all right students we are going to be talking about adaptive leadership today and just as we kind of get going i want to remind you what i said at the very beginning when we were discussing sort of definitions of leadership i believe that leadership is not an academic theoretical discipline i believe it's a practice and at the end of this video we're going to make a shift on future videos and really start talking about the practice of leadership particularly in an apostolic family so the practice of apostolic leadership this theoretical background you might be listening and going it sounds like each one is sort of a disjointed theory and remember from the very beginning i said there are literally as many uh definitions of leadership uh as there are people defining it so it's it's it's not something that's theoretical it's something that's recognized as it's put into practice with that said we do want to have a basic kind of academic see where the the thought of leadership has evolved to before we shift to start discussing it in practice at the end of this video you're going to notice in your path too that i would like a just a very quick reflection post which of these theories if any and it's fine to say none but which of these theories may be resonated with you are there some pieces that you could pull as you put them into practice with regards to your leadership so without further ado we're going to look at the last of our kind of theoretical conceptualizations of leadership and it's called adaptive leadership just like we have in the prior videos we'll talk about what it is how it works strengths and weaknesses so what is adaptive leadership it's a follower-focused form of leadership and really it's we look at the behavior of the leader in relation to the work of the follower in the situations in which they find themselves at least that's what north house uh would describe it as adaptive leadership is about helping people change and adjust to new situations it was originally formulated by a a theorist named heiferts and the seminal work was in 1994 heiferd's book leadership without easy answers it's still very applicable to man what we're seeing globally today in some of your local contexts but essentially adaptive leadership conceptualizes the leader not as the one who solves the problems for people but rather is one who encourages others to do the problem solving so it's how leaders encourage people to adapt to face and to deal with problems and challenges and changes and it initially emerged from the medical field so imagine a kind of a stereotypical sort of adaptive leadership situation where the leader isn't solving the problem and producing the change but is helping create an environment whereby the followers or the people involved or under their influence can grow and solve the challenges that they have a typical situation that's emerged within the medical leadership or medical community would be maybe have a family member who needs to go to hospice care kind of end of life care now there are things that the leader the doctor the medical community people with expertise can advise in here are some ways that we can provide the best care maybe pain management etc etc there there is a an element of expertise that has to happen in those moments but the reality is the family that is going to be losing a family member their world is going to change and there's really nothing that the leader can do to do that change for them to to make the adaptations to life without a family member a leader can't do that for him that heavy work is the work of the the follower that's maybe under the care of the physician if we tried to use leader follower language but there are conditions and behaviors that the leader or the physician or the hospice care people can do and create that help facilitate the adaptation to a new way of living now we're obviously not working in medical care but we do have people in our churches and ministries that are going through a very similar thing and we can we can't do the heavy work that is going to be needed for those family members to deal with loss and grief but we can help facilitate and there's behaviors that leaders can take to help facilitate that if it's not somebody in you know grief or loss many of us have people in our churches and congregations or under our sphere of ministry that are undergoing a divorce and what we can do is facilitate and encourage and challenge and comfort and do certain behaviors as leaders that can help them navigate that difficult situation better but the work of adaptation to a new way of life falls with the the follower some of us have you know maybe somebody in our campus ministry that was an effective campus minister stepped right off you know being a student into campus ministry and now maybe three four five years in maybe they're starting a family but they're considering a career change the the the work of changing the career and everything it's going to mean to their family dynamic falls to the follower but there are things we can do as leaders and as their pastors and senior leaders to help to help them make those life changes better so essentially this is going to focus on the adaptations that are required of people in response to changing environments and gosh we all see this even from a global perspective with the global external environmental forces that weigh on our ministries uh we know that people are facing uh demographic factors and our ministries are facing demographic factors that are beyond our control and there's problems that occur even within our ministries as we grow and we see we can we can make the structural changes so our ministries can handle growth but the reality is growth creates problems for those that were leading that are you know maybe just uh the average person sitting in a pew that loved church the way it was and we have to create an environment where they can navigate a new larger church some of the people on our staffs or or in our church sites or having to grow their leadership and we can encourage them and we can create the right environment but growth causes even our leaders that are underneath us to have to expand and that work of adapting to the challenge that they're being presented with it's their work to do but as leaders there are behaviors we can take that make that adaptation more likely so this can be useful to help our people change it can be useful to help our people and our next year of leaders adapt to the increasing complexity that's brought up on by growth adaptive leadership explains how leaders encourage productive change across multiple levels how we can facilitate productive change in the self how we can facilitate productive change in teams how we can facilitate productive change in our organizations how we can facilitate and help people navigate change within even our community or our society which is there's global upheaval in our communities how do we help our people navigate and adapt to the changes that are in many ways being thrust upon them uh and perhaps they didn't choose for themselves so we're going to really focus in on the adaptations in this model of our followers not necessarily of us as leaders in 2009 heifers who's sort of the you know the big dog in this field in this model he defined adaptive leadership as and i quote the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive it's the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive so they are leader behaviors that encourage learning leader behaviors that encourage creativity leader behaviors that encourage adaptation by the followers in complex situations what you now see is a is heiferd's most recent model of adaptive leadership and you can see that it involves kind of three categories there are situational challenges there are leader behaviors and then there's the adaptive work let's take a look at the type of situational challenges first there are kind of really three types of situational challenges technical technical and adaptive and adaptive when we think of technical challenges which you see there on the left-hand column the technical challenges are problems that are they're clearly defined problems we have known solutions that can be implemented through the existing organizational procedures so things happen challenges happen but we can easily see what they are we can adapt to them by the means that we already have we use current know-how followers in this type of challenge typically look to the leader or look to the expert we're having a problem with our software it went down call the i.t department call them and they will specifically you know our sound equipment isn't working on a sunday get your sound team in there's an expert there's somebody that sort of knows how to diagnose that it's not an uncommon problem that we have the technical adaptive and this is where we're going to start to look now move into our leadership adaptive leadership model the technical adaptive these are challenges that are clearly defined a technical type challenge we can see what the problem is but you don't necessarily have the straightforward solutions in the existing organizational system so a leader can be a resource but the reality is everybody in the organization including the followers are going to have to learn and adapt so we don't just grab an expert and the expert solves it we don't know how to solve it yet the leader and the expert can be resources but the entire organization is now going to have to make an adapt adaptive move finally we see the adaptive situational challenges and the adaptive situational challenges is where there's this is really where adaptive leadership comes in and the problem is not clear-cut the problem is not easily identified and it's not solved solely with the leaders or experts authority or through the normal way of doing things again the family in hospice right how how does a family adapt to that i can ask an expert what i can expect but the reality is i will be moving through that life situation and having to adapt and there really is no good road map for the emotions that i might be feeling you can see in the middle column that there are leader behaviors so there are situations and then what does the leader do what do you do that can help facilitate adaptive change the ability to change along with the situation that's presenting itself six leader behaviors and when we're helping others confront difficult challenges these are the prescribed leader behaviors and their steps in that they'd run in chronological order uh but they probably many of them might be being done simultaneously it's not like when this step is finished move to the next some of them are happening at the same time but they they do flow in this order even though there might be overlap first one is what uh heifer says uh he he says get on the balcony and get on the balcony is simply a fancy way of saying step back from the fray like elevate your self and get some perspective so we're not in the nitty-gritty of solving the problem solely we sometimes step back and it's the job of the leader to sort of step back go up on the balcony overlook the whole dance floor and see the totality of what it is that's happening we step out we see the big picture and getting out on the balcony can involve maybe the behaviors of some quiet time some time of reflection maybe attending the meetings that are trying to problem solve the problem but really attending that more as just an observer as opposed to somebody who's involved in participating we don't dissociate from the problem we don't we don't duck the problem but we're engaged in it both as participant and observer we're not the problem solver we can go in and add our piece to the puzzle but then we step back and try to make sure we see the whole puzzle we need to see how issues primarily are affecting one another so as people are trying to solve problems we need to step back and see in solving the problem this way is it going to create unintended consequences so leader behavior one is to what eiford says get on the balcony leader behavior number two is to identify the adaptive challenge so the leader's primary job is to distinguish between technical challenges again a clearly defined problem with clearly defined solutions that we already have the resources for and adaptive challenges kind of foggy problems we know something's not right we know we got to fix something but it's going to require behaviors and and resources that we don't yet have right so we need to as leaders distinguish between those two and we recognize that adaptive challenges tend to push people's emotions and values because they require a new approach that's going to require change in people as they learn in the cope and people honestly generally don't like to change some of sort of the archetypes of these adaptive challenges is when we find a gap maybe between espoused values and behaviors where we say we believe one thing but it's actually not reflected in the values of the organization and now we want to get those two aligned do we change our values or do we change our behaviors right are we going to hold to what we say we believe and now modify our behavior to match it or do we really say the way we're behaving is actually what we believe and we'll modify our values some people have bought into both and to require or either or and to require change of our people is going to require really some some soul work and some hard work and some difficult emotional work the archetype number two would be people with competing commitments we have an organization that's doing two things that are actually working against one another and we have some people that really believe in either or of these commitments and we've got to help them work through it um our organizations our type three according to heifers would be speaking the unspeakable our organizations have some sacred cows i'll never forget a gigantic baptist church here in our community had a pastoral change right about the time we were planting our church and the new pastor was very very uh outreach oriented wanted to reach the community and one of the things that this church had done for decades was a gigantic christmas pageant and he came in and he said i don't know that the christmas pageant is fulfilling what we wanted to fulfill so they went a year or two years without it and let me tell you half the church was excited because they were using the resources to do something new and reach their community but there was tremendous backlash from the other half because this is a ch like they were invested in this and they remember their children being involved in it they remember coming to it as children with their parents and grandparents and and now it was creating some emotional change and the leader hadn't predicted the adaptive challenge as much as the technical challenge we can do away with that and institute something new but didn't realize what the newness was going to create by touching the sacred cow and then fourth uh work avoidance um there were some that rather than change will avoid doing the hard work that changes and when they don't address the change it's eventually going to create some bitterness it's eventually going to create some resentment in them that they're not willing to avoid so we want to create as leaders create the proper environment whereby our followers can address the adaptive challenges that they're facing third behavior is going to be we're going to regulate distress generally speaking people have a high psychological need for consistency um we like to believe things and have those beliefs hold up uh we like to have our attitudes affirmed we like our values when it's said that these are the right values we we like to have consistency and have those things remain the same and when they're challenged when my beliefs become confronted when what i hold valuable is being told we're not going to do it that way anymore when my attitude needs to be recalibrated that is very difficult and people who prefer predictability which honestly is most of us particularly on a beliefs and a value system it leads to feelings of distress and feelings of distress are normal with regards to those of us who are leading adaptive change when change is thrust upon our people it can create distress and we want to recognize that we want to be able to regulate that among our people one of the ways we're going to talk about doing that is is what heifer's called creating a holding environment an environment where it's okay to say i'm not good with this an environment where it's okay to say this is really challenging me and i'm struggling with it creating a safe space and a trusting healthy environment where we're not quick to just you know too bad get on board and there's a there's a time for that in our leadership but as people are wrestling through difficult chains that they're going to have to engage with they need the space to work through that and we've got to allow that in our environment we need to provide maybe direction we need to allow protection where people may not get there as quickly as we thought and they also don't need the added pressure if it might cost them their job as as they're in the process of processing and sorting through we need to help orient them we might have some conflict among our teams that we need to be able to manage and we need to point them to where we're eventually going cast vision and provide some productive norms but understand it's normal if there's distress as our people are being required to change fourth behaviors we need to maintain disciplined attention and this is where we're going to encourage our people to focus on the tough work at hand focus on the tough work that they need to do keep people from avoidance help them go we can't just put your head in your sand to pretend this isn't challenging and keep them focused on the challenge fifth one is going to give work back to people we are going to be empowering people this is your work to do this is your change to produce this is your adaptation to make the organization is shifting based on environmental factors this is the work you need to do and it's empowering actually it's confidence building in many ways it's dignifying because we're saying to our followers you can do it we believe you have what it takes to create the change that's needed for you to continue to be productive in what the organization is doing so you're going to let people know that you trust them to do the work of change and finally and this one's very important to leadership behavior for those of us leading through change is we need to protect leadership voices from below is how heifer says it i would say protect leadership voices from outside and here's what it means by that is we have to be open to ideas from the out group members there might be somebody at the lowest level of the organization that is experiencing change and they may have a creative way to go about it again adaptive changes or those changes and adaptive challenges or those challenges that we don't already have a road map for and those don't always come from top down sometimes it's the people on the ground going hey this might be the best way to navigate it and sometimes it's from those who are i think some of our best change ideas are going to come from those who typically offer disruption who are kind of on the outside who don't do it the way we all do it if this is the way we all do it and change is thrust on the organization if we're not careful we're gonna be subject to group think well how do we do it i don't know what do you think we're just gonna look at those who already have done it the way it's been done and honestly when change is thrust upon us when adaptation is needed we actually need to hear from those kind of outside disrupting voices the ones that are always going why do we always do it the way we've done it and it's kind of annoying because the reason we do it the way we do it is because it works and you're just disrupting the way it works but when the status quo has to be disrupted we have to now protect and bring value to those outside voices that sometimes might be disrupting i was consulting with a church one time that was pretty good size very stable but i was being brought in because they were very stagnant they were stay safe and they were stagnant and the reality is they could no longer bring themselves to change and because they were safe when outside voices were hired when disruptive people were added to their leadership team their voices were not valued were not protected and honestly they had been brought in to sort of shake things up but it was only a matter of time before they moved on to another ministry assignment because they weren't given the latitude to challenge the safety that this church had created and consequently they were stagnant everybody thought the same everybody valued the same now mission and vision are crucial and alignment is crucial but the reality is in times of change we have to protect some of those outside voices all right if you look at the model you can also see then once we have our situational challenges once we have our leader behaviors now we start to look at this idea of adaptive work and these are the the interactions between the leader and the follower in what's called the holding environment that that safe safe space so when we look at an adaptive work the focus and goal of adaptive leadership primarily is going to create the environment this holding environment whereby the adaptive work can be done holding environment is simply a space where people feel secure as they confront and resolve difficult life challenges you're going to give them the space where they can and the safety and the security where they can confront the difficult life challenges the difficult organizational challenges uh where they can test solutions uh without fear of failure where they can test solutions and process what that change is going to mean to them uh emotionally an an example of sort of a a holding environment would be example of maybe a fitness instructor right who is leading a class for people who have heart disease and need to lose weight the the fitness instructor cannot take the weight off of them the adaptive challenge that they're facing is that they have to do the the people in the class have to do the hard work of exercising to reduce weight to alleviate their heart disease but the fitness instructor is the one who creates the environment so they create the environment of here are the machines here are the workouts here's how we believe in you i'm going to keep you focused on the goal of long life and being alive for your children's wedding and seeing your grandchildren and being able to be out in the world like i'm gonna keep you focused on the goal i'm gonna provide sometimes challenge like hey you haven't been to class you need to get to this sometimes i'm gonna provide encouragement like okay it's okay that this workout was too hard but here's where we're going so i'm gonna create the environment and i'm gonna offer them the tools and i'm gonna provide support whether they can go about producing the change that they want to see the adaptive work belongs to the individual to create change in their own life but the environment is the job of leadership to create that so in many ways you and i are the fitness instructors you and i are the creators of the environment and the challengers and the encouragers to help people make the life change they need to uh for their own good so the instructor encourages the instructor challenges uh the instructor has the space where the people can learn uh where they can adapt where they can grow but ultimately the work of changing the lifestyle is the job of the follower or the patient or the client in this case when you're leading your church and you're staffed maybe you you might find yourselves leading a church plant and we can be like this is what's going to happen technically and we have all the books and all the manuals and all the models and we've done it before but the reality is your church and your staff are going to have to adapt to a team being sent out we're going to have to technically adapt the budget but we're going to have to adapt to relationships people that we've built with and people that we've worked with deciding they're going to grow go across town and we're gonna be excited and we're gonna celebrate them but we're gonna also feel the challenge of more work falling on our plate right or the church shrinking for a minute or people leaving our worship team and those that are being sent out are now going to face a new adaptive challenge they have the you know the the the the game plan to how to plant the church but the reality is they're going to get out there and face things that they didn't face in the sending church based on its size and strength and years they're going to have to get out there and figure out how do we get a bunch of people together that are coming into our environment for the first time and create a culture like that work has to be done by the scent team even though we can give them a model even though we can cheer them on and encourage them and challenge them their stuff they can only the change can only be felt by those who are out doing it and us in ascending church also have changes and challenges and adaptations we have to make by virtue of having sent them out what's it going to feel like i don't know until it happens we've sent out church plant teams and it feels different every time because it's different people going to that did different things in the sending church and had different relationships in the sending church and it affects the sending church a little bit differently every time we have to adapt and adjust while celebrating while keeping people focused on this is why we're doing it and the sending team has to adjust the scent team has to adjust because it's new for them it's a different group of people in a different environment there's things and principles we can give them but the reality is they have to be able to adapt all right that's what it is well how does it work um well it's been utilized honestly primarily in the healthcare system and it's working amazingly there because it's allowing physicians and hospitals to help patients there's a technical component to medicine and there's an adaptive component the technical here's the medication you have to take here's the surgery we did and then there's the back end where the patient has to adjust their lifestyle to the recovery process or they have to adapt to taking medication and rebuild it into their lifestyle so it's been utilized primarily there but it really makes a lot of sense for us in the church world because ultimately what are we trying to produce in those that we're leading not just in our tears of leaders but ultimately the lost person who walks into our ministry life change life change at its most foundational level what they believe what they value we're trying to have people become literally new creations and we have steps and we have four e's and we have the gospel and we have behaviors that we do but the reality is for the receiver of our ministry we're actually asking of them to to do incredibly challenging work of becoming a new person and yielding their lives and their beliefs and their thoughts and with that comes emotions on their part we need to create an environment where they can ask questions we need to create an environment where they can wrestle through these things we need to create environment that encourages them it is safe and da da that environment is your campus ministry that environment is your church that environment is the small group system right so we're creating these environments but the work being done of change and transformation falls back to the individual anyway that's kind of how it works and i think it's working very very effectively what are some of the strengths as we bring this lesson to a close well the strengths is that it emphasizes that legit leadership is a complex interactive process there's multiple dimensions to it there's multiple activities that need to take place it's not super clean cut which of these do i do kind of all at the same time how does that produce change well the change i can't make things change it is the other individual changing it's complex another strength is that adaptive leadership i think clearly describes leadership as actions that the leaders undertake to afford followers the best opportunity to do adaptive change work number three i think it describes how leaders can help people confront and adjust their values in order to adapt and thrive which by the way is what we do in kingdom work we're going to challenge them to evaluate their values and adjust their values and adapt their values so that they can thrive here in this life and be productive members of the kingdom of god a last strength i think is that it really highlights the important role of the environment in the leadership process we need to create healthy environments whereby our people can engage with the gospel and engage with other followers and take this journey effectively the environment we create matters the trust that we build in people matters all the prior models focusing on the leader and them as problem solvers and having good relational skills all of that matters so that the overall environment is healthy people can come in from a dirty world and swim in clean water and by virtue of that be changed and transformed and invite others into the process what are the weaknesses well from a leadership theoretical academic perspective uh it's a newer concept so there's not a ton of empirical evidence to support it um the second weakness is the conceptualizations i think need a little bit further refinement um we we can see some of the major factors and how they fit together but it's not super kind of delineated like do this than this than this it's just sort of kind of do these things and these things help create a proper environment that people can change but it's not as clean as maybe we would like in a discipleship model and lastly i think the breadth and the width of the prescription of adaptive leadership i think can be a little bit overwhelming like you might be finishing this and going okay i'm not totally sure like huh yeah and that's kind of where adaptive leadership sits now sort of huh like it's the breadth of it and the width of it so let me distill it down to this when people change by choice we're going to change jobs we're going to move to a new city there are technical components to it the practice of boxing up and buying a new home and there are adaptive things to it the adaptives are i don't know what it's going to feel like to leave these relationships i don't know how we're going to do integrating in new relationships i don't know how our children are going to do in this new environment so change creates technical and adaptive issues adaptive leadership prescribes for us as leaders ways that we can behave toward our people that will give them the best possible chance at making those adaptive behaviors changes that they need to be able to thrive when change is thrust upon all right i hope that makes sense uh you are gonna have now i want you to jump in sometime here in the next little bit before you move to the next series of videos uh to the post give us a quick couple thoughts on the post which of these most resonate with you uh from a theoretical perspective and now from here on out we're going to turn the corner we're going to start looking at the practice of apostolic leadership [Music]