Advocacy I: Leadership

Jose Jorge Saavedra

“Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth”

James MacGregor Burns (1978)

New framework: Everyone is responsible

Heroic vs. post heroic leadership(Bradford & Cohen, 1998)

Heroic Leadership Post-Heroic Leadership

Traditional framework: Leader is responsible

Direction

Shared responsibility

team

Mutual influence

ManagementGroup

Downward influence

Tangible vision

Leader andmemberscreate

Leadercreates

Authority(Heifetz, 1994)

Conferred power to performa service

1. Authority is given and can be taken away

2. Authority is conferred as part of an exchange

Formal and Informal AuthorityFormal Authority: comes with various powers of the office and it is granted because the office holder promises to meet a set of explicit expectations (job descriptions, legislated mandates, etc.).Informal Authority: rests on trust and comes with the power to influence attitude or behavior beyond compliance.Trust: Predictability on values and skills.

SOURCES OF POSITIONALPOWER

Formal authorityRelevanceCentralityAutonomyVisibility

Formal Authority

InformalAuthority

Importance andrelevance of the position

SOURCES OF PERSONAL POWERExpertise

Track recordAttractiveness

Effort

CredibilityTrust

RespectAdmiration

AuthoritySocial functions of authority:

Direction and sense of purposeProtectionOrder:

Roles and responsibilitiesConflict resolution mechanism and cohesion Norms

Adaptive Leadership

Mobilize people to face their problems and their painful decisions so that they learn new ways of being.Mobilization implies to motivate, organize, orient and focus attention.

Adaptive LeadershipThe final objective of leadership is to confront difficult problems that require the clarification of values and the generation of progress.The measurement of leadership is the progress in the solution of problems. Communities achieve this progress because people who exercise leadership challenge them and help them in the process.There is a joint responsibility.

Technical Problems The necessarry knowledge about them already has been digested and put in the form of a legitimized set of known organizational procedures guiding what to do and role authorizations guiding who should do it.

Adaptative ProblemNo adequate response has yet been No adequate response has yet been developed. They require developed. They require learninglearning to to overcome the conflicts in values, or overcome the conflicts in values, or reduce the gap between the espoused reduce the gap between the espoused values and reality.values and reality.They require changes in They require changes in values, attitudes values, attitudes or habits of behavior.or habits of behavior.

Distinguishing Technical from Adaptive Challenges

The people with the problem

Learn new ways

Adaptive

AuthoritiesApply current know-how

Technical

Who does the work?

What’s the Work?

Technical and Adaptive ProblemsWhen we face an adaptive problem and we treat it as technical one and we turn to authority figures to produce technical solutions we develop inadequate dependencies (maladaptive behavior).

Disequilibrium and work evasion

To exercise leadership one must overcome the work evasion mechanisms and help people learn despite their resistance.

Leadership requires that one regulate the level of stress and the pace of learning at a rhythm within a range that people can tolerate.

Common mechanisms of work avoidance

Hold on to the past.Blame the authority figures.Find a scapegoat.Deny the problem.Draw conclusions too quickly.Use a distraction.

How to control the heat

Lower the temperatureAddress the technical aspects of the problemEstablish a structure for the problem-solving processTemporarily reclaim responsibility for tough issuesEmploy work avoidance mechanismsSlow down the process of challenging norms and expectations

Raise the temperatureDraw attention to tough questionsGive people more responsibility than they are comfortable withBring conflict to the surfaceProtect dissenting voices

Leadership with authority

Authority as a resource1. Managing the holding environment2. Directing attention3. Testing reality4. Managing information and framing

issues5. Orchestrating conflicting perspectives6. Choosing the decision making process

Strategic principles1. Get on the balcony.2. Identify the adaptive challenge.3. Regulate distress.4. Maintain disciplined attention and prevent

work avoidance.5. Give the work back to the people.6. Protect leadership from below.

Get on the balcony

Leadership is both active and reflective. One must alternate between participating and observing.

Take perspectiveDevelop capacity to distinguish the patternsDon’t be swept away by the music!

Identify the adaptive challenge

Is it a technical or adaptive problem?Readjustments on basic routines or new ways to proceed?What are the values, beliefs or attitudes that need to change?What sacrifices must be made and by whom?

Regulate distress

Balance between tension necessary for change and being overwhelmed by changeHolding environmentOrchestrate the sequence and rate of changeModified social function of authority

Adaptive Work Calls for Leadership(Or walking on the razor’s edge)

Authority challenges unproductive norms or allows them to be challenged

Authority maintains normsShaping Norms

Authority exposes conflict or lets it emerge

Authority restores orderControlling Conflict

Authority disorients current roles or resists pressure to orient people in new roles prematurely

Authority clarifies roles and responsibilities

Orientation

Authority lets the organization feel external pressure within a range it can stand

Authority shields the organization from external threats

Protection

Authority identifies the adaptive challenges, frames key questions, issues and solutions.

Authority defines problems and solutions

Direction

AdaptiveTechnical or Routine

SituationResponsibilities

Regulate distressPoise and tolerance: Control changeEmotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration and pain

Maintain disciplined attentionAllow people to face difficult alternatives in terms of values, procedures, operating styles and power Uncover conflicts to use them as sources of creativity Limit work avoidance

Giving the work back to the people

Achieve that people assume greater responsibilitiesDevelop the collective trust in oneself

Protecting leadership from below

For organizations to learn, everybody must be able to express their opinionThese opinions can create disequilibrium--one must resist the temptation to quiet them to restore equilibrium.

Protecting leadership from below

Protect those who put the internal contradictions of the organization on the table

What are they really talking about?Is there something we are missing?

Losing balanceAuthority limits the exercise of leadership because in times of disequilibrium and distress people expect too much and develop inadequate dependencies.

Whoever puts forward delicate issues runs the risk of being sacrificed. It is in periods of disequilibrium that there is a greater urgency to find answers, and the need for leadership from those in authority is even greater.

Losing balanceIf authority figures reinforce that dependency and fool themselves thinking they have answers that they do not have, they are not complying well with their role. They will give technical solutions to adaptive problems that will generate work avoidance and hamper progress.

Management vs. Leadership

Management and Leadership according to Kotter (1990)

Management Leadership

• Coping with complexity • Coping with change:Promotion and mangmt.

• Planning and budgeting • Setting a direction: visionand strategies forachieving it

• Organizing and staffing • Aligning people:communicating vision

• Controlling and problemsolving

• Motivating and inspiring

Ron Heifetz’s reply:“In short, the prevailing notion that leadership

consists of having a vision and aligning people with that vision is bankrupt because it continues to treat adaptive situations as if they were technical: the authority figure is supposed to divine where the company is going, and people are supposed to follow. Leadership is reduced to a combination of grand knowing and salesmanship.” (1997)

Staying aliveSelf-knowledge and self-discipline form the foundations for staying alive.

Heifetz and Linsky, 2002

AssassinationLeadership is dangerous because the stresses of adaptive work can be severe.People exercising authority are always failing somebody.Persons exercising leadership and authority figures get attacked, dismissed, silenced and sometimes assassinated because they come to represent loss, real or imagined, of the members of the community as a result of adaptive work.

The temptation for martyrdomExercising leadership, people often are drawn to taking courageous stands. Indeed, leadership may require willingness to die. Sometimes, however, people confuse courage with the temptation of martyrdom.

Martyrdom does not arise from the nature of the martyr’s person or acts alone. It derives from the meaning people give to him/her and his/her acts. Martyrdom is a role created by the community.

The temptation for martyrdom

Most commonly, martyrdom is a role reserved

for charismatic authorities who are

assassinated in the service of their cause.

CharismaWe attribute charisma to those that express our pain and give us hope, and we don't understand that the source of their charisma is our own longing.

Charisma derives not only from the attitudes of those people and their devotion to the cause, but also from the fact that the community has invested power and hope in them.

Personal challengeInternal discipline to contain the personal tensions that leadership causes.The role/self distinction.Partners: confidants and allies.Listening: Using oneself as data.Finding a Sanctuary.Preserving a sense of purpose

“the capacity to find the values that make risk-taking meaningful.”

Final reflections The exercise of leadership is a voluntaryactivity.Thus, it’s a time bound intervention: its episodic.It is oriented by the task of carrying out adaptive work.It implies asking questions more than providing answers.

Final reflections (cont.)It requires good questions and the willingness to sustain uncertainty.The heart of the strategy is to center people’s attention in complex and difficult issues instead of in distractions.In light of the above, one can exercise leadership form any position.Its development requires a learning strategy.

"The true journey of discoverydoes not consist in searching for new territoriesbut in having new eyes.”

-Marcel Proust