1. Building Your Adaptive Leadership Skills
Prepared for FORHP Rural Health Network Planning Grantees
CRL Consulting is the Technical Assistance partner for the Network Planning Grantees.

2. Sustainable Network Core
Relationships
Vision and Charter
Mutual Trust
Agreement and Alignment
Able to have difficult conversations
One voice
Have each others’ back
Not project-focused
Safe environment for risk taking
Partners and Participants
Authority
Transparency
Front-line perspective
Confidentiality
Perspectives
Resources
Culture of Innovation
Knowledge
Assumes change is inevitable
Styles
Part of the organizational DNA
Leadership Structure
Distributed
Value learning together
Shared
“Deep and wide” involvement and accountability
Willingness to try new things
Sustainable
Network Core
Leadership is important for all domains of the Sustainable Network Model core.
The most effective leadership approach for sustaining networks working on complex health challenges is referred to as Adaptive Leadership.
These slides explore how adaptive leadership encourages the culture of inclusive, creative involvement where all perspectives and continuous innovation are valued.

3. Adaptive Leadership Leadership in the context of:
Collaboration not authority
Complex and actively changing health environment
Leadership is considered adaptive when:
partners don’t have authority over each other and leaders must work through the art of effective collaboration, and
the health issues being addressed in communities have many causes and shifting dynamics that require the ability to constantly assess and adapt strategies together,

4. Adaptive Leadership Qualities
Comfortable working with ambiguity
Connected to purpose - applies both “head” and “heart”
Constantly scanning and sense-making
Understands role and limitations of authoritative vs collaborative approaches
Experiments with smart risk-taking
Learns and adapts
Adapted from: Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, 2009
Qualities of an adaptive leader include:
Read bullets from slide

5. Technical vs. Adaptive Challenges Adapted from The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Heifetz, R et al
May be complex and critically important but problem is clear
Have known solutions
Can be resolved by applying current structures and procedures
Problem definition not clear
No set of known solutions, requires learning
Requires shared solutions among stakeholders = collaboration
Requires changes in peoples’/partners’ beliefs, habits and loyalties
Adaptive leaders also understand that not all problems are the same. Specifically, the distinction between those that are technical and those that are adaptive. While both technical and adaptive issues can be extremely complex and difficult to resolve, there are distinct differences.
Technical issues have a clear and known solution and can be resolved by applying know procedures. An example might be heart surgery which is extremely complicated but follows a protocol that is known by everyone in the operating room.
Adaptive problems are those where there is no one agreed upon solution. An example might be how to improve the health measures of a low-income, uninsured population.

6. Leadership As Fit Adaptive Leaders understand the importance of:
discerning technical from adaptive challenges, and
“fitting” their leadership approach to best support the stakeholders
Certain leadership capabilities may be a good “fit” in one situation and not sufficient to resolve challenges or make progress in another.

7. Leadership As “Fit” Adapted from “Leadership as Fit: A Tool to Assess Leadership Capacity”; Eoyang and Olson, 2016, Human Systems Dynamics Institute
Spectrum of leadership approaches from more authoritative to more collaborative
Effective leaders apply the right approach to the context = Fit
They co-evolve with the environment - structured and demanding when needed or more open to shared exploration when more appropriate
Context matters when it comes to leadership. The most successful leaders understand that different circumstances require different leadership capabilities.
In some situations, a leader is required to be authoritative and take control. Such a situation might be emergency management – when every minute matters and acting swiftly is crucial. This is one end of the leadership spectrum.
In opposition, the leadership skills required to start a new initiative with a rural health network are more collaborative and adaptive. Leaders in this situation must be able to balance differing perspectives and interests in order to find the right path forward. .

8. Network Leadership: Self and Situational Assessment Tool
Assessment tool for assessing natural and acquired adaptive leadership strengths and gaps
CRL Consultants, the Coaching Team for our Planning Grant, has provided us with the Network Leadership: Self and Situational Assessment Tool which can provide insights to each of our personal leadership capabilities.
You can use this tool to assess your own traditional and adaptive leadership capabilities.