“The single most important skill and most undervalued capacity for exercising adaptive leadership is diagnosis …. To practice adaptive leadership, you have to take time to think through your interpretation of what you observe, before jumping into action.”
– The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Heifetz, Grashow, Linsky
Are you proactive or reactive in your leadership? In our fast-paced world, leadership can feel like you are constantly juggling multiple balls. There is the day to day issues to be addressed, but also the long-term planning for direction, and then on top of it keeping a team of people working together to accomplish it. It can be a lot to handle.
Adaptive leadership is about leading well in a constantly shifting environment. It can be easy to fall into a reactionary routine of just responding to the circumstances around us. In their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky state that the process of adaptive leadership consists of three activities of observation, interpretation and intervention.
As a leader, we need to be doing these three activities externally and internally. It takes diligence and effort to be intentional to do this, but the effectiveness of our impact makes it well worth it. Adaptive leadership is an in-depth process, but it also reminded me of a simple tool that can help us in some of our day to day interactions with others.
I remembered a recent incident that a leader shared with me. He was finally getting to go out of town for a 2-day trip with his wife. As he was enjoying his time, he got the text. You know, the dreaded text that something was not going well at work. His emotions boiled within him over the situation. In the past, he would have just reacted, without fully thinking it through, feeling justified in his reaction. However, it would have compounded the problem and led to further staff resistance to his leadership when he returned to work.
Instead in this split second, a diagram came to mind that I had shared with him. In that moment he decided to take a different approach that led to a much better outcome for him and the team. Here is the model:
Following the model, he chose not to just react, but to stop and reflect. He observed the situation from other perspectives and interpretations. It then led to a different way in which he responded and a different conversation with his employee.
Here is an example. You are working on a presentation for a project. Your supervisor comes over to check-in on the project with you. You could have a couple of interpretations:
- My supervisor doesn’t trust me and is just trying to micromanage me.
- My supervisor cares about me and is showing her support.
You could have multiple and various interpretations. Either of the above interpretations could be true. However, without taking time to think through our interpretations, we tend to jump to an already defined internal story, which may not be accurate. By entertaining multiple interpretations, it makes us curious and open to test our assumptions. This then leads us to act in a more accurate way.
Do you just react to situations and people around you? Or are you applying the important skill of questioning, checking and evaluating your interpretations, assumptions and internal stories? This is a valuable skill to have as a leader. How will you begin to apply today?