LEADERSHIP ON THE LINE: A SEMINAR BY RONALD A HEIFETZ

International Leadership Association Annual Conference
Seattle, Washington November, 2002

Summarized by Herb Rubenstein
CEO, Herb Rubenstein Consulting

Introduction

There are two completely different uses of the world leadership.

#1 = authority (which could include moral authority)

#2 = creator and fulfiller of opportunities

Leaders must know their target audience to be able to refashion allegiances. Martin Luther Kings’ primary audience was those who did not care about civil rights. He wanted to move the apathetic to his side. He never tried to convince those who were antagonistic to his point of view.

One measure of leadership is social domination. Some elements of social domination are characterological (either born, bred in or taught at a very early age). For example, we know that adaptive capacity is very important for leaders. Studies show that when we shake six week old babies – some get startled/terrified; while some are more adaptive and resilient and don’t cry or complain. Most children are in the middle of these two extremes.

Studies show that 10 to 15 years later, the most resilient babies, those with greater shock absorbent capacity become more socially dominant; while those who get scared more easily when shaken become shyer.Girls and boys have different social dominance hierarchies. Social dominance is measured by the child that gets the most attention. Attention is the currency. Socially dominant children are those who are looked to organize the games.

Leadership and Authority

People expect those in authority to know how to solve problems. This becomes problematic when no one knows the way to solve a problem (like drug abuse) and those in authority make up solutions which do not work and refuse to abandon wasting precious resources.
Authority is an amazing gift. Our job in life is to make social interaction feasible. Trusting relationships are sacred, without trust you get the disintegration of life. The down side to our move toward teamwork is a prevailing distrust of giving X person the authority to decide Y. Many people have been “violated” by those in authority. Once trust is violated, people withhold authority. Recovering people’s capacity to establish trusting relationships must be a key element of leadership.
Having one’s heart in the right place and the competence are the keys to leadership/trust. The services that people ask those in authority to provide, are quite primitive: food, clothing, health care, sanitation, transportation, security, protection orientation, order, resolve conflict, create/generate, enforce norms. These are routine problems. People in authority are supposed to provide direction and resources. Those in authority are those who can serve to organize resources to meet these basic needs.

When under environmental distress such as war, we want to see people in authority often, hear them and be assured by them that the problem is being handled. This is a primitive response.

Adaptive Problems

Adaptive problems are problems that we currently do not know how to fix. Adaptive problems are problems we cause by our behavior and to address them properly we must change our behavior significantly. This is not easy. It requires learning and discipline.

Failing to solve adaptive problems causes extinction. Species that do not know how to solve the problems faced in a new environment die off and often kill each other in the process.

Adaptive challenges are not the same as technical challenges and in every situation we must determine which element of a problem is an adaptive challenge and which is a technical challenge. Static environments and technological problems can do well with just authoritative expertise. Adaptive problems and changing environments need something more than authoritative expertise. They need adaptive leadership. Technical challenges can be met by a technical problem solving response. Technical problems are those that are already within our problem solving expertise; we have the known and tested procedures, norms, systems and methods to solve the problem. Technical problems are best handled by giving authority to the expert to implement a solution – no meetings are necessary, no learning need to take place. Just get the expert to fix the problem.

In order to resolve adaptive challenges people must learn new ways, behave in new ways, think in new ways and people change slowly. The problem in an adaptive challenge is that the problem is in the people and we must change the people to figure out how to solve the problem. Meetings, consultation and experimentation are appropriate for this type of problem. Confusing adaptive challenges with technical problems is a huge and costly mistake. Most problems come bundled – they are technical and adaptive. (obesity, health problems, for example.) Drug abuse is an adaptive problem. Government policy can only be a partial solution to adaptive problems, if government treats the problem with a technical focus, like the war on drugs.

We can not attack the drug problem by externalizing the enemy. S__ that the problem is “over there” will not work. Money wasted. In time of distress we look to people in authority to give answers.

What is precious and essential and what is expendable? How can I innovate, experiment to thrive in the new environment? These are the essential questions of adaptive leadership – taking from the history what is best and making a new, better life tomorrow. The process of figuring out what part of history to give up, what to keep, is very painful in a changing environment. Adaptive work is very hard and is often avoided by those in authority.

Defining Leadership

Heifetz’s definition of leadership is the activity of mobilizing adaptive work or meeting adaptive challenges. Routine or critical technical problem solving is the role of managers.

Leaders must reconceptualize the concept of trust to understand “leadership.” When society is faced with an adaptive challenge, people will trust you as a political leader more when you lie to them and say you can solve the problem. Unfortunately, when political leaders give followers a wrong, fake remedy it creates trust. Political leaders can’t say “I don’t know” because it means an abdication of authority. Telling the truth can cause a great loss of trust in today’s environment.
What kinds of challenges require authority? What kinds of challenges require adaptive leadership? These are the key questions of leadership.

Leaders must be present (physically) in a crisis. They must be poised, because leader must show whether the people should panic or not.

Leaders must be organizationally prepared.

When you develop, possess moral authority – you have people’s attention and you must use it or lose it; and after 9/11 no one, like Guillani began to ask the tough questions - - like “What did we do to create such a permissive context for terrorism?”

Conclusion

The key to fixing adaptive problems is that we must begin to realize “we” are part of the problem.

We need to admit that we do not know the solutions to the problem so that we will be willing to learn what we need to in order to begin to solve the problem. This is tough and maybe suicidal for politicians to admit that we do not know how to solve the problem and then tell us to look at ourselves and see how we can change as needed to address adaptive problems.

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