Exercising Leadership

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Exercising Leadership Practicing Facilitation

• What is leadership?
• What is not leadership?
• What is facilitation?
• What is not facilitation?
• In what ways are they similar/different from one
  another?

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Exercising Adaptive Leadership

• by Ronald A. Heifetz
• Presented by Diane Foucar-Szocki
• James Madison University
• Learning, Technology and Leadership Education

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The Classic Error

• Treating
• Adaptive Challenges
• as if they were
• Technical Problems

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Technical Adaptive Work
Kind of Work Problem Definition Solutions Implementation Primary Focus of Responsibility for the Work
Technical Clear Clear AUTHORITY
Technical Adaptive Clear Requires Learning AUTHORITY STAKEHOLDER
Adaptive Requires Learning Requires Learning STAKEHOLDERgtAUTHORITY
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Ten Properties of an Adaptive Challenge

• The Challenge consists of a gap between
  aspirations and reality demanding responses
  outside the repertoire
• Adaptive Work to narrow that gap requires
  difficult learning
• The Learning involves distinguishing whats
  precious and essential from whats expendable,
  which involves loss

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Ten Properties of an Adaptive Challenge

• The Losses often involve learning to re-fashion
  loyalties and develop new competencies
• Adaptive Work is value-laden conservative as
  well as progressive
• The People with the problem are the problem, and
  they are the solution
• Problem-Solving Responsibility shifts to the
  stakeholders

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Ten Properties of an Adaptive Challenge

• Adaptive Work requires a longer time frame then
  technical work
• Adaptive Work is experimental
• Adaptive Challenges generate disequilibrium and
  avoidance

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Adaptive or Technical?

• Identify 1-3 challenges faced by you and/or your
  organization
• Determine whether these are technical, adaptive,
  or both
• Discuss the relative degree of difficulty
  associated with managing each

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Work Avoidance Mechanisms

• Organizations tend to avoid adaptive work
• Common Pathway
• Diversion of responsibility or attention
• Common Function
• Restore equilibrium and hold onto the past

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Work Avoidance Mechanisms

• Displace Responsibility
• Externalize the enemy
• Attack authority
• Kill the messenger
• Scapegoat

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Work Avoidance Mechanisms

• Distract Attention
• Fake Remedies
• Define the problem to fit your competence
• Misuse of structural adjustments
• Misuse of consultants, committees, and task
  forces
• Denial
• Sterile conflict Proxy fights No curiosity or
  creative engagement

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Examples of Work Avoidance

• Please give and discuss examples of work
  avoidance patterns that operate in your
  experience and/or organizational environment.

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Technical Problem or Adaptive Challenge?
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Authority

• Resource and constraint on leadership
• A contract for services
• Formal or informal
• Power entrusted for service
• Power
• Trust
• Service

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Trust

• Predictability
• Values
• Competence

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The Services of Authority

• Direction
• Protection
• Order
• Orientation to roles
• Control of conflict
• Norm Maintenance

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Leadership with Authority
Area of Focus Technical Adaptive
Direction Provide Problem Definition Solution Identify the Adaptive Challenge Frame Key Questions Issues
Protection Protect from External Threats Disclose External Threats
Order Orientation Orient People to Current Roles Disorient Current Roles Resist Orienting People to New Roles too Quickly
Conflict Restore Order Expose Conflict or Let it Emerge
Norms Maintain Norms Challenge Norms or Let Them Be Challenged
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The Paradox of Trust

• People will often trust you when you fulfill
  their expectations for service
• So what happens when you
• Raise questions or deliver information that
  conflicts with those expectations?
• When you tell them what they may need to hear,
  but not what they want to hear?

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Risking Trust

• Please give an example of a time when you should
  have told people what they needed to hear rather
  then what they wanted to hear.
• Please give an example of a time when you
  generated distrust by telling people what they
  needed to hear.

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Leadership

• Mobilizing adaptive work
• Leadership is an activity
• With or without authority
• Not defined by personality traits, power,
  influence, or position

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4 Confusions of Leadership

• Leadership authority
• Leadership personality
• Leadership knowledge
• Leadership value-free

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Leadership Tasks

• Identify the Adaptive Challenge
• Think Politically
• Orchestrate the Conflict
• Discipline Attention
• Develop Responsibility
• Regulate Disequilibrium
• Infuse the Work with Meaning

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The Politics of Leadership
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Get on the Balcony

• Distinguish Technical from Adaptive Work
• Find Out Where People Are At
• Listen to the Song Beneath the Words
• Read the Authority Figure for Clues

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Think Politically

• Find Partners
• Keep the Opposition Close
• Accept Responsibility for Your Piece of the Mess
• Acknowledge their Loss
• Model the Behavior
• Accept Casualties

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Orchestrate the Conflict

• Create a Holding Environment
• Control the Temperature
• Pace the Work
• Show Them the Future

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Give the Work Back

• Take the Work Off Your Shoulders
• Place the Work Where it Belongs
• Make Your Interventions Short Simple

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Hold Steady

• Take the Heat
• Let the Issues Ripen
• Focus Attention on the Issues

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• LEADERSHIP
• generates
• LEADERSHIP

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• LEADERSHIP
• IS DANGEROUS

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The Heart of Danger

• The Perils of Adaptive Change
• Going Beyond Your Authority
• At the Heart of Danger is Loss

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The Faces of Danger

• Marginalization
• Diversion
• Attack
• Seduction

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Manage Your Hungers

• Power and Control
• Affirmation and Importance
• Intimacy and Delight

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The Personal Challenge- Staying Alive

1. Get on the balcony
2. Use partners
3. Distinguish role from self
4. Listen
5. Manage your hungers
6. Anchor yourself
7. Preserve your sense of purpose

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Anchor Yourself

• Distinguish Role From Self
• Dont Confuse Allies With Confidantes
• Keep a Sanctuary

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Activity Leadership Tasks

• Instructions At your table respond to the
  assigned question. Please document your answers
  on the flip chart. (10 minutes)

• Identify the Adaptive Challenge
• Proposition People often confuse technical
  problems with adaptive challenges.
• Identify 3-4 things you can use as indicators to
  identify an adaptive challenge.

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Activity Leadership Tasks

• Instructions At your table respond to the
  assigned question. Please document your answers
  on the flip chart. (10 minutes)

• 2. The Politics of Change
• Proposition Adaptive learning is inherently
  political.
• Identify the relevant parties to a recent
  strategic initiative. How are you asking each of
  them to experience a measure of loss, disloyalty,
  or incompetence?

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Activity Leadership Tasks

• Instructions At your table respond to the
  assigned question. Please document your answers
  on the flip chart. (10 minutes)

• 3. Using Conflict
• Proposition Competing perspectives can become a
  source of creativity rather than a source of
  destructive conflict.
• Identify 1-3 things you can do to make competing
  perspective become a source of creativity.

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Activity Leadership Tasks

• Instructions At your table respond to the
  assigned question. Please document your answers
  on the flip chart. (10 minutes)

• 4. Maintain Disciplined Attention
• Proposition People often avoid adaptive work by
  diverting attention away from the issues that
  generate frustration and conflict
• Identify 1-3 things you can do to help people
  maintain disciplined attention.

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Activity Leadership Tasks

• Instructions At your table respond to the
  assigned question. Please document your answers
  on the flip chart. (10 minutes)

• 5. Develop Responsibility
• Proposition Leadership requires getting people
  to assume greater responsibility.
• Identify 1-3 things you can do to give the work
  back to the people.

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Activity Leadership Tasks

• Instructions At your table respond to the
  assigned question. Please document your answers
  on the flip chart. (10 minutes)

• 6. Regulate Disequilibrium
• Proposition Too much disequilibrium overwhelms,
  not enough stagnates.
• Identify 1-3 things you can do to raise or lower
  the amount of disequilibrium in order to keep it
  within a productive range.

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Activity Leadership Tasks

• Instructions At your table respond to the
  assigned question. Please document your answers
  on the flip chart. (10 minutes)

• 7. Infuse the Work with Meaning
• Proposition People need to feel committed to the
  work theyre doing.
• Identify 1-3 things you can do to infuse work
  with meaning.

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Losing Heart

Quality of Heart Becomes Dressed Up As
Innocence Imagination Cynicism Realism
Curiosity Doubt Arrogant Certainty Authoritative Knowledge
Compassion Callousness Thick-skin of Experience
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Why Lead?

• Love
• The Form Doesnt Matter
• The Myth of Measurement