The Female and Adaptive Leadership?

Is she a natural change agent? Carefully observe the leader your organization is producing. Examine the promotions, positions, and talent possibilities. Is it time for an adapting leadership style and behavior to focus on the validity of the soft skills, strengths, talents, and knowledge of its people? Do we need a repeat of failings, misgivings, or antiquated talent possibilities? Or is it time for Leadership that understands the fundamentals of adapting as its only survival for continued building of an organization with a pulse on the pillars of change around people, technology, and the analytics of people, data, and possibilities? Who is she? The creative, innovative, and transformational talent asset with options of possibilities. Remember, She’s the one with adaptive leadership qualities.

?Introduction

Newmarket dynamics and competitive business landscapes call for leaders who can easily adjust to changes due to their view of the actions from a distance and through active involvement of that action Heifetz & Laurie. Surviving today’s rapidly changing business and economic environments requires members of the organizations to be adaptable, flexible, and ready to change Heifetz. Change is imperative for both individuals and organizations due to the competitive conditions facing 21st-century organizations. Leadership both positional and non-positional is the key to a successful change initiative. A leader capable of handling rapid change must be able to adapt effectively to the pressures and demands of the moment. This type of leadership is known as adaptive leadership, (Conger, Spreitzer, & Lawler). Adaptive leaders provide direction, protection, orientation, conflict control, and the shaping of norms while overseeing the change process within the corporate structure. ?The goal of this report is to:

(a)??Describe the considerations of an adaptive leader that are related to the management of change.

(b)?Evaluate how adaptive leadership factors impact the team in implementing change.

Various leadership styles have been used in previous change initiatives, transformational, transactional, and charismatic are a few however, the adaptive leadership style may be the most approach to support strategic change. ??

Organizations are open systems that collect and process information pertaining to their environments. They use the collected information to evaluate their existing and future strategies. Change management is an imperative action due to competitive conditions facing 21st-century organizations. Scanning the internal and external environment for potential threats and opportunities with organizational strengths and weaknesses to determine and firm up strategy is a process senior leadership is responsible for. Once identified the right changes can increase opportunities for all involved if implemented well. Some changes facing 21st-century organizations will call for strategic change that involves a radical change within the organization’s internal environment. The crucial challenge for leadership in an organization is to implement effective change strategies which support the vision and goals of the organization. ?

Change factors

The actions of change management involve one or two actions, either continuous improvement or strategic changes. Both methods require leadership, learning, and innovative actions and results for organization success. Change management should be seen as an ongoing process that could involve radical changes or sustainably change involving organizational strategy. It can either be reactive or proactive. Change can be set off by reactions to the external environment like economic or political pressures. A change could also be due to internal pressures such as competitive processes, inefficient structures, and limited human capital talent or succession planning challenges.

The change process

In order to be effective in change management efforts sometimes calls for alterations to human capital talent demands, a shift in attitudes or work routines. Other measures affecting effectiveness include leadership style, employee motivations practices, effective communication both internal and external, and the general acceptance of internal staff about the changes being made.

(1)?Recognition of some event that indicated that a change is needed. Examples of events include challenges in the financial markets due to the mortgage crisis or challenges due to an influx of corporate downsizings affecting one city which affects business revenues for businesses within the city limits.

(2)?Planning how to achieve change for increased market share or a different market share. Maybe the company decides to go global or become an internet-based organization.

(3)?Clarification and continuous communication on where the company is going

(4)?Accomplishment of the transition as in item two to an internet-based organization.

(5)?Maintenance to ensure the change is lasting which requires ongoing innovation, creativity, and change.

The ability to manage employee participation in the learning process, innovation, and new environment call for leadership which is different for the management of directing, organizing, and authoritarian. Empowerment also plays a major factor in organizational success when change actions and processes are implemented.

Adaptive leadership and management of change?

Adaptive Work of Positional Leadership

Adaptive work is different from technical or routine work and as such calls for a different leadership strategy. The leadership of adaptive work requires those in positional power to identify the adaptive challenge, form key questions, issues and solutions. Once the leader has accomplished this he then lets the organization experience the external pressures within a range it can stand. The leader then causes confusion among the current roles or resists in making changes to new roles before having the adequate knowledge needed from questions posed to those below. Instead of eliminating conflict, the positional leader lets conflict surface. In order to achieve change effectively, adaptive leadership must look at all the options needed to move from the existing state to the future state. The next step is to evaluate the possibilities of each option and decide on the best course of action. Rather than simply identifying the desired goal and taking the straightest and easiest route.

Assessing the Environment

(Conger, Spreitzer, & Lawler) described the challenges faced by leadership in a rapidly changing business environment as adaptive leadership. Adaptive leadership is the leadership of change. Adaptive leadership represents the right type of leadership model needed in an age of change and moral questioning. According to Heifetz, and Laurie, it is the most effective way of learning to lead adaptively (Parks). Adaptive leaders must consider fundamental aspects of change and the impact that change will have on the respondents within the organization. Adaptive leaders understand the process of leading and learning at the same time. Adapting to new environmental demands involves personal humility and reflection on personal mistakes as well as exercising authority dealing with conflict and exploring new possibilities. Leadership is an act and leaders can learn from models of artistic groups.

Supporting Creativity

Adaptive leadership requires that the leader help in establishing the direction yet allowing all members to participate in establishing the change needed for the organization. Leaders do this by establishing whether the issue is an adaptive challenge or a technical problem decides the type of leadership needed for the challenge. Leadership typically involves direction setting, protection, employee orientation to role and place, control or conflict, and maintenance of norms Heifetz & Laurie. Adaptive leadership requires that the leader focus less on personal traits of leadership and focus more on effective leadership participation in order to gain a perspective view of the challenges through asking the right questions, addressing tough issues, and adapting to challenges through new learning, innovation, creativity, conflict, and loss which leads to deep change throughout the organization. ?

Developing a Learning Organization

Adaptive change requires leadership with the spirit of building and revising strategy when necessary. Leadership must be dedicated to building a continuous learning environment in order to have stronger more effective teams equipped to handle internal and external environmental demands. The organization’s ability to achieve competitive advantage lies in the knowledge and abilities of its talent. Without the proper talent in place organizations can not successfully move forward with strategy execution in an effective and efficient manner. Intellectual capital is an important component of effective strategy execution without the right mix of talent, effective strategy execution can not happen. The strategy involves having the right mix of people who are knowledgeable, engaged, and committed to the goals of the organization. These individuals are needed in order to craft effective and creative measures for achieving the organization’s goals and objectives as seem with the Attack of the Stratagem.

Due to the new competitive environmental landscapes, the challenges facing 21st-century organizations call for the right changes in order to maximize the opportunities to increase and maintain organizational success. Some changes will involve radical changes to the current landscape of the organization and its members. The radical change could involve organizational transformations, downsizings, restructuring, mergers, or globalization. The adaptive leadership model provides tools and strategies which leaders may use in order for effective change transition and maintenance.

Management of change

There are six principles described by Heifetz & Laurie, which can be used by leaders who want to organize teams to achieve adaptive work represents the leadership characteristics that an adaptive leader must consider during the management of change. The six principles of leading adaptive work are as follows:

(1)?Begins by getting on the balcony items this must be complete first before the next five principals

(2)?Identify the adaptive challenge – find the challenge and recognize its implications for the organization. Challenges typically causing the need for an adaptive strategy are organization transformation, re-engineering, efforts to reinvent the organization, new executive leadership, changes in products from the norm, change in business philosophy, external environmental demands as well as internal environmental demands.

(3)?Regulate distress by organizing problems and composing the process.

(4)?Maintain disciplined attention

(5)?Give the work back to people

(6)?Protect leadership from below

Also, leaders must lead in making the organization more consistent with human nature(O’Brien) enabling people to balance, the desire for continuity with the desire to be creative (Simon) and integrates conceptualizing the big picture and testing ideas in practice. Leaders are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their abilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models.

Adaptive Work Theory

The adaptive work theory lays the foundation for the process adaptive leaders take once they have identified the challenge. The three fundamental tasks of the leader are laid out in the diagram below.?

Adaptive Work Theory Fundamental Assumptions Diagram (Heifetz & Laurie, 1999)

The three fundamental assumptions details:

(1)?Create a holding environment by sequencing and pacing the work. Regulating new initiatives, balancing progress on change initiatives.

(2)?Adaptive leadership involves the leader have a core set of leadership responsibilities involving:

(a) Setting direction by first identifying the adaptive challenge then framing the questions and issues instead of defining the problem and providing solutions

(b) Providing protection not by shielding the organization from external pressures and threats but by allowing the organization to feel the external pressures within an acceptable range of comfort

(c) Orientation through challenging current roles yet challenging requests for new roles but not clarifying the roles and responsibilities as was the case in non-adaptive leadership models

(d) Managing conflict by exposing conflict or letting the conflict emerge as an opportunity to learn and build additional core competencies leading to innovative product and service solutions. Opting to manage conflict reduces the need to restore order utilizing non-adaptive leadership measures

(e) Shaping norms not by maintaining old norms challenging non-productive norms and encourage proactive norms which help with innovative solution processes.

(3)?The leader must have the emotional intelligence to withstand uncertainty, frustration, and anxiety yet have the presence and poise while having the capacity to tolerate indecision and change.

Adaptive work can be difficult due to the pressures on the manager to engage in business problems?and hold team members responsible for the tough work issues while remaining active during the work activity. Adaptive issues are not technical issues which are customarily the type of issues that can be handled from an authoritarian directive. Adaptive issues require experimentation and responsibility of those on the front line.

Assessing the State of Leadership

Quinn defined the fundamental state of leadership as the leader is a results-driven leader who goes beyond the familiar territories in order to pursue ambitious new outcomes. The leaders are internally directed with behaviors based on internal values. These leaders put the collective good first and are externally open to the demands of the environment recognizing when a change needs to be made. Adaptive leadership requires that leaders have the same type of fundamental values in order to address the adaptive challenges which the organization faces. The adaptive leader asks questions instead of directing staff they provide guidance through questioning. The adaptive leader has fundamental states of leadership practices that are core to their ability to make effective change happen. ?

Conclusion

In order to survive today’s business environment the collective goal and support of everyone within the organization must be adaptable, flexible, and ready to change. The old way of leadership within organizations required direction from the top compared to the new way of leadership which requires leadership throughout the organization and less formal leadership roles. The prevailing leadership roles must be able to lead with vision, design, implementation, building organizations, and inspiring.

Adaptive leadership requires the leader to channel the collective talents of the organization by using the bench strength of the collective team to address the questions and issues faced by the organization. Leadership is seen as a task for everyone within the organization and not just those with positional power. The adaptive leadership process involves simultaneous movement, coordinating, leadership, learning, and innovation. Change is an ongoing process and as such the adaptive leader understands the importance of combining experimentation and responsibility based on a view from above to achieve effective leadership measures for strategy execution for organizational survival. The creative, innovative, and transformational talent asset with options of possibilities. Remember, She’s the one with adaptive leadership qualities

Dr. Marilyn Carroll is a researcher, writer, entrepreneur, and business professor. She lives in Dallas, Texas. www.carrollbeck.com or carrollbecksecurity.com. Join Dr. Carroll for here Cocktails and Conversations 2022 Year of the Badass Women in Leadership Tour.