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THE PRACTICE OF ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP: TOOLS AND TACTICS FOR CHANGING YOUR ORGANIZATION AND THE WORLD By RONALD HEIFETZ, ALEXANDER GRASHOW, & MARTY LINSKY Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press (2009) Hardcover, 326 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Gyuroka
I work in a conservative 150-member church made up primarily of older people. Recently, a group of 40 students joined the church and their numbers will likely continue to grow. But the blessing of growth came with some unexpected challenges. The students' different values and expectations are clashing with the more traditional mindset of the older members in the congregation. Both sides demonstrate limited understanding for each other and are appealing to me to straighten out the other party on the basis of my pastoral authority. You may have faced similar circumstances, in which there is no standard answer because the adequate response has yet to be developed. Situations like this have often left me feeling awkward and thinking, "If I were a better leader I certainly would know what to do." Heifetz's adaptive leadership theory helped me to grow in my understanding of how to deal with situations that seem to defy simple solutions.
The term "adaptive leadership" originated in the work of Ronald Heifetz in his book Leadership Without Easy Answers (1994), in which he unfolded the understanding of adaptive leadership. This approach was expanded in Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leadership (2002), which he wrote with Marty Linsky. The current book is coauthored with Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky.
Heifetz et al. (2009) maintain that it is important to redefine popular misconceptions of leadership. In their understanding it is imperative for leaders to distinguish between leadership and authority and between technical and adaptive tasks. Many leaders fail to lead when they mistakenly treat adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems.
Technical problems, although potentially complex and critically important, have a known solution within the expertise of those in authority. In contrast, adaptive challenges usually need a learning experience which requires an adaptation of habits, attitudes and values, or of organizational roles, norms, and procedures. Technical problems usually are...