The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Book)
Ronald A. Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, Marty Linsky, Authors.  Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2009.

Congregations—like other communities and organizations—face challenging situations regularly. Many challenges have a clear definition along with an obvious solution. Others, however, have uncertain origins and call for difficult choices. Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky describe these latter challenges as "adaptive"; they require people to change their habits, make tough choices, and tolerate both ambiguity and uncertainty. Such requirements can cause anxiety, leading people to avoid adaptive challenges or—worse—promote quick but facile solutions to complex problems.

The authors believe that organizations and communities need adaptive leadership—"the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive." They wrote their field book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, to assist leaders in addressing adaptive challenges.

The book is organized into five parts. The first section provides the theoretical framework for leadership needed to address adaptive challenges. The remaining four sections address what the authors call "essential practices of adaptive leadership." These practices include diagnosing the system, mobilizing it, seeing oneself as a system, and deploying oneself. Each section includes definitions, descriptive ideas, and illustrative stories, followed by opportunities for personal reflection and low-risk exercises for the reader to use with organizations or communities.

Congregational leaders seeking to address adaptive challenges within their communities will find this book extremely helpful.

Average Customer Rating: Not yet rated
Rate this resource and share your thoughts.

Return to category listing

See also these resources:

Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Book)
Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, Authors.  Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.
Congregational leaders will find the skills to implement adaptive change: gaining perspective, developing allies, allowing issues to ripen, controlling the heat of conflict, and giving the work back to those who must make the change.

Leadership Without Easy Answers (Book)
Ronald A. Heifetz, Author.  Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994.
The book offers key distinctions regarding leadership and works through them in theoretical and practical ways. Although not aimed at religious leaders, it will be useful to them.