Adaptive Leadership

Manuel E. ContrerasMarch 2014

> 1. Introduction to leadership> 2. Leadership and authority (link and diff.) > 3. Technical problems vs. leadership

challenges

Outline

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

James MacGregor Burns (1978)

3

Adaptive leadership is a notion of change, transformation that enables capacity to thrive.

It is a practice of mobilizing people to tackle difficult challenges and thrive.

What is Adaptive Leadership?

Key distinctions1. Normative and not “value-free”2. Product of teaching3. Developed from and for the public

sector??4. Provides a strategy5. Breaks away from “heroic leadership”

Why adaptive leadership?

5

Identifying elements that need to be changed and elements that need to be preserved.

Making the best possible use of previous wisdom and know-how.

Anchoring change in the values, competencies and strategic vision.

Adaptive leadership within an organization

> NEEDS a link between Leadership and Authority.

> Possibly stating differences or connection between the 2

Needs a link with next slide

Authority is formal or informal power within a system, entrusted by one party to another in exchange for a service.

Basic services or social functions provided by authorities are: Direction Protection Order

Authority

1. Authority is given and can be taken away

2. Authority is conferred as part of an exchange

Conferred power to perform a service

Authority (Heifetz, 1994)

9

Formal 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.).

Formal Authority

11

Informal Authority: rests on legitimacy and trust and comes with the power to influence attitude or behavior beyond compliance.

Trust: Predictability on values and skills

Informal Authority

Authority Resources

InformalWhat you do, and how you are perceived? Competence Reliability Trust Legitimacy Integrity

13

Formal

Where you are? Position.

Formal Authority

InformalAuthority

CredibilityTrust

RespectAdmiration

Importance and relevance of the position

SOURCES OF POSITIONAL POWER

Formal authorityRelevanceCentralityAutonomyVisibility

SOURCES OF PERSONAL POWER

ExpertiseTrack record

AttractivenessEffort

14

They can usually be diagnosed and solved within a short time frame by applying established know-how and procedures.

Technical Problems

15

The necessary 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.

Technical Problems

Unlike technical problems where the know-how already exists. Adaptive challenges require learning to overcome the conflicts in values, or reduce the gap between the espoused values and reality. They require changes in values, attitudes or habits of behavior.

Adaptive Challenges

17

What’s the Work?

Who does the work?

Technical Apply current know-how

Authorities

Adaptive Learn new ways

The people with the problem

Distinguishing Technical from Adaptive Challenges

18

To create and enhance organizational value 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 Leadership

19

The final objective 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.

Adaptive Leadership

20

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

Common mechanisms of work avoidance

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

Leadership

1. Managing the holding environment2. Directing attention3. Testing reality4. Managing information and framing issues5. Orchestrating conflicting perspectives6. Choosing the decision making process

Authority as a resource

26

We exercise leadership to create or enhance public value

The exercise of leadership is a voluntary activity 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

29

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 from any position.

Its development requires a learning strategy.

Final reflections (cont.)

30

Leadership ≠ Authority

Adaptive challenge

Technical problem

A-T

Social Function of Authority

Formal Authority

Informal Authority Dynamic

Finite

Adaptive Leadership Framework

31

“How” of reform

AdaptiveTechnical

Management Leadership

Formal Authority

Informal Authority

Leadership is NOT the same as Authority

DynamicFinite

32

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

Marcel Proust

33

Brookes, S. and K. Grint (2010) The New Public Leadership Challenge. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Heifetz, Ronald A. (1994) Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press.Heifetz, R.A. and D.L. Laurie (1998). “The work of leadership.” Harvard Business Review on Leadership. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.Heifetz, R.A. and M. Linsky (2002) Leadership on the line. Staying alive through the

dangers of leading. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.Heifetz, R.A., M. Linsky and A. Grashow (2009) The Practice of Adaptive Leadership:

Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.

Hill, L. (1994). “Power Dynamics in Organizations.” Note HBB No. 494-083. Harvard Business School.Kotter, J.P. (1998) “What leaders really do.” Harvard Business Review on Leadership. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.MacGregor Burns, J. (1978) Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

Bibliography

34

Adaptive Leadership

Manuel E. ContrerasMarch 2014