13. Leadership

Leadership

• A process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task

Six Principles of Leadership for Addressing Adaptive Challenges

• Get on the Balcony

• Identify the Adaptive Challenge

• Regulate distress

  • “Productive level of distress”

• Maintain Disciplined Attention

• Give the Work back to the People

• Protect Leadership from Below

Getting on the balcony

• Take a step back and instead of being in the action understand different perspectives

• Understand structure, culture, norms

• Identify struggles over value/power

• Watch for reactions to change/loss

Identify the adaptive challenge(s)

• Diagnose the situation in light of the values at stake, and unbundle the issues involved

  • Try to understand losses

  • Open to gathering/hearing other perspectives

Regulating distress

• Keep the level of distress within tolerable limits for doing adaptive work

  • Keep the heat up without blowing up the vessel

  • Relieve pressure if it is too high

Maintaining the Focus

• Keep attention on the task at hand

• Ensure topic has time to mature

• Watch for “work avoidance’

  • Avoid shifting focus to another topic, laying blame, and creating an “ad hoc” committee

Give the work back to the people

• Allow people to take responsibility for the problem, but at a rate they can handle

• Resolve the temptation to resolve the issue

• Get people engaged

• Place the work with the relevant parties

Protecting Voices of Leadership Without Authority

• Protect those who raise hard questions, generate distress, and challenge people to rethink the issues at stake

• Protect the voices you want to silence

• Annoyance is a signal of opportunity

• Is there potential value in addressing the provocative questions being raised?

Three principles of Leadership

1) Diagnose the situation in light of the values at stake, and unbundle the issue involved

• Try to understand losses

2) Keep the level of distress within tolerable limits for doing adaptive work

• Keep the heat up without blowing up the vessel

• Relieve pressure if it is too high

3)Identify the issue that engage the most attention and

• counteract avoidance mechanisms such as denial, scapegoating, pretending the problem is technical, or attacking individuals rather than issues

4) Allow people to take responsibility for the problem, but at a rate they can handle

5) Protect those who raise hard questions, generate distress, and challenge people to rethink the issues at stake.