What Got Your Leaders Here, Won’t Get Them There: How to Develop Leaders Facing Adaptive Challenges

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Short Description

Leaders face increasingly unpredictable challenges for which past ways of thinking and acting do not suffice. Ronald Heifetz suggests that such challenges be described as adaptive, because defining and solving them requires significant learning, or adaptation. Workshop participants will explore how to overcome adaptive leadership challenges by using an immunity to change approach to work through a significant personal or professional challenge of their own, identify the underlying structure of their challenge, name the big assumptions that hold the challenge in place and block progress, and design learning experiments to begin overturning these assumptions.

Detailed Abstract

A defining feature of leadership in turbulent times is that leaders face increasingly unpredictable, novel challenges, which require new forms of thinking as well as new ways of acting. Ronald Heifetz (2002; 2009) suggests that such challenges be described as ‘adaptive’, because both the problem definition and the solution require significant learning, or adaptation.

Learning Outcomes

This workshop gives participants the opportunity to learn more about how to overcome adaptive leadership challenges by providing a rich experience in working through one of their own, in two stages:
• Investigating the underlying structure of their challenge, and identifying forces that aid and hinder progress (Learning for Problem Definition)
• Identifying the Big Assumptions that hold the challenge in place, and designing learning experiments to test the validity of these assumptions (Learning for Problem Solution)

A brief overview of how the time will be used

The workshop will introduce participants to Immunity to Change (ITC) Coaching, as pioneered by Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey (1982; 2009). This approach is rooted in adult constructive developmental theory (Kegan, 1982) which identifies the significantly different ways that adults make sense of the world and of themselves as they develop in mental complexity.

Over a whole coaching arc, the ITC process is designed to help leaders develop their mental and emotional complexity in order to meet a challenge which their current level of complexity leaves them ill-equipped to deal with.

This workshop will allow participants to experience the first step of that journey, which is to work on an overview ‘map’ of their current challenge and their responses to it. We think of this as an X-Ray looking beneath the surface of the challenge, identifying a participant’s behaviours, thoughts, feelings and assumptions, and the ways in which these have come together around the specific adaptive challenge in question.

An explanation of the interactive components

Participants will work in small, confidential, safe groups to support each other to use the ITC process to gain insights into their current challenge; the mind-set that is holding them in the place of that challenge; and the assumptions that lie behind the mind-set itself. We will guide participants through each stage of making their own ITC map, with peer and facilitator support, and we will work with two live examples in the room to help participants use the ITC approach most effectively.

The session will be highly interactive and participative throughout, using discussion; modelling; working with live examples in the room; individual reflection; and peer feedback and coaching as the main learning activities.

Development of new skills, techniques, or proficiencies

Participants will get the most from the session if they come with a personally significant adaptive challenge in mind which they are ready to work on. A good challenge to work on is one which involves a behavioural change which has proved difficult to make in the past (e.g. ‘I want to get better at delegating’ or ‘I want to become more open to other people’s ideas’).

We hope that once participants have been introduced to some of the core theories and practices of ITC adaptive coaching, they might wish to explore it to as a route to further their own development and/or as a tool to support leaders and organizations facing adaptive challenges.

If participants would like to read more about effective ways in which these approaches are being used to support individual and group adaptive development, we would refer them to Kegan and Lahey (2016 – see particularly Chapters 3 & 4) and Garvey Berger (2012 – see Chapters 4-6; & 2015 – see particularly Chapters 7 & 8).

Please note that the session will be facilitated by two certified ITC coaches.

Sub Unit

• Leadership Development

Presenters

• Neill Thew, Cru Leader Development

• Trevor Cousins, Cru Leader Development