{"id":31434,"date":"2023-03-01T11:00:46","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=31434"},"modified":"2023-02-28T07:35:56","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T15:35:56","slug":"leadership-is-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leadership-is-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership is Art"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, <\/em>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&#8217;s subtitle, \u201cTools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World.\u201d 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 \u201cwritten <em>from<\/em> the field\u201d and designed \u201c<em>for<\/em> the field\u201d as a day-to-day tool to further one\u2019s leadership efforts.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> \u201cAdaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive,\u201d is \u201cchange that enables the capacity to thrive,\u201d is built \u201con the past rather than [to] jettison it,\u201d \u201coccurs through experimentation,\u201d \u201crelies on diversity,\u201d significantly rearranges old DNA, and finally, \u201ctakes time.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to the authors, the most common failure in leadership is produced by treating adaptive challenges as mere technical problems.<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> Not only so, but people often confuse leadership as being bound by authority, power, and influence. That authors state, \u201cWe find it extremely useful to see leadership as a practice, an activity that some people do some of the time. <em>We view leadership as a verb, not a job<\/em>\u201d (italics mine).<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> The key activities of adaptive leadership include:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(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.<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The authors state that one of the \u201cfirst overall tasks of leadership is to educate the people around you &#8211; junior, senior, lateral, and across boundaries &#8211; that adaptive challenges are fundamentally different from technical problems.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a> This sounded very familiar to Tod Bolsinger\u2019s concept of reframing, a constructive perspective in understanding and adapting to challenges.<\/li>\n<li>In designing effective interventions to challenges, the authors suggest seven steps:\n<ul>\n<li>Step 1: Get on the Balcony <em>(The \u201cbalcony\u201d is the practice of stepping outside the box, so to speak, to better understand the challenge from an observer\u2019s perspective. This is a concept that has been mentioned a few times in our various leadership books.)<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Step 2: Determine the Ripeness of the Issue in the System<\/li>\n<li>Step 3: Ask, Who Am I in This Picture?<\/li>\n<li>Step 4; Think hard About Your Framing<\/li>\n<li>Step 5: Hold Steady<\/li>\n<li>Step 6: Analyze the Factions That Begin to Emerge<\/li>\n<li>Step 7: Keep the Work at the Center of People\u2019s Attention<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>As an adaptive leader, it is essential to understand that you are part of a larger system \u201cas complex as the one you are trying to move forward.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Effective leaders must practice and model self-awareness: \u201cPeople who lead adaptive change most successfully have diagnostic mind-set about themselves as well as about the situation.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn9\" name=\"_ftnref9\">[9]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>I very much appreciated the authors&#8217; thoughts on how to strengthen your capacity to embrace tough decisions: \u201c<em>Accept that you are going to have to have to make some tough decisions your whole life,\u201d \u201cNothing is forever,\u201d <\/em><em>and \u201c<\/em><em>Tough does not necessarily mean important.<\/em>\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn10\" name=\"_ftnref10\">[10]<\/a> Regarding <em>nothing is forever, <\/em>I couldn\u2019t 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: \u201cYou learn that you can do anything, at least for a short period of time.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Adaptive leaders need to give themselves permission to fail!<a href=\"#_ftn11\" name=\"_ftnref11\">[11]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Finally, I really appreciated this perspective of leadership. The authors write,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>Do you inspire people? The root of the word <em>inspire<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s beliefs and loyalties, which lie in their hearts, not their heads.<a href=\"#_ftn12\" name=\"_ftnref12\">[12]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Ronald A. Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linsky, <em>The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World<\/em> (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 5.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Ibid., 14\u201316.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Ibid., 19.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Ibid., 24.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Ibid., 32.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Ibid., 115.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> Ibid., 126\u2013130.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> Ibid., 181.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref9\" name=\"_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> Ibid., 184.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref10\" name=\"_ftn10\">[10]<\/a> Ibid., 256\u2013257.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref11\" name=\"_ftn11\">[11]<\/a> Ibid., 259.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref12\" name=\"_ftn12\">[12]<\/a> Ibid., 263.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s subtitle, \u201cTools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World.\u201d This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2656,2654,2655,2657],"class_list":["post-31434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grashow","tag-heifetz","tag-linksy","tag-the-practice-of-adaptive-leadership","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31435,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31434\/revisions\/31435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}