Adaptive Leadership Distinctions

Authority vs. Leadership

Authority is about providing orientation and direction, setting norms, resolving conflict and providing protection.

Leadership is mobilizing people to address their toughest problems. Leadership addresses problems that require people to move from a familiar but inadequate equilibrium-through disequilibrium-to a more adequate equilibrium.

Power vs. Progress

Power is the misdirection of resources spent to address “who has personal power, how much and how will they wield it?”

Progress is the activity of making progress on adaptive challenges that address swamp issues with less attention paid to the transactions of power and influence. Making progress on critical adaptive challenges becomes the basic measure of effective leadership.

Personality vs. Presence

Personality relates to charisma and traits of the individual personality.

Presence is the reflected skill that occurs with the shift from authority and technical problems to leadership and making progress on adaptive challenges. Thus the capacity to be present becomes a major factor in effective leadership: the quality of one’s capacity to be fully present, comprehend what is happening, hold steady in the field of action and make grounded choices regarding when and how to intervene with people in ways that make real progress.

Technical Problems vs. Adaptive Challenges

Technical problems (even though they maybe complex) can be solved with knowledge and procedures already in hand.

Adaptive Challenges require new learning, innovation and new patterns of behavior. Adaptive Challenges ask for more than changes in routine or preference. They call for changes of heart and mind-the transformation of long-standing habits and deeply held assumptions and values. (Heifetz 1994, 1997, 2002).