Leadership is Art
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, written by leadership gurus Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linksy, is an incredibly practical book for those seeking to better understand and apply organizational leadership principles to any context. We first see this practicality in the book’s subtitle, “Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World.” This is further demonstrated over twenty-three chapters and five sections of the text with the subheadings: Introduction: Purpose and Possibility, Diagnose the System, Mobilize the System, See Yourself as the System, and finally, Deploy Yourself. The book was “written from the field” and designed “for the field” as a day-to-day tool to further one’s leadership efforts.[1] “Adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive,” is “change that enables the capacity to thrive,” is built “on the past rather than [to] jettison it,” “occurs through experimentation,” “relies on diversity,” significantly rearranges old DNA, and finally, “takes time.”[2]
According to the authors, the most common failure in leadership is produced by treating adaptive challenges as mere technical problems.[3] Not only so, but people often confuse leadership as being bound by authority, power, and influence. That authors state, “We find it extremely useful to see leadership as a practice, an activity that some people do some of the time. We view leadership as a verb, not a job” (italics mine).[4] The key activities of adaptive leadership include:
(1) observing events and patterns around you; (2) interpreting what you are observing; and (3) designing interventions based on the observations and interpretations to address their adaptive challenge you have identified.[5]
There were so many excellent (and practical) elements of this book, far too many to mention in this blog. Thus, in Kaylee fashion, I will highlight a few fundamental principles that stood out to me:
- The authors state that one of the “first overall tasks of leadership is to educate the people around you – junior, senior, lateral, and across boundaries – that adaptive challenges are fundamentally different from technical problems.”[6] This sounded very familiar to Tod Bolsinger’s concept of reframing, a constructive perspective in understanding and adapting to challenges.
- In designing effective interventions to challenges, the authors suggest seven steps:
- Step 1: Get on the Balcony (The “balcony” is the practice of stepping outside the box, so to speak, to better understand the challenge from an observer’s perspective. This is a concept that has been mentioned a few times in our various leadership books.)
- Step 2: Determine the Ripeness of the Issue in the System
- Step 3: Ask, Who Am I in This Picture?
- Step 4; Think hard About Your Framing
- Step 5: Hold Steady
- Step 6: Analyze the Factions That Begin to Emerge
- Step 7: Keep the Work at the Center of People’s Attention[7]
- As an adaptive leader, it is essential to understand that you are part of a larger system “as complex as the one you are trying to move forward.”[8]
- Effective leaders must practice and model self-awareness: “People who lead adaptive change most successfully have diagnostic mind-set about themselves as well as about the situation.”[9]
- I very much appreciated the authors’ thoughts on how to strengthen your capacity to embrace tough decisions: “Accept that you are going to have to have to make some tough decisions your whole life,” “Nothing is forever,” and “Tough does not necessarily mean important.”[10] Regarding nothing is forever, I couldn’t help but think of Shelly, my wife, as she reflects on her medical training. It was not uncommon for her to work 120 hours a week during residency. It was grueling with every three days requiring a 30-hour shift to which she would be at the hospital the entire time, coming home for 8 hours only to start another shift. As Shelly reflects on the demands of her medical training, she has said this very thing: “You learn that you can do anything, at least for a short period of time.”
- Adaptive leaders need to give themselves permission to fail![11]
- Finally, I really appreciated this perspective of leadership. The authors write,
Do you inspire people? The root of the word inspire means to take breath in, to fill with spirit. Inspiration is the capacity to move people by reaching in and filling their lives from deeper sources of meaning.
To lead your organization through adaptive change, you need the ability to inspire. Adaptive challenges involve values, not simply facts or login. And resolving them engages people’s beliefs and loyalties, which lie in their hearts, not their heads.[12]
[1] Ronald A. Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 5.
[2] Ibid., 14–16.
[3] Ibid., 19.
[4] Ibid., 24.
[5] Ibid., 32.
[6] Ibid., 115.
[7] Ibid., 126–130.
[8] Ibid., 181.
[9] Ibid., 184.
[10] Ibid., 256–257.
[11] Ibid., 259.
[12] Ibid., 263.
10 responses to “Leadership is Art”
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Eric,
Thank you for your post. You picked up on things I did not focus on in the reading.
Now that your role has shifted from an organizational leader to a consultant, what do you think your part is in influencing change?
Ask me in 6 months:) I have been thinking about this. Obviously, my sphere of influence is different, and somewhat new territory for me, so I will see how it all pans out.
Eric,
Thanks for your post. As you reflect on your new position, are there any specific skills or behaviors from this book that you would like to include or pass onto your clientele?
This is a great book that I will certainly revisit. My primary tasks as a consultant are around strategic planning and fund raising, so there will be elements are that transferable. However, it might be more in my “one-off” conversations/relationships with other leaders that I can invest in them as leaders of their organizations.
Eric, I appreciate your wonderings that it may in the one-off connections you may use this book. I would like to offer however a pushback….as a consultant what might be the ways you can impact/influence your client with these resources that Heifetz offers? Meaning as you guide your clients in strategic planning what ways can you empower them on their journey?
Eric, I really enjoyed reading your diverse set of takeaways from this book. It is so dense with material, making it hard to trace just one theme. At the end of your post, you speak about a leader needing to inspire. As someone who has learned the value of that in a pastoral role, how does your current church do that? To ask it another way, what have leaders in your church experience done will to provide inspiration for you?
Wow Roy, that is tough. I am sure they have inspired me some, but largely, I feel the Church is often lagging behind on the missional pulse (local or international). I go and engage as a faithful member, but I can’t say I find I am particularly inspired. Hard to say, but how I honestly feel.
Eric: Thanks for your analysis. I also centered in on the idea of giving ourselves per mission to fail. It’s inevitable anyway, so we should just embrace it and learn and grow from our mistakes. Hopefully, they become less frequent…
Eric: Given your new role, were there any specific on the balcony/on the field tools that they utilized that you would want to incorporate into your consultant tool box as you walk with other organizations?
That is a good question. I will have to give the book more of a “review” from that perspective at a later date. In my personal notes on the book, I highlight this as a book I want to read again, for that very purpose – there is some great content to chew on in here! For right now, I don’t feel I have the bandwidth to give it the attention it deserves.