What is Adaptive Leadership?

Adaptive leadership is a practical leadership framework that helps individuals and organisations to
adapt to changing environments and effectively respond to recurring problems. First, the change
itself needs to be considered to subsequently take on challenges and respond to the change.

1. Explain how the adaptive leadership approach differs from other leadership theories in our
textbook. The adaptive leadership approach is different because it is about how leaders
encourage people to adapt, it focuses on the adaptations required of people in response to
changing environments. It’s simply about the leader encouraging followers to deal with
change. The adaptive leadership approach stresses the activities of the leader in relation to
the work of followers in the contexts in which they find themselves.

2. What are the respective roles of leader and follower in this approach? Leaders help
followers do the work they need to do, in order to adapt to the challenges they face. Leaders
are concerned with how people change and adjust to new circumstance. Leaders encourage
followers to grapple with difficult problems. Followers take head of the guidance and
instruction of the leader to deal with the problem at hand.

3. What are the five activities expected of leaders in this approach? Be able to explain each of
them.  The five activities expected of leaders are the ability to mobilize, motivate, organize,
orient, and focus the attention of others. They help others explore and change their values
and encourage people to change and learn new ways of living so that they may do well and
grow
.
4. What does a systems perspective contribute to our understanding of adaptive
leadership? This approach assumes that many problems people face are actually embedded
in complicated interactive systems, thus problems are viewed as complex with many facets,
dynamic in that they can evolve and change, and connected to others in a web of
relationships. Thus leaders can use this understanding to better effectively help followers
with the ever-changing issues.

5. What are the key insights of Complexity Leadership Theory? CLT focuses on the strategies
and behaviors that encourage learning, creativity, and adaptation in complex organizational
systems. Within this framework, adaptive leadership is described as a complex process that
emerges to produce adaptive change in a social system. It originates in struggles or tensions
among people over conflicting needs, ideas and preferences. Its conceptualized as a dynamic
process.

6. What are the three types of situational challenges leaders face? Technical challenges,
technical and adaptive challenges, and adaptive challenges.

7. Explain the six leader behaviors prescribed in the model of Adaptive Leadership.
Get on the Balcony – stepping out of the fray and finding perspective in the midst of a
challenging situation.
Identify the Adaptive Challenge – analyze and diagnose challenges,
differentiatebetween technical and adaptive challenges correctly.
Regulate Distress – help others recognize the need for change but not become overwhelmed
by the need for change itself, monitor the stress people are experiencing and keep it within a
productive range, create a holding environment, provide direction, protection, orientation,
conflict management, and productive norms, regulate personal distress.
Maintain Disciplined Attention – encourage people to focus on the tough work they need to
do.
Five the Work Back to the People – be aware of and monitor the impact they have on others,
learn to curtail their influence and shift problem solving back to the people involved, be
attentive to when he or she should drop back and let the people do the work they need to do.
Protect Leadership Voices from Below – be cautious to listen and be open to the ideas of
people who may be at the fringe, marginalized, or even deviant in the group or organization.

8. What are the four patterns of adaptive change a leader needs to identify in the Adaptive
Leadership approach? 
Archetype 1: Gap Between Espoused Values and Behavior – when an organization espouses, or
claims to adhere to values that it doesn’t in reality support by its actions
Archetype 2: Competing Commitments – when an organization has numerous commitments and
some come into conflict with each other
Archetype 3: Speaking the Unspeakable – situation when there are radical ideas, unpopular issues,
or conflicting perspectives that people don’t dare address because of their sensitive or controversial
nature
Archetype 4: Work Avoidance – situation where people avoid addressing difficult issue by staying
within their “comfort zone” or by using diversionary methods

9. What are the three ways leaders can regulate distress in an organization, according to this
approach? 
Create a Holding Environment – establish an atmosphere in which people can feel safe tackling
difficult problems, but not so much so that they can avoid the problem
Provide Direction, Protection, Orientation, Conflict Management, and Productive Norms – help
identify the adaptive challenges that others face then framing these so they can be addressed, be
responsible to manage the rate of adaptive change, orient people to new roles and responsibilities,
handle conflict effectively, establish productive norms
Regulate Personal Distress – leaders need to keep people focused on the hard work they need to do
and the tension that accompanies that, while at the same time being sensitive to the very real
frustrations and pain that people feel when doing adaptive work, leaders need to make sure they
have their own act together

10. Be able to explain and give examples of these five behaviors: providing direction, protection,
orientation, conflict management, and productive norms.
Provide Direction – identifying challenge and framing it to be addressed, bring clarity to
confused/undecided goals, to bring order and certainty to help reduce stress of the person
Provide Protection – monitoring external pressures people are experiencing and keeping these
within a range they can tolerate, warn someone when an extracurricular activity is bringing too
much stress to the situation
Provide Orientation – when change requires adopting new values and acting on such, people may
need to adopt entirely new roles, help people find their identity within a changing system
Provide Conflict Management – manage conflict and guide the production of positive change, help
by being a mediator between two people who have a problem
Provide Productive Norms – pay close attention to norms and challenge those that need to be
changed and reinforce those that maximize the group’s effectiveness and ability to adapt to change

11. What are avoidance behaviors and why should leaders be concerned about them?  Avoidance
behaviors are ignoring the problem, blaming problems on authority or coworkers, attacking those
who want to address the problem, pretending there is no problem, or working hard in areas
unrelated to the problem. Leaders should be concerned because all these behaviors lead to working
on anything but the problem. It is imperative to stay focused on the problem and the task at hand in
order to get anything or considerable magnitude completed.

12. What are the strengths of the Adaptive Leadership approach? Adaptive leadership takes a
process approach to leadership, it is follower centered, it directs attention to the use of leadership to
help followers deal with conflicting values that emerge in changing work environments and social
contexts, and it provides a prescriptive approach to leadership that is useful and practical.