The root of the English word leadership is leith. It means to go forth, to cross the threshold, or, simply, to die. Not the most appealing of adverts to attract leaders but one that maybe should be incorporated into any serious discussion on what it takes to lead in the new world of work.
I’m reminded of the advert explorer Ernest Shackleton placed in the London Times in 1914 to recruit people for a voyage to the South Pole. It read: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” Of course the story of how Shackleton got every one of his men out safely having had to abort his mission, is the stuff of leadership legend. Increasingly leaders brave enough to lead into the future will be required to do so without a roadmap, guarantees and perhaps under the banner, ‘Safe Return Doubtful’.
Adaptive leadership requires toleration of ambiguity and uncertainty. It requires the capacity to allow for failure and a sense of incompetence. It requires not knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. This all represents an entirely new conversation and approach to leadership. In my experience most business schools fail in their embrace of what this means, sticking to the safer and more familiar terrain that is leadership education / development. Leadership programmes that embrace this new understanding of leadership will look fundamentally different to those which currently dominate this lucrative space. They will come to understand the classroom as not the place where content is delivered, but rather the place where the content is facilitated, examined and discussed; they will come to value process over programmes; questions over answers; chaos over order; influence over control and value over measurement.
And this will happen. It has to if we are to lead effectively in the new world of work. Current leadership models and practice will need to die and in the end, death of these entrenched models, is inevitable. Real leadership, Ron Heifetz suggests, involves helping people face reality and mobilizing them to make progress on their toughest challenges. This takes time and invariably provokes resistance. Adaptive change is always painful because it involves loss, giving up something. As an aside, the heart of adaptive work is actually conservation, but this is seldom recognized. Effective teaching of this will necessitate a different approach and conversation.
Adaptive change “stimulates resistance because it challenges people’s habits, beliefs and values. It asks them to take a loss, experience uncertainty, and even express disloyalty. Because adaptive change forces people to question and perhaps redefine aspects of their identity, it also challenges their sense of competence. Loss, disloyalty and feeling incompetent. That’s a lot to ask. No wonder”, Heifetz says, “people resist.” You are, after all, asking them to cross the threshold.
In all leadership situations there are those who are for you, those who are against you, and those who simply don’t care. Heifetz’s second book is titled, ‘Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading’.
