• readings
The Humble Leader: file:///C:/Users/Ellen/Downloads/5027-humble-leadership.pdf
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Week Three Lectures

“Authority constrains leadership because in times of distress, people expect too much. They form inappropriate dependencies that isolate their authorities behind a mask of knowing. [The leadership role] is played badly if authorities reinforce dependency and delude themselves into thinking that they have the answers when they do not. Feeling pressured to know, they will surely come up with an answer, even if poorly tested, misleading, and wrong” (Heifetz, 1994).
Week three topics
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 Leadership strategies or interventions
 Leadership skills in organizational settings
 Adaptive Leadership
 Organizational Culture
Adaptive Leadership
The lecture for this week examines developing capacities for leadership in a post modern organization. As mentioned previously in the background of leadership theory; much that has been research about leadership has been the examination of leaders and how to develop the individual. Theories or approaches that are more recent acknowledge that leadership is a process, not a person. But what constitutes this process and how do we best provide leadership?
In Ron Heifetz and Donald Laurie’s article the “Real Work of Leadership” they suggest leadership has to do with the functions of identifying adaptive work versus technical challenges. Once an adaptive challenge is identified leadership begins to frame the issues and ask the difficult questions to the people that are impacted by the challenge and collectively can create a solution. This approach to leadership includes promoting a culture where leadership can be exercised by anyone that is connected to the purpose of the organization and does not need to come only from those with formal authority.
Perhaps because most organizations have long been seen through an understanding of mechanics (a result of a manufacturing economy) or a mechanistic metaphor, technical fixes or solutions are frequently applied to problems that require adaptive work with disastrous results. In other words when an adaptive challenge exists and a technical solution is administered there is no leadership.
An adaptive challenge is linked to values in that it identifies the gap between shared values that people hold and the actual realities of their lives. Conflict over values or strategy creates an adaptive challenge as well.
The following table can be helpful in determining adaptive challenges and differentiating them from technical ones:

Leader’s Responsibilities Type of Situation
Technical or Routine Adaptive
Direction Define problems and provide solutions Identify the adaptive challenge and frame key questions and issues
Protection Shield the organization from external threats Let the organization feel external pressures within a range it can stand
Orientation Clarify roles and responsibilities Challenge current roles and resist pressure to define new roles too quickly
Managing Conflict Restore order Expose conflict or let it emerge
Shaping Norms Maintain norms Challenge unproductive norms
Heifetz, R.A. & Laurie, D.L. (1997). The Work of Leadership, Harvard Business Review, Breakthrough Leadership. Vol. 79 #11
Organizational Culture
Organizational Culture includes the ways in which organizations create norms for behavior and construct meaning around symbols, rituals and events. Everyone discovers this when they are new to an organization or group and come to understand that this is the ways that things are done around here.
Organizational Culture is very powerful as it has an impact on behavior that is generally more significant than the incluence of authority. Leadership seeks to align organizational culture with the values and priorities of an organization. When these are not aligned organizations have a “disconnect” between what they say matters, versus what actually matters as supported by policy, reward systems and reinforcement.
Edgar Schein wrote Leadership and Organizational Culture which is a major contribution to the understanding of how culture operates in organizational life and the sub-cultures that are also created around units, geography or functions.
According to Schein (1992), culture makes a difference to what kind of approach leadership is needed:
• Different stages of an organization’s growth requires certain type of culture management
• Different issues need an understanding of dimensions of culture
Assumptions are introduced and reinforced by those that hold authority and influence therefore there is a need to understand how these mental models shape the organizational life. Schein suggests that those that provide leadership must be flexible and adaptable and develop the capacity to contain their own emotions but also to help contain the collective anxiety that comes with learning and change. He goes on to say that this ability to contain and manage anxiety may be the most significant thing that leadership can learn to do.
Consider this statement by Schein; In addition to being able to observe, understand and interpret the organizational culture and subcultures, leadership needs:
to be able to analyze the culture in sufficient detail to know which cultural assumptions can aid and which ones will hinder the fulfillment of the organizational mission and (2) to possess the intervention skills to make desired changes happen. (Schein, 1992, p. 442)
In summary these strategies and approaches require an understanding of leadership that is capable of processing multiple data points from patterns in the organization. This data is gathered as those providing leadership gain a “balcony view” as suggested by Heifetz and Laurie in order to look at patterns, organizational culture, emerging conflict patterns as well as adaptive challenges. These new skills and capacities are needed for organizations to thrive in a emerging globalized economy in a pluralistic society such as the united States.

Sample Solution