Adaptive

Leadership

By: Group 5
 “Exercising adaptive
leadership is about giving
meaning to your life beyond
your own ambition.”
― Ronald A. Heifetz
Marty Linsky
Adaptive leadership is given to impacting the
environment. It addresses a very active form of
leadership, not a passive effort taken merely to
adjust to circumstances as found. Biology
teaches that relationships between living
entities are circular and interactive. Our
organizations are also living systems, being
composed not just of capital goods and
technology, but of people. --Dr. Charles Albano
 Model of Adaptive Leadership
Situational Leader Adaptive
Challenges Behaviors Work
1. Get on the Balcony
Technical Challenges
2. Identify the
Adaptive Challenge Holding Environment
3. Regulate Distress
Technical and Adaptive 4. Maintain Disciplined
Challenges Leader Followers
Attention
5. Give the Work Back
to the People Interaction
Adaptive Challenges 6. Protect Leadership
Voices from Below
 Technical:
problems that Examples: new software
are defined issues that managers
with solution
Situational that can be can identify and solve
corrected with with assessing and
rules or training.
polices

Technical &
Adaptive:
Challenges Defined but This may include
the solutions new rules or
aren’t as clear training

Adaptive:
Challenges These are solve through
that aren’t encouragement of others to
clear cut or define the challenge and
easy to solve it
identify
 Step out of the Fray, finding
solutions in challenging
Get on the situations.
Balcony

Leaders should illicit and listen Protect Leaders should do what is

to the workers suggestions and Identify necessary to mobilize
leadership
allow them to seek solutions to Adaptive workers to do the work they
Voices from
the challenge. Challenges need to do.
Below
Leader
Behaviors

Give Work
Leaders have to provide Regulate Recognize the stresses of
direction, which is the desire Back to situations and help diffuse
Distress
or the workers. People it.

Maintain
Discipline Encourage followers to face the tough
Attention work they need to do. Steering them away
from avoidance.
 Adaptive Work is where
adaptive leaders direct their
work

Leaders Followers
Adaptive leaders do not use
Holding Environment is where
the term follower as it implies
work is conducted
a submissive role. Leaders
instead interact with workers.
How it works:
-Understand the complexities
-In the of change leaders need to know if the change is causing
challenges
Strengths:
-Process approach
-It is worker centered in
involvement
-It helps workers deal with
conflicting values such as
changes in environment
and social context
Application:
Criticisms:
Adaptive leaders can be
-Needs more research and used to understand
refinement
change and the
-Too wide ranging and challenges created by it.
abstract It can direct leaders on
how to defuse stress and
-Doesn’t incorporate a
moral Dimension solve technical
challenges
The study indicates Boundary fluidity
the basics of -- teams can move
both horizontally
effective teamwork and vertically,
across roles, to
include maintaining connect with the
next level of
leadership
distributed
leadership, an
Freedom within a
optimal talent mix, One voice -- clarity
framework -- team
leaders are
a clear charter and and consistency of
objectives
empowered to
take bold risks
mutual trust. In within agreed-
upon parameters
addition, the
highest-performing
adaptive-leadership
teams had the
following five traits: Information
Sense and processing -- the
respond capability ability to
-- the systematic synthesize
ability to filter and complex insights
assimilate external and make high-
information quality decisions
quickly
Grensing-Pophal, L. (2012, May 14)
 References

Grensing-Pophal, L. (2012, May 14). The Value of Adaptive Leadership. Retrieved May 11, 2017, from
http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=533347270

Northouse, P. (1993). Leadership Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.