Three powerful tools to add to the ‘leadership tool belt’

GLF 2014 participant Michelle Peterson reflects on Integration Session 2 of the Governor’s Leadership Foundation program. Throughout the year various GLF participants will contribute to a series of blog posts about their experiences and insights of the GLF program.

Integration session 2 set an ambitious agenda to cover off three topics to help us on our journey to be wiser leaders:

• Adaptive Leadership
• Action Learning
• Belbin Personal Profiles

Adaptive Leadership

Most of us were introduced to this concept through our reading of ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’ by Heifetz, Linsky and Grashow. To explore the concept and practice adaptive leadership skills further, we were asked “What’s the one big question you have in regards to GLF at the moment?”

Several questions were raised, and the group settled on working through one of them. The details of the question itself are irrelevant; the process we were taken through to experience adaptive leadership in action was the key learning. Connecting to our purpose, clarifying the values of the group, dealing with ambiguity, being accepting of some chaos and frustration as the session wore on with different factions emerging – this was the essence.

Get experimental!

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

Heifetz and Linsky point out that everything you do in leading adaptive change is an experiment. Framing it this way offers you space to try new strategies, ask questions and discover what’s essential, what’s expendable and what workable innovation is. Framing this way also allows some protection when you fail in your educated guesses.

We’ve had quite a bit of discussion around this already.. run multiple experiments to increase innovation, make midcourse corrections, audition ideas and so on. It seems to me this is a central theme and critical component to Heifetz and Linksy’s adaptive leadership. Certainly I have shared examples of how it has been applied in my current organisation and how it could have benefited previous organisations to take this stance.

What is different in this chapter in reference to experiments is Heifetz and Linsky clarify how you might need to communicate the fact you are running experiments.

How to inspire people

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

Heifetz and Linsky define inspiration as the capacity to move people by reaching and filling their hearts from deeper sources of meaning. Heifetz and Linsky believe this is necessary to lead people through and adaptive challenge which is more than facts or logic but engages values. Fortunately Heifetz and Linsky believe anybody can inspire others, but it must be through their own unique voice shaped by their purposes, the particular challenge and their personal style of communication.

As you might then gather, finding your voice isn’t about elocution or overwhelming with facts and arguments – it’s about connecting and speaking to other’s values and needs. Language that reaches into other’s hearts. Helping them to envision a future with the best from the past while also holding out new possibilities.

Two skills are therefore required here:

1. Listening from the heart
2. Speaking from the heart

Engage courageously

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

Heifetz and Linsky identify five major constraints to engaging in adaptive leadership which most people experience to some degree. These are:

1. Loyalties to people who may not believe you are doing the right thing
2. Fear of incompetence
3. Uncertainty about taking the right path
4. Fear of loss
5. Not having the stomach for the hard parts of the journey

They recommend tackling the first constraint by undertaking a number of steps. Firstly watching again for the gaps between you words and actions, staying in the present (and putting the past to rest), identify the loyalties you need to refashion and then conduct the needed conversations. You can also create rituals for refashioning ‘ancestor’ loyalties. This means if somebody who you need to converse with is deceased or can no longer be reached then you create a ‘ritual’ in order to create the closure you might need to leave the unproductive aspects of that loyalty behind you. And finally, focus on what you are conserving by remaining true to core principles and values as you leave perspectives that are no longer helpful.

Stay connected to your purposes with five key practices.

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

As discussed in the previous blog, there is no reason to shoulder the difficult work of adaptive leadership if you do not have a compelling higher purpose to serve. This provides the inspiration, direction and, I think, the resilience to sustain the journey.

Heifetz and Linsky describe five practices in this chapter to help you stay connected to your purpose.

1. Negotiate the ethics of leadership and purpose
2. Keep purposes alive
3. Negotiate your purpose
4. Integrate your ambitions and aspirations
5. Avoid common traps

Articulate your purpose

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

Mmmm isn’t this a much pondered question? What is my life’s purpose? It might not need to be your life’s purpose but it certainly will help if it is closely aligned. Leading change through an adaptive challenge is difficult and dangerous work. So you need to deeply care about the change you wish to make – much easier if you see it as aligned to your purpose.

So Heifetz and Linsky stress the importance of identifying your higher (orienting) purpose – a critical part of understanding yourself as a system that provides a larger context for prioritisation and resolve in difficult times.

Your purpose helps you allocate your time, or conversely examining how you spend your time may be illuminating about what your real purpose is. Watching what you do, what decisions you make (big and small) to see what reflects your actual purpose can be uncomfortable if it reveals dissonance for you.

Understand your roles

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

The key here seems to be understanding where your values and or perspectives are shared with others in relation to the challenge at hand. Simply because this creates a faction and factions are needed to lead adaptive change. It is incredibly challenging to lead adaptive change on your own. Not least as you don’t have the extended networks of relationships and allegiances that a faction does.

Within any group or faction you will have an assigned role(s) for which you are recognised. The more roles you can play the more effective you will be as they give you a wider repertoire to draw from in different situations, making you less predictable and readily pigeonholed. Plus the more roles you play, the more factions you will be connected to.

The main point here is to give yourself permission to play different roles to lead effectively from different places in different contexts.

Broadening Your Bandwidth

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

Broadening your bandwidth is about increasing your repertoire of techniques for working on adaptive change. You will have to mix and match from this repertoire as dictated by the situation.

To start exercising your bandwidth muscle, diagnose your current repertoire. What skills do you have? What are you missing or not so effective in? Put this analysis into the context of adaptive leadership and you should consider how skilled you are at raising the heat, getting on the balcony or distinguishing the technical from the adaptive aspects of an issue.

Know your tuning

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009). 

Knowing ‘your tuning’ is understanding those childhood experiences, genetic dispositions, cultural background, gender and loyal identifications with various groups that affect you both in your personal life and in the workplace.

Heifetz and Linsky describe these as strings that vibrate continuously, communicating to those around you who you are, what’s sensitive and what’s important to you. Understanding these, similar to my last blog, allows you to respond rather than react.

Heifetz and Linksy use the example of conflict. If you don’t mind or enjoy conflict you may raise the level of conflict to the point that it is unproductive and people shut down. I can operate in conflict but as identified in the adaptive leadership text, my strict parenting ensured I don’t relish in it. In fact the level of conflict (yelling, shouting and swearing amongst colleagues) whilst not directed at me but observed daily at a NSW financial institution, ensured I found an alternative role within my probationary period. It just wasn’t the environment I wanted to be in, yet those within it seemed fuelled by it and continued to thrive for the short term at least.

Divided loyalties: a challenge for working parents

This blog is about my journey through a text called ‘The Practice of Adaptive Leadership’, (Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky, 2009).

Chapter 14 explores identifying your loyalties.

Heifetz and Linksy helpfully divide this into a further three components (having identified our personal system as our loyalties, our personal tuning and our bandwidth as discussed in the last blog.)

The three ‘circles’ of your loyalties are:

1. Colleagues (boss, peers, subordinates, etc.)
2. Community (family, friends, social, political etc.)
3. Ancestors (revered grandparents, special teacher and groups who form your gender, religion, ethnicity or national roots.)

As you work through these circles in the identified order, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the loyalties. For example I feel a sense of loyalty to our small Leaders Institute team inclusively, my immediate family and friends who were essentially extended family in my 15 years interstate and yet I struggle to readily identify as I write this blog the ancestral loyalties.