1. Adaptive Leadership for Sustainable Networks
Prepared for FORHP Rural Health Network Webinar November 8, Eric Baumgartner, MD, MPH

2. Sustainable Network Core
Relationships
Vision and Charter
Mutual Trust
Agreement and Alignment
Able to have difficult conversations
One voice
Have each others’ back
Not project-focused
Safe environment for risk taking
Partners and Participants
Authority
Transparency
Front-line perspective
Confidentiality
Perspectives
Resources
Culture of Innovation
Knowledge
Assumes change is inevitable
Styles
Part of the organizational DNA
Leadership Structure
Distributed
Value learning together
Shared
“Deep and wide” involvement and accountability
Willingness to try new things
Sustainable
Network Core
Leadership is important for all domains of the Sustainable Network Core.
Effective leaders help assure that there is a strong, coherent, shared and enduring vision that galvanizes the purpose for partners to collaborate.
Effective leaders also support the work of identifying and engaging partners that to strengthen the collective work of the Network.

3. Adaptive Leadership Partners do not have authority over each other
Effective collaboration is essential for success
Health issues in communities have many drivers and shifting dynamics that require the ability to constantly assess and adapt strategies together
Network must be sustained over years
The most effective leadership approach for sustained collaborative networks that face complex health challenges is referred to as Adaptive Leadership.
Rural Health Networks require adaptive leadership because:
Partners do not have authority over each other
Effective collaboration is essential for success
Health issues in communities have many drivers and shifting dynamics that require the ability to constantly assess and adapt strategies together
Network must be sustained over years

4. Adaptive Leadership Qualities
Comfortable working with ambiguity
Connected to purpose - applies both “head” and “heart”
Constant scanning and sense-making is first nature
Understands role and limitations of authoritative vs collaborative approaches
Experiments with smart risk-taking
Learns and adapts
Adapted from: Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, 2009
The qualities of an adaptive leader include:
Being comfortable working with ambiguity
Being able to connect with both head and heart
Having scanning and sense-making being 1st nature
Understanding the role and limitations of authoritative vs collaborative approaches
Being willing to experiment with smart risk-taking
Constantly learning and adapting

5. Technical vs. Adaptive Challenges
May be complex and critically important but problem is clear
Have known solutions
Can be resolved by applying current structures and procedures
Problem definition not clear
No set of known solutions, requires learning
Requires shared solutions among stakeholders = collaboration
Requires changes in peoples’/partners’ beliefs, habits and loyalties
An important aspect of Adaptive Leadership is discerning between technical and adaptive challenges
Adaptive challenges are those that have a known solution even though they may be complex – an example might be gall bladder surgery. A physician with the skills and training knows the recommended protocols for how to do this surgery.
On the other hand, adaptive challenges have no prescribed way of solving the problem. Adaptive challenge could be how to bring desperate stakeholders to address health disparities in a community. The issue is so complex that it requires that people work together in new and creative ways to solve it.

6. Leadership As Fit Adaptive Leaders understand the importance of:
discerning technical from adaptive challenges, and
“fitting” their leadership approach to best support the stakeholders

7. Adaptive Leadership
CRL Consulting has developed the Network Leadership Self and Situational Assessment Tool to help us understand the concepts of Adaptive Leadership and Leadership as Fit and assess our personal leadership strengths