write papers

No need to act

Companies talk about acting

But don’t act

Overcoming the gap

Action oriented organization & culture

Reward action not discussion

Trust people

Coaching / Mentoring / Master-Apprentice

Embedded training - On the job training

Reduce gap between learning and doing

Repeat attention

Simplicity

One or two things at a time

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.”

The leader does not impose a solution: the final solution emerges from the dialogue of all the parties

The leadership challenges are complex: there is no one “right” answer

vs.Real risk must be balanced against reward

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

The Dangers Adaptive Leaders Face

Marginalization

Diversion

Attack

Seduction

Loss

Adaptive Leadership Strategies

Get on the balcony

Anchor yourself

Maintain “sacred heart”

Manage your hungers Hold steady

Think politically

Orchestrate the process

“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 incompetence- change 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!

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?

THANK YOU