1. Adaptive Leadership: A model for meeting the most difficult challenges
From Adaptive Leadership: Heifetz and Linsky
Adaptive Leadership is a model that has been developed primarily by Dr. Ronald Heifetz. This model presents many tools for working with many of the most difficult challenges we face. Challenges that arise when stakeholders view a situation very differently and all feel that they have much to lose if ANY change is implemented.

2. The Need for New, Adaptive Leadership
Complex, Significant Challenges
Myth that Better Execution and Improving Operations Alone will Accomplish Needed Results
Can’t keep trying to put the square peg in the round hole to reach our goals, which include…

3. Leadership Level and Associated Tasks
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
Adaptive Leadership, Relational Dialogue
Social Leadership
Leadership Level III
Inter-Personal Influence
Relationship-Based Leadership
Leadership Level II
Creating commitment, alignment, motivation, spirit, teamwork, and political skill
Dir
Align AT EVERY STAGE
Commit
hEIFETZ gives us some concrete guidance…
Personal Dominance
Leader-Based Leadership
Leadership Level I
Setting direction, priorities, mission, vision, goals, purpose and taking immediate action
Adapted from Drath and Heifetz

4. Adaptive Leadership Challenges
“challenges for which there are no simple, painless solutions-problems that require us to learn new ways… uncompetitive industry, drug abuse, poverty, poor public education, environmental hazards…”
Leadership Without Easy Answers, Ronald Heifetz, p. 2
Problems sometimes viewed as outside the PH system’s purview
So, complex PH problems demand lead approaches that can deal with complex challenges AND merely doing the same things better won’t suffice…

5. 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.”
Leadership Without Easy Answers, p. 2
Applies on org/comm level but also individual
HARRY AND LOUISE
HEALTH CARE REFORM
IRAQ
Briefly review difference b/t tech and A issues…

6. Comfortable Authoritarian “Equilibrium”
Power and trust given to an authority in return for services that maintain tolerable levels of stress:
Protection
Safety
Order
Position, roles, belonging, norms, conflict
Direction
Group and individual activity, needs met
Lower level needs on Maslow’s Hierarchy not being met causes great stress- TO SURVIVE
TERRORIST THREAT GIVES RISE TO GIVING UP POWER TO ASSUAGE FEAR AND STRESS- want ANSWERS NOT ?s
AL– DISAPPOINTING PEOPLE AT A RATE THEY CAN TOLERATE…. CHANGES ARE NEEDED
PERSONAL DOMINANCE and AUTHORITY NOT EQUAL TO LEADERSHIP
But, different L approaches should be used w/different types of challenges …

7. vs.
The leadership challenges are complex: there is no one “right” answer
Real risk must be balanced against reward
The leader does not impose a solution: the final solution emerges from the dialogue of all the parties
Adaptive Learning is a model proposed by leadership author Ronald Heifetz in his book, Leadership Without Easy Answers and developed further in Leadership on the Line. This is a principle-based model to apply to very complex situations, such as balancing the need for environmental protections against economic concerns, or if we use a healthcare example, you could consider helping an individual come to terms with a terminal diagnosis. In this model, the leader does not try to impose a solution. Instead, the leader realizes that everyone has a valid perspective, that we all need more information about the issue at hand, that constructive dialogue is essential, and that the final solution has to be created by all the parties at the table. No one party coming to the table will have their solution adopted—rather the final solution is something that no one can actually see at the start of the process, but it emerges during the dialogue and learning phase of the process. This is called Adaptive Learning because everyone needs to adapt their perspective to understand the others at the table better, to understand the situation better, and to help create a plausible solution.
This type of principled leadership is perfect for situations in which there are many stakeholders and real risk must be balanced with reward. In short, there is no right way, no perfect solution to implement. This is a type of leadership that takes great skill. You will find the tools of Managing the Difficult Conversation very helpful when you come to situations that require an Adaptive Leadership approach. Managing Difficult Conversations is another topic in this online series.
Heifetz & Linsky: Leadership on the Line, 2002
Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers,
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

8. Adaptive vs. Technical Challenge
Problem/Definition Solution Solver
Technical clear Known/Clear Expert
Mixed clear Partially known Expert+group
Adaptive Unclear Unknown All, but > group
TYPE 3: REQUIRES LEARNING AND SOLUTION > responsibility of stakeholders
LEARNING DIALOGUE VALUE SHIFTS
What proportion of your problems are T, D or mixed???.... No one really knows but…

9. } Adaptive Learning Adaptive challenge Too hot! Limit of tolerance
Productive distress
Disequilibrium
Threshold of learning
DAVID:
Let’s talk more about that challenge to your basic assumptions and values. Leadership authors Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky present Adaptive Learning as a model for looking at how people learn and make changes to their perspectives, needs, biases, values or beliefs. Successfully changing your basic assumptions—that is adapting—requires some level of discomfort, which they refer to as disequilibrium. If the level of disequilibrium is too low, then people just avoid the work or the problem is merely a technical one, and not an adaptive one. This is depicted in the yellow zone on the screen. If your group is here they are not motivated to learn and grow at all. Whatever adaptive problem you are facing won’t be solved.
CLAUDIA:
Now take a look at the zone in red: If you push people too hard, in effect turn up too much heat under the issue or make the pace too fast, then you exceed their limits of tolerance—and they don’t adapt. They just melt down. They retreat to their corners and put up their dukes! Innovation and productivity both evaporate!
Now focus on the green zone: that’s the area of productive distress. That’s where innovation happens. The point of this is—if people can’t adapt, then they can’t learn. If they can’t learn then they can’t change and grow. If they can’t do these things then they cannot innovate. As a leader, you need to find that significant point where people are pushed just enough out of their comfort zones so that they do learn, change their perspectives, and grow, in short—they function as a learning organization. As a leader, you have to find the right pace, the right motivators, create just the right sense of urgency, to bring your team into this range of “productive distress”.
Keeping your team in the green zone requires that you as a leader keep close tabs on the stress level of the group so that the proverbial heat isn’t up too high for them to function. As the leader, you have to help the team be brutally honest about what is real, what the current reality is like, and help them constantly gauge how far they are from their vision. You will need to encourage them so they feel the future they’re creating is worth what they are losing by changing and giving up their status quo. Leaders need to hold the group responsible for the work at hand and make sure they implement their decisions and are accountable for their results. Praising and celebrating success is essential once they have accomplished their tasks.
Work avoidance
Technical problem
Time
Source: Heifetz & Linsky: Leadership on the Line, 2002

10. Center for Creative Leadership Research on Problem Types
Technical Challenges: 43% -solvable using current techniques
Adaptive Challenges: 37% -solvable only by collectively developing significantly different perspectives and approaches
BIASED SAMPLE, CCL LEADERSHIP CLASS
Most are Technical Problems- Heifetz says 80%- but often embedded in each other. So, makes sense that Technical approach used as DEFAULT and often misapplied to others…
Critical Challenges: 10% -in which crisis response is demanded

11. Albert O. Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Reaction: Conditions versus Problems
Leadership challenge to convert perception of immutable, “Intractable Conditions” that cannot be modified (the poor will always be with us) to “Actionable Problems” that have more palpable, definable, attackable characteristics.
A word of caution: There is a difference between how people view conditions versus problems. Problems—they can handle. They see problems as having solutions. Conditions, on the other hand, are seen as immutable, intractable—as “the way things are”.
When you are the leader, you have several tasks ahead of you. As we’ve already discussed, you first must identify whether your challenge is a technical one or an adaptive one. When you have an adaptive leadership challenge, then you need to convert it from being seen as a condition to being seen as an actionable problem.
Let’s take a very tough example: poverty. Some people say, “the poor have always been with us, they will always be with us”. When people see the problem as a condition, they see it as intractable and they believe it cannot be modified. You, as the leader, will need to break those problems down into actionable problems that have characteristics that you can define, address, and attack.
Poverty is a pretty big issue, so let’s think about where you work. Have you ever heard people say, “well it’s the bureaucracy of the organization. That’s the way it works”. In order to change this seemingly intractable problem you need to give it definable, attackable characteristics.

12. Diagnosing the Challenge
The System: Structure, Culture, Processes
The Challenge: Cycle of Failure, Dependency on Authority, Listen Underneath, Examine Archetypes
Diagnose the Political Landscape: Values, Loyalties, Who will Loose, Where are the Alliances.

13. Adaptive Leadership Tasks
Discern Adaptive vs Technical Challenges
Identify and “Tag” the Adaptive Challenge
Focus and Discipline Attention
Develop/Share Responsibility
Regulate Disequilibrium
Infuse the Work with Meaning and Promise
Take responsibility-REVOLVING DOOR OF CEOS- TAKE A GUESS AT ADAPTIVE PROBLEM SOLUTION----DOES NOT WORK AND FIRED
“IF ONLY WE HAD THE RIGHT LEADER OUR PROBS WOULD BE SOLVED” instead of being involved in solving them
Still, a very difficult process secondary to the nature of the endeavor—change of people….
Pass It On; Teach a Culture of Adaptive Leadership, Build Adaptive Capacity

14. Leadership On the Line: Pain of Change
“The dangers of exercising leadership derive from the nature of the problems for which leadership is necessary. Adaptive change stimulates resistance- it challenges people’s habits, beliefs, and values. It asks them to take a loss, experience uncertainty, and even express disloyalty to people and cultures… loss, disloyalty, feeling incompetent… No wonder people resist.”
It is important to understand that change causes real pain to those involved. It involves a loss. They have to give up, sometimes material things or power, but also often they have to sacrifice their current understanding of the world, their habits, beliefs, or values as they go through this process. Often they have to give up the security of “this is the way I’ve always done it!” They have to experience uncertainty. Often it leaves them unsure of what to do, which can lead to feeling incompetent or angry. As Heifetz, notes, “no wonder people resist!”
And Leaders often symbolize the change and thus are the lighting rods that catch the resistance and hostility towards the change.
Leaders who don’t manage the adaptive challenge well get blamed for the failure and risk derailing.

15. The Dangers Adaptive Leaders Face
Marginalization
Diversion
Attack
Seduction
Loss
There are some tactics to help you reduce your risks of derailing, but you need to understand what the risks are.
First there is marginalization. This is when either your importance as the leader or the importance of your issue decreases with stakeholders. You have to keep them in the zone of productive distress. They need to keep focused on the critical issue.
Another thing that can happen is that you get extra work dumped on your shoulders—which serves to distract and divert you from the uncomfortable adaptive challenge you’re trying to address. It can be easy to get caught up in diversions—and then fail at the necessary adaptive work.
Leaders also often face personal attacks on themselves or their families from those resistant to the changes or the issue.
Seduction is when opponents try to woo you or treat you as special. They try to win you over to “the other side” and away from your base or your commitment to the adaptive challenge. Their ultimate and unspoken goal is to avoid the tough work and the change required.
And finally loss. As a leader you can lose your friends, followers, and allies as the change follows its unpredictable and nebulous course.
Bear in mind that if the change were completely predictable it would be a technical challenge. If the leader can dictate the change or the course of change, that is personal dominance and not adaptive leadership.

16. Adaptive Leadership Strategies
Get on the balcony
Think politically
Maintain “sacred heart”
Orchestrate the process
WILL GO OVER EACH…
Anchor yourself
Hold steady
Manage
your hungers

17. “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
Getting on the balcony is an essential first step—and one that you will likely need to come back to time and again. Heifetz describes this as cultivating the ability to simultaneously be on the dance floor, where all the action is, and to see the situation objectively—hence the balcony analogy. In part, this is what systems thinking is all about. Other authors call it taking the 10,000 foot view—that essential distance that allows you to observe both patterns and people. This perspective can help you get true read on meanings behind words and actions and people’s real feelings. Heifetz describes this as “the song beneath the words”. It also allows you critical personal reflection that is crucial to understanding the situation on many levels.

18. “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
Many leadership experts have commented that “it’s all about relationships”. Thinking politically will help you dance the relationship dance as you encourage the supporters of the adaptive change process and court the undecided. You will need to speak the truth—and acknowledge the problems that change can bring, including real loss, feelings of uncertainty, disloyalty or even incompetence. It will be crucial here to allow time for the change to mature, but you cannot wait forever on those who cannot cope with it. There may be some you have to leave behind.

19. “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
The next step is to orchestrate the process—most particularly the conflict around it. This is the difficult phase where the hard work is. You need to create the crucible that can hold the stress and yet be a safe environment. This the pressure cooker of keeping people in the phase of productive distress. You will need to moderate the proverbial temperature and the pace of the work. At times you will need to simply let issues ripen, which takes patience and timing. At all times it is vital to give people hope for the future by putting out your vision for it. That will help people deal with the personal losses they face. It will be easier on you and truly move you more into adaptive leadership if you give the work back to the people—don’t let them wait for “the leaders” to do the work. They need to own the change. Interventions you chose should be short and simple. You will be criticized. Don’t take the attacks personally. Remember it’s not about you. It’s about the process. It’s a hard process.
****************************

20. “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?
Leaders are lightning rods. You will need to take the heat as you hold steady despite the turbulence that might surround you. Holding steady also means allowing issues to ripen, which takes patience. You can’t fix everything immediately. Similarly, you might not be able to tell all right up front. Keep focusing the group’s attention on the issues. Asking the hard questions will help you with this. It will be key to encourage risk and experimentation because the solutions to the adaptive challenges you face probably don’t exist for the particular problem you face. You will need to learn as you go—and risk and experimentation are tools to help you to just that.
********************

21. “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
Managing your hungers is about NOT letting your ego get the better of you. As a leader, you need to remember it’s not about YOU. Really it’s not. It’s about the role you fill, so avoid the classic de-railers of believing that you are extra special. There are concerns that when people get into positions of power, for some reason they start to act differently and can be tempted to utilize their position for their own selfish needs, at times not meeting intimacy and delight needs appropriately. There will be needs for power, control, affirmation and importance—both for yourself and others—that you need to hold in careful respect.
Spending too much time at the office is dangerous in many ways; it can become the only place that meets one's needs. You are in trouble when you start to like your power and who you are at the office more than you like who you are at home. It is important to "diversify your portfolio" in terms of interactions with people from other spheres of life outside of work. Yes, work-life balance is important. It is crucial to your success in many ways.
And finally, it is good for you to play many roles—that way you get less attached to any one of them. It can be hard to make the switch from one set of responsibilities to another, such as from work to family time, or from leader to facilitator. You can use transitional rituals to help you change roles.

22. “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!
Anchoring yourself is key to survival in the leadership role. Don’t confuse yourself with your leadership role—that is a role you fulfill and at some point someone else will play that part. Anchor yourself in YOURSELF. It will be important for you to refill your vessel, so find a regular time and space for personal reflection and rejuvenation. You will find having truth tellers to be good anchors for you. Having a confident who can tell you what you most need to hear is invaluable. But don’t make the mistake of confusing allies for confidants. Allies shift as the issues shift. Confidants might not necessarily be at the workplace.
If you don’t anchor yourself appropriately, you run the risk of getting burned—or burned out.

23. Maintaining “Sacred Heart”
Quality of Heart Becomes Dressed Up As:
Innocence Cynicism Realism
Curiosity Arrogance Authoritative Knowledge
Compassion Callousness The “thick skin” of experience
Heifetz’s final point is to maintain sacred heart. He describes the quality of heart as being one of innocence, that is curious about the world, the problems the potential solutions. The sacred heart has compassion for others. However, when this sacred heart is damaged it can become cynical, arrogant, or callous. Of course, no one wants to appear or admit to being cynical, arrogant or callous, so cynicism is portrayed as realism; arrogance as authoritative knowledge, and callousness as “the thick skin of experience”. If you want to lead well and stay alive in leadership, take good care of your sacred heart.

24. 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
3 YEAR LILLY ENDOWMENT STUDY PAL 101 EXERCISING LEADERSHIP: MOBILIZING GROUP RESOURCES
PRACTICE BALCONY/DANCE FLOOR- AN ADAPTVE PROCESS TOWARDS GOAL OF PROGRESS IN UNDERSTANDING & PRACTICING LEADERSHIP
DISEQUILIBRIUM & CONFLICT ALLOWED
TECH VS ADAPTIVE
AUTHORITY VS LEADERSHIP
POWER VS PROGRESS-
PERSONALITY VS PRESENCE- ABILITY TO INTERVENE, HOLD STEADY, INSPIRE, WORK NON-VERBALLY
METAPHOR AND IMAGES HAS STAYING POWER Using these, back to IOM advice…on leaders in PH….
1989 SURVEY- > HALF OF 165 RESONDENTS MOST OR MUCH MORE USEFUL THAN OTHER CLASSES & TRAINING

25. 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?
Consider for a moment the challenges you face. How many of these are technical ones, ones that can be solved with currently known methods or by those with expertise? And how many of them are adaptive ones? Ones that will require you to create relational dialogue that will foster learning across groups or organizations?
Once you identify a problem as an adaptive one, then you can start to apply the tools we’ve discussed here.

26. Sentinel Leadership Texts: Adaptive Learning and Dialogue
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow 2009
Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading, by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, 2002
Leadership Without Easy Answers, by Ronald Heifetz, TH Printing, multiple languages
The Deep Blue Sea: Rethinking the Source of Leadership, by Wilfred Drath, 2001
Leadership Can be Taught, by Daloz Parks, 2005
Real Leadership, Dean Williams, 2005.
There are many books that address these issues in further depth. Here is a list that might interest you.
I hope you have found this brief tour of Adaptive Leadership a helpful primer for you. Thank you for joining me for this session. Please investigate the other topics in this leadership series.