I drafted most of this post last year, but when I realised it was going stale in the drafts I dusted it down and finished it off. It gave me the opportunity to review my notes and refresh my memory on these ideas.
Change can be hard for people and in our Aurora session on Adaptive Leadership we discussed the idea that people aren’t fearing change itself, they’re fearing what they will lose when the change happens.
Adaptive Leadership challenges, as presented to us at Aurora, are ones where we’re looking to change a “hearts and minds” situation, rather than implementing an established change. It suggests that we assess the features of the situation, deciding what to discard and what to keep,
After the session I was thinking about how breaking down these elements of a change can help “show your workings”. If people are struggling with getting on board with a change, letting them see the bigger picture can help them appreciate what’s going on. For example you might want to share:
What we are leaving behind? – Clarifying how the activities we are leaving behind are not serving us anymore and reassuring colleagues that these are what we want to move away from.
What we are doing instead? – Discussing how we’re keeping the good bits, and what ideas we’re bringing in to replace the discarded activities.
What will the new thing look like? – Breaking down the new solution so that people can see where it differs and where it matches previous approaches. Showing what tools will be used and how they work.
Why we are doing this? – Stressing that this isn’t change for change’s sake – we’re aiming for a better solution – we want to thrive!
What will happen if it doesn’t work? – Clarify how people can feedback and how it’ll be reviewed. Will we be looking to iterate improvements or revert to previous methods?
How we feeling about this? – Emotional responses can reveal things that might not have been addressed already. Acknowledging our own fears, and listening to other peoples worries can shed a light on more hard to define issues.
Having experienced bad change management (where an entire department were sent on a course about accepting change, rather than being asked to meaningfully contribute to, or offered a breakdown of, the changes that were coming) I can see how this sort of information would have helped me. However these only work when the changes are genuinely there to improve things, so building trust with your colleagues is really important. They need to see that you are committed to making your workplace better, and that the changes are well thought out.
We all have different facets to our personality that we bring to different areas of our life. In Day 6 of the Aurora course, one facilitator suggested that we should be trying to bring our whole selves to work. I saw this as an extension of being authentic and embracing our differences and can appreciate how that builds a better workplace,
Strength in Diversity
Just like the saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, having a variety of strengths across a team means that it is stronger and more resilient. With a diverse talent pool any individual weaknesses can be covered by other people, and allow for a wider skills set across the whole team.
If part of the team excels in business as usual (BAU) tasks, and part of the team excels in generating new ideas, you should get the benefit of BAU done well, but improvements being made where appropriate. In a team like mine that does technical support we typically have some members who have better knowledge of a system than others. By running technical explanations by non-system-expert colleagues we ensure that the customers are communicated with more effectively – helping the team by combining our strengths and viewpoints.
Bringing our whole selves to work might also free us to use skills in our workplace that we picked up elsewhere. I’ve used skills at work that I picked up in my time on a sports club committee which have made me and my team stronger.
Quality in Diversity
As leaders, seeking a diverse range of inputs can also improve the quality of the outcomes that we’re delivering. We should be considering differences in gender, race, culture, disability etc, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because by doing so we are creating something better for everyone.
For example, ensuring written teaching materials can be accessed in audio format is required to accommodate those with a visual impairment. However this is not just a benefit to people with disabilities. Audio format may also work for a part time student who can listen to the content at the gym, or for a parent who is nursing their child, or simply for someone who learns better that way. If this was an accommodation only available to those with a registered disability, then we’d all miss out.
When people speak up about their diverse viewpoints, we can learn and adapt and make our environment a better place for all.
Community in Diversity
If we embrace the diverse aspects of ourselves and exhibit them authentically at work, we will hopefully encourage others to be more authentic too. There is no homogenous “ideal” of a co-worker or leader, so the more variety we exhibit, the more diverse our world looks, and the less people feel like they have to conform.
There is risk associated with “being authentic” and “bringing our whole selves to work” so we have to appreciate that when considering what we or others disclose at work. Not all workplaces are safe spaces. Even where it’s not deliberate, information that we reveal can be used to pigeon-hole or disadvantage. As leaders we should question our internal biases, and be sensitive to situations where others are disadvantaged because they have revealed something about who they are.
Some people don’t have the energy or inclination to invest greatly in their work lives. Forcing people to engage authentically when they aren’t interested or where it would require too much effort isn’t conducive to a community. An authentic workplace has to be something that is encouraged, rather than inflicted.
In the last of the facilitator-led online sessions, the introduction by Vajaya Nath reiterated that Aurora should not be about changing us as women, but rather about giving us an understanding of our space in leadership. She also mentioned the upcoming election and that we may wish to do what we can, within our power, to build the society that we want to see.
I made a lot of notes on this session, but it was quite “bitty” in that there were lots of concepts that I felt didn’t clearly lead from one to the other. I felt like the Adaptive Leadership title was a sort of catch-all that meant it was somewhat ill-defined by the end. Again I imagine this was due to time limitations and the vastness of the topic.
Barbara Bassa and Rachel Witton co-delivered the session and started by talking about their background, key values and interests. This helped build an understanding of where they were coming from, and for allowing me to connect where these intersected with my own interests, and values. They also encouraged us to bring our whole selves to our working environment, including things not typically part of our work approaches. We should be trying to use all the tools and identities that are available to us as only we have our unique combination and those differences are key to a varied and balanced workspace.
Adaptive Leadership
I definitely felt like I needed to do much more reading on this to understand the concepts more clearly, but our speakers presented this as a more accessible (and effective) form of leadership. Adaptive leadership (as I understand it from this session) is differentiated from formalised and top-down traditional structures. It is a more social, collective process without a small number of specific individuals holding all the power.
I looked into a summary of Adaptive Leadership and found this:
According to Heifetz, the adaptive leadership process has three stages:
Observing events and patterns.
Interpreting and developing hypotheses.
Designing interventions.
These steps are iterative, so once you’ve completed them all, you repeat the process and refine your observations, interpretations and interventions until you’re satisfied with the solution.
Adaptive leadership utilises a collective purpose to tackle specific types of tough challenges.
Adaptive challenges
Some issues aren’t supposed to be addressed with these adaptive techniques but how we know if this is a an adaptive challenge? In the session, non-adaptive challenges were described as technical, and whilst both may be complex or critically important, they can be described differently.
Technical Challenges
Known solutions.
Available expertise.
Procedures and structures are already in place.
Adaptive Challenges
Can only be addressed through changes in peoples attitudes, habits, etc.
Moving beyond expertise and existing authority.
Decide what to keep, what to get rid of, and what new ways to work.
Tools Of Adaptive Leadership
There were some tips on how we can gather information on a situation to help diagnose and resolve adaptive challenges that need addressing. These are continuous processes that we can use at any stage.
Balcony vs Dancefloor
From the balcony we can get distance from what’s happening and see it in it’s wider context. Observing all aspects of the big picture allows us to see patterns and themes more clearly.
On the dancefloor we become part of the action – we can engage with people who are directly impacted and being up close with the issue allows us to understand it better. We also get more diverse stories and clarity on challenges.
To my mind, this approach complements what I know of Continuous Improvement methodology. Taking a local problem, then giving those who are closest involved the opportunity and tools to take a step back and view it from the balcony. They then suggest small, iterative changes, based on the understanding they bring from the dancefloor.
With this technique we can ensure we’re getting both the hands-on detail and the bigger picture.
Head and Heart Check-in
If we’re going to challenge the status quo, and risk our political capital at work by doing so, then it’s advisable to check-in with ourselves to be sure that we’re not missing any clues.
As well as logically assessing the issue with our “head” (intelligence) we can also check-in with our “heart” (intuition) to ensure we’re not missing anything. We can observe our own feelings for an indicator – how do I feel about this? Am I having an emotional response that might be disguised as something else? If so, what does that tell me about the situation?
We can also do a check-in at a Social/Organisational level. Just like we might run a practical process by a colleague, we could instead ask others for feedback on how they feel about an upcoming change. Or we may see spontaneous emotional responses coming from colleagues that suggest that we might need to give people reassurance or more information, or even amend our approach.
Success
One of the other aspects of adaptive leadership that I liked was the idea that rather than throwing out everything and rebuilding from scratch, we take more considered approach.
Preserving what’s essential, discarding or rearranging what no longer serves the current needs are ways that we can enable a thriving environment. If we clearly communicate this, and involve people in picking out what needs to change, it can help us get buy-in for change.
Exploring Adaptive leadership
There were three elements that we were asked to take away with us about how we continue our Adaptive Leadership journey and I think that these are the same for our more general career paths too.
Don’t do it alone – Being alone can make you vulnerable, so where possible seek out allies with a common purpose. Resist the leap to action – Often we’re pushed to do something, but take the time to consider and diagnose the issue first. Make sure you’re taking the right actions. Live life as a leadership laboratory – Experiment and be playful. Don’t aim for perfection – change and iterate.
