Upheaval Is Here—Are You Leading or Reacting?
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More big changes are afoot—no longer just on the horizon, but unfolding rapidly—at work, in our communities and across the country.
The sheer pace and complexity of what we’re navigating has made one thing clear: change is no longer a phase; it’s a constant. As leaders, we are mandated to manage the experience of change as it occurs—in real time, amid uncertainty, urgency, and even discomfort and upset, when there aren’t easy answers.
We thought it might be helpful to dust off the 2001 Harvard Business Review article, ‘The Work of Leaders’ by Ron Heifetz and Don Laurie, and revisit a few of its key reminders. Their breakthrough concept is known as ‘Adaptive Change’—and it’s something we use ourselves when working with leaders. Adaptive Change identifies six critical skills to be effective in leading effectively through change or complex problems without clear solutions:
1. Get on the Balcony
The pull is to roll up your sleeves and keep your head down—focused on your work, trying to figure it all out. Be sure to also dedicate time to step back and get up high enough to observe what is happening in your organization and allow that to inform your actions. What is the big idea? Leaders need to see the context or create one.
2. Embrace Complexity and Identify the Adaptive Challenge
Adaptive challenges are not the same as technical ones; they often involve values, beliefs and behaviors, and may require systemic change. Since change is rarely linear or predictable, leaders must be flexible and comfortable with ambiguity.
Listen to the ideas emerging both inside and outside your organization. Pay attention to and identify where values and norms may be in conflict. Are different perspectives or expectations clashing? Can you name the specific tension or arising conflict?
3. Regulate Distress
Maintain a healthy tension between the need for change and compassion for people’s workloads and their ability to adapt by:
1. Creating a safe holding environment for the adaptive change process.
2. Being responsible for the direction and management of the emerging conflicts and norms as change unfolds.
3. Having “the emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration and pain.”
4. Maintain Disciplined Action
“Disciplined attention is the currency of leadership.” Be rigorous in encouraging healthy conflict, clearly communicating competing or conflicting perspectives and styles, and modeling adaptive change at work. Pay attention to how much disciplined time you’re dedicating to fully understanding what is needed before you make decisions.
5. Give the Work Back to the People
Support rather than control or solve. Encourage risk by backing your people up when mistakes are made. Manage the unconscious desire to return to old or familiar ways. Are you aware of your own tendencies? How much freedom do your people have to make mistakes?
6. Protect Voices of Leadership from Below
Take care of the people who have the courage to raise the questions or point to what may be impeding success. Watch for the unconscious tendencies to quiet those who bring conflict, disagree with leadership direction, or bring new ideas that are a stretch for the “way we do business around here.” How do you respond to conflict or tension? How open is communication on your team or within your company?
Get up on the balcony. What do you see?
Are you interested in learning more?
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