by Jason Coady, LL’13, Director of Learning Research and Development, The Hill School (PA)
When I walked into the gcLi Leadership Lab in 2013, I had never heard of adaptive leadership and had no idea what it was. When I walked out six days later, I was still searching for its true application. I was curious, though, so I ordered Leadership without Easy Answers by Ronald Heifetz. When it arrived, I read the first few pages before setting it down on my desk where it got buried under a pile of other work. I found it a few months later and took the time to move it to a bookshelf before forgetting about it again. It was almost two years after that when I picked up the book and started reading it, and I’ve been kicking myself for letting those two years pass.
Adaptive leadership is a concept developed by Heifetz at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Heifetz looks at dilemmas people and organizations face and divides them into two categories: technical problems and adaptive challenges. Technical problems are those that an expert can solve, such as planning a soccer practice. Adaptive challenges are those for which there is a gap between one’s values and their reality, such as a player who is upset about being moved to a new position.
To plan the practice, the coach solves the technical problem by identifying team needs, finding appropriate drills, and writing the practice plan. To address the upset player, that same coach must lead by creating the conditions in which the player can understand the gap between her desires and her reality and can close the gap on her own. By recognizing it as an adaptive challenge and having conversations about both the player’s and the team’s needs, she enables the player to adjust her priorities and create a new understanding of her role that is aligned with those needs.
Looking at things through an adaptive leadership lens has given me a very different perspective on leadership and on student leadership development. I’m convinced it’s the best tool for helping students and colleagues understand leadership in many situations. I have found, though, that’s it very difficult to help people understand adaptive leadership without first-hand experience. There are many good examples in the book, but none compare to being in the middle of an adaptive challenge. I had a good fortune this fall to see an adaptive challenge from start to finish, and the teachable moments that arose have helped me rethink my own approach to teaching this topic.
The adaptive challenge our school faced arose when our Director of Residential Life decided to tackle a familiar issue for boarding schools: establishing a policy regarding technology use that promotes healthy sleeping habits. This has been an ongoing concern that we have addressed with mixed success in the past. He was determined to solve it, calling on the experience he had from his previous school, and we were all ready to support him. This, it turned out, was teachable moment number one: what happens when one treats an adaptive challenge as if it were a technical problem.
Approaching the technology issue as a technical problem, we met with our dorm residents to explain our concern and the changes we were going to implement. Had this truly been a technical problem, we would have answered some questions to clarify expectations and then moved ahead with implementation. Because this was actually an adaptive challenge, the response from the students was very different. Yes, there were questions, but they were broad, addressed both conceptual and practical concerns, and were raised with more than a little anger. This led to teachable moment number two: how to respond when you recognize a problem is actually an adaptive challenge.
Over the next twenty-four hours, more than forty students spoke to either the director or a dorm head about their concerns. With all this input, it became much easier for us to see and treat the challenge for what it was. After some discussion, we decided to challenge the students to address the problem themselves. We invited them to establish a small committee, investigate the issue, and develop proposals that might satisfy the school’s goals while addressing the students’ concerns. Given this freedom to address the challenge, the students responded beautifully. A group of six students met, talked to peers, debated, and developed a proposal. When they presented it to us, they blew us away with their thoughtfulness, their preparation, and their appreciation of the opportunity they’d been given. We had a great discussion with them, which led to teachable moment number three: in effective adaptive leadership, members of the group become adaptive leaders themselves.
Part of our discussion with the students focused on the need for ongoing education for all students about the role technology use can play in sleep disruptions. The students seized on this, offering to become the voice of this educative effort and help their peers adapt to the new reality they would be facing. In the following weeks, not only did the students roll out the policy and obtain buy-in from others, they became the group that determined how to handle violations of the policy. In the span of just three weeks, we had gone from addressing what we thought was a technical problem to having students become adaptive leaders.
At the end of my week at the gcLi Leadership Lab, Dr. Ted Fish posed a question to us all: “How do you teach leadership?” My response then was, “One conversation at a time.” I still believe that’s true, and my experience with adaptive leadership this fall reinforced that belief. Sometimes those conversations are about a student’s organizational skills, or how to run a meeting, or how to persuade others to join a project. Going forward, I expect that more of my conversations will focus on looking at something that’s happening or that a student wants, deciding together whether it’s technical or adaptive, and then supporting the student as he or she moves forward as a leader.
Jason Coady is the Director of Learning Research and Development, Student Leadership Programs Coordinator, and Dormitory Head at The Hill School in Pottstown, PA. He is a 2013 graduate of the gcLi Leadership Lab. His student leadership work focuses on integrating leadership development into all areas of school life and eliminating the connection between “title” and “leadership.” In his spare time, he cleans off his desk to see what other books might be buried there.