Adaptive Leadership
Mobilizing for change and disrupting the status quo
Adaptive Leadership
Learn How To
Find the root cause of a stubborn and recurring challenge in your organization, team or community
Partner with people in positions of authority or power
Recognize your role in the challenge and use your own power to get to a solution
Lead adaptively amidst times of mistrust, resistance, conflict and distress
Course Syllabus
Learning Tools
4 reading guides highlighting case studies and examples
4 discussion guides to help you identify, analyze and craft an experiment for your own adaptive challenge
Video tutorials from Eric Martin
Section 1: Identify Your Leadership Challenge
Reading: Getting on the Balcony
Exercise: Getting on the Balcony
Exercise: The “Gap”
Reading: The “Gap” and the System Around It
Reading: The Illusion of the Broken System
Activity: Discussion
Activity: Frame Your Adaptive Challenge
Section 2: Think Politically to Mobilize Support
Video: Think Politically
Reading: Why “Thinking Politically”?
Exercise: Reflection
Reading: Practicing the VLL Framework
Exercise: Values, Loyalties, Losses
Reading: Stakeholder Categories (Factions)
Reading: Additional Resources
Activity: Faction Mapping
Activity: Engage with Your Map
Section 3: Distinguishing Technical and Adaptive Problems
Video: Technical and Adaptive Challenges
Reading: What’s the “Work”?
Reading: Technical vs. Adaptive Problems
Exercise: Technical vs. Adaptive Problems
Reading: Bundled Challenges
Reading: Unbundling Your Challenges
Activity: Reframing Your Challenge
Activity: Seek External Perspectives
Section 4: Adaptive Experiments
Video: An example of a courageous conversation
Reading: Experimenting Adaptively
Reading: Readying Yourself and Others
Reading: Orchestrating Disequilibrium
Reading: Avoiding Work Avoidance
Exercise: Productive Zone of Disequilibrium
Reading: Experiment and Take Smart Risks
Activity: Design Your Adaptive Experiment
Activity: Summary Deck
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Change your view of the world
Draw inspiration from thought-provoking readings, videos, and reflections.
Gain diverse perspectives
Learn with a team that brings different experiences and thinking to the table.
Receive a certificate of recognition
Attain a “Statement of Accomplishment” recognizing your successful completion of a course.
"I am a Certified Executive Coach and consultant working with leaders and organizations to create change. I'm already starting to think and behave differently in having hard conversations. Great tools to support key concepts.”
Lucille
Course Description
Have you ever struggled with a problem that will not go away, despite multiple attempts to solve it? Adaptive Leadership can help tackle problems where seemingly obvious solutions stubbornly persist or face unexpected resistance.
In this project-based course, you’ll identify a leadership challenge in your life and use the tools and techniques of Adaptive Leadership to make progress on it. The Adaptive Leadership approach was developed at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and equips people with the skills needed to lead change in times of uncertainty in an increasingly complex world.
Supported By
Adaptive Change Advisors (ACA) was founded by Eric Martin, who stewarded adaptive leadership from Harvard Kennedy School to real-world application. ACA seeks to “democratize leadership” – making it possible for anyone, anywhere to improve their livelihood by effectively mobilizing others.
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