Exercising Leadership & Practicing Facilitation

1. Exercising Leadership & Practicing Facilitation • What is leadership? • What is not leadership? • What is facilitation? • What is not facilitation? • In what ways are they similar/different from one another? www.cambridge-leadership.com

2. Exercising Adaptive Leadership by: Ronald A. Heifetz Presented by: Diane Foucar-Szocki James Madison University Learning, Technology and Leadership Education www.cambridge-leadership.com

3. The Classic Error Treating Adaptive Challenges as if they were Technical Problems www.cambridge-leadership.com

4. Technical & Adaptive Work www.cambridge-leadership.com

5. Ten Properties of an Adaptive Challenge • The Challenge consists of a gap between aspirations and reality demanding responses outside the repertoire • Adaptive Work to narrow that gap requires difficult learning • The Learning involves distinguishing what’s precious and essential from what’s expendable, which involves loss www.cambridge-leadership.com

6. Ten Properties of an Adaptive Challenge • The Losses often involve learning to re-fashion loyalties and develop new competencies • Adaptive Work is value-laden; conservative as well as progressive • The People with the problem are the problem, and they are the solution • Problem-Solving Responsibility shifts to the stakeholders www.cambridge-leadership.com

7. Ten Properties of an Adaptive Challenge • Adaptive Work requires a longer time frame then technical work • Adaptive Work is experimental • Adaptive Challenges generate disequilibrium and avoidance www.cambridge-leadership.com

8. Adaptive or Technical? • Identify 1-3 challenges faced by you and/or your organization • Determine whether these are technical, adaptive, or both • Discuss the relative degree of difficulty associated with “managing” each www.cambridge-leadership.com

9. Work Avoidance Mechanisms • Organizations tend to avoid adaptive work • Common Pathway: • Diversion of responsibility or attention • Common Function: • Restore equilibrium and hold onto the past www.cambridge-leadership.com

10. Work Avoidance Mechanisms • Displace Responsibility • Externalize the enemy • Attack authority • Kill the messenger • Scapegoat www.cambridge-leadership.com

11. Work Avoidance Mechanisms • Distract Attention • Fake Remedies • Define the problem to fit your competence • Misuse of structural adjustments • Misuse of consultants, committees, and task forces • Denial • Sterile conflict: Proxy fights; No curiosity or creative engagement www.cambridge-leadership.com

12. Examples of Work Avoidance • Please give and discuss examples of work avoidance patterns that operate in your experience and/or organizational environment. www.cambridge-leadership.com

13. Technical Problem or Adaptive Challenge? www.cambridge-leadership.com

14. Authority • Resource and constraint on leadership • A contract for services • Formal or informal • Power entrusted for service • Power • Trust • Service www.cambridge-leadership.com

15. Trust • Predictability • Values • Competence www.cambridge-leadership.com

16. The Services of Authority • Direction • Protection • Order • Orientation to roles • Control of conflict • Norm Maintenance www.cambridge-leadership.com

17. Leadership with Authority www.cambridge-leadership.com

18. The Paradox of Trust • People will often trust you when you fulfill their expectations for service So what happens when you: • Raise questions or deliver information that conflicts with those expectations? • When you tell them what they may need to hear, but not what they want to hear? www.cambridge-leadership.com

19. Risking Trust Please give an example of a time when you should have told people what they needed to hear rather then what they wanted to hear. Please give an example of a time when you generated distrust by telling people what they needed to hear. www.cambridge-leadership.com

20. Leadership • Mobilizing adaptive work • Leadership is an activity • With or without authority • Not defined by personality traits, power, influence, or position www.cambridge-leadership.com

21. 4 Confusions of Leadership • Leadership = authority • Leadership = personality • Leadership = knowledge • Leadership = value-free www.cambridge-leadership.com

22. Leadership Tasks • Identify the Adaptive Challenge • Think Politically • Orchestrate the Conflict • Discipline Attention • Develop Responsibility • Regulate Disequilibrium • Infuse the Work with Meaning www.cambridge-leadership.com

23. The Politics of Leadership www.cambridge-leadership.com

24. Get on the Balcony • Distinguish Technical from Adaptive Work • Find Out Where People Are At • Listen to the Song Beneath the Words • Read the Authority Figure for Clues www.cambridge-leadership.com

25. Think Politically • Find Partners • Keep the Opposition Close • Accept Responsibility for Your Piece of the Mess • Acknowledge their Loss • Model the Behavior • Accept Casualties www.cambridge-leadership.com

26. Orchestrate the Conflict • Create a Holding Environment • Control the Temperature • Pace the Work • Show Them the Future www.cambridge-leadership.com

27. Give the Work Back • Take the Work Off Your Shoulders • Place the Work Where it Belongs • Make Your Interventions Short & Simple www.cambridge-leadership.com

28. Hold Steady • Take the Heat • Let the Issues Ripen • Focus Attention on the Issues www.cambridge-leadership.com

29. LEADERSHIP generates LEADERSHIP www.cambridge-leadership.com

30. LEADERSHIP IS DANGEROUS www.cambridge-leadership.com

31. The Heart of Danger • The Perils of Adaptive Change • Going Beyond Your Authority • At the Heart of Danger is Loss www.cambridge-leadership.com

32. The Faces of Danger • Marginalization • Diversion • Attack • Seduction www.cambridge-leadership.com

33. Manage Your Hungers • Power and Control • Affirmation and Importance • Intimacy and Delight www.cambridge-leadership.com

34. The Personal Challenge- Staying Alive • Get on the balcony • Use partners • Distinguish role from self • Listen • Manage your hungers • Anchor yourself • Preserve your sense of purpose www.cambridge-leadership.com

35. Anchor Yourself • Distinguish Role From Self • Don’t Confuse Allies With Confidantes • Keep a Sanctuary www.cambridge-leadership.com

36. Activity: Leadership Tasks • Instructions: At your table respond to the assigned question. Please document your answers on the flip chart. (10 minutes) • Identify the Adaptive Challenge • Proposition: People often confuse technical problems with adaptive challenges. • Identify 3-4 things you can use as indicators to identify an adaptive challenge. www.cambridge-leadership.com

37. Activity: Leadership Tasks • Instructions: At your table respond to the assigned question. Please document your answers on the flip chart. (10 minutes) • 2. The Politics of Change • Proposition: Adaptive learning is inherently political. • Identify the relevant parties to a recent strategic initiative. How are you asking each of them to experience a measure of loss, disloyalty, or incompetence? www.cambridge-leadership.com

38. Activity: Leadership Tasks • Instructions: At your table respond to the assigned question. Please document your answers on the flip chart. (10 minutes) • 3. Using Conflict • Proposition: Competing perspectives can become a source of creativity rather than a source of destructive conflict. • Identify 1-3 things you can do to make competing perspective become a source of creativity. www.cambridge-leadership.com

39. Activity: Leadership Tasks • Instructions: At your table respond to the assigned question. Please document your answers on the flip chart. (10 minutes) • 4. Maintain Disciplined Attention • Proposition: People often avoid adaptive work by diverting attention away from the issues that generate frustration and conflict • Identify 1-3 things you can do to help people maintain disciplined attention. www.cambridge-leadership.com

40. Activity: Leadership Tasks • Instructions: At your table respond to the assigned question. Please document your answers on the flip chart. (10 minutes) • 5. Develop Responsibility • Proposition: Leadership requires getting people to assume greater responsibility. • Identify 1-3 things you can do to give the work back to the people. www.cambridge-leadership.com

41. Activity: Leadership Tasks • Instructions: At your table respond to the assigned question. Please document your answers on the flip chart. (10 minutes) • 6. Regulate Disequilibrium • Proposition: Too much disequilibrium overwhelms, not enough stagnates. • Identify 1-3 things you can do to raise or lower the amount of disequilibrium in order to keep it within a productive range. www.cambridge-leadership.com

42. Activity: Leadership Tasks • Instructions: At your table respond to the assigned question. Please document your answers on the flip chart. (10 minutes) • 7. Infuse the Work with Meaning • Proposition: People need to feel committed to the work they’re doing. • Identify 1-3 things you can do to infuse work with meaning. www.cambridge-leadership.com

43. Losing Heart www.cambridge-leadership.com

44. Why Lead? • Love • The Form Doesn’t Matter • The Myth of Measurement www.cambridge-leadership.com