Ronald Heifetz, Martin Linsky, and Alexander Grashow, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization. Harvard Business School Press, 2009.
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LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This is a sequel to Leadership Without Easy Answers and Leadership on the Line. It is an excellent addition to the field of literature on transformational and empowering leadership through the authors’ unique concept of “adaptive” vs. “technical” leadership.
This volume functions much like a field manual or developmental guide for the practice of adaptive leadership. It is packed with insight, with several charts, checklists, and assessment mechanisms interspersed:
- The unique challenges of adaptive leadership (Pages 52-53)
- How to identify a primarily adaptive challenge (Page 74)
- Nonconfrontational ways to slow down organizational momentum (Page 111)
- Seven steps to orchestrating conflict (Pages 152-153)
- How to personalize the adaptive challenge (Page 193)
- Common leadership traps and how to avoid them (Pages 244-246)
- How to ease the constraint presented by loyalties (Pages 248-251)
The book is dense and requires a significant commitment to work through. The full content is only for the most serious follower of adaptive leadership. Certain sections, however, may be helpful by themselves if one already understands the theory. Fortunately the book is written in such a way that a visual perusal may help readers find the pieces that are most helpful to them.
From the Publisher
We live in a time of danger and opportunity. Individuals, organizations, communities and countries must continuously adapt to new realities to simply survive. Wanting more, wanting to thrive even under constantly shifting and often perilous conditions, people in all sectors are called upon to lead with the courage and skill to challenge the status quo, deploy themselves with agility, and mobilize others to step into the unknown.
Ron Heifetz first mapped a groundbreaking theory of leadership in the seminal book, Leadership Without Easy Answers. Followed by the bestselling Leadership on the Line, he and long-time Harvard colleague Marty Linsky offered a compelling set of arguments and stories to show how to lead and stay alive through the dangers of change.
Now Heifetz and Linsky, joined by Alexander Grashow, have distilled the learning from their combined sixty-plus years of leadership consulting, teaching and training around the globe into a practical hands-on guide to making your leadership both more effective and more powerful.
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership will help you think and execute amidst profoundly changing complexity. With its comprehensive and systemic approach to assessing candidly the situation and yourself, and then taking action, its wisdom and advice are drawn also from the experiences of people like you, committed to advancing what you care about most.
The book is anchored in the framework of Adaptive Leadership, but goes beyond the theory to provide a practical set of stories, diagrams, techniques, and activities that will help you both assess and address the toughest challenges that lie ahead. Dozens of tools and tactics are presented in an exciting, clear, and reader-friendly design.
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is your handbook to meeting the challenges of leadership in a complex and rapidly changing world.
About the Authors
Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky are cofounders and Principals of Cambridge Leadership Associates and authors of previous books on adaptive leadership, with over fifty years of teaching and leadership consulting experience between them. Alexander Grashow is Cambridge Leadership Associates Director of Consulting Practice and has extensive experience as a leadership consultant, teacher, and trainer.
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