I am reading "Leadership on the Line -- Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leadership" by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky in preparation for a National Fire Academy Leadership class that I am observing this weekend.
If you are looking to make a major change in your organization, this is a must-read. Adaptive Leadership is when you approach organizational leadership to create real change, which people don't tend to like, and therefore, try to eliminate you from their organization to prevent or stop the change.
An important concept to accomplish successful adaptve leadership is to think politically and develop partners in your cause. Particularly, partners who have the authority and commitment to help you accomplish your organizational change, especially members in the change.
Partners should be internal and external to your organization. Make sure that they are real partners, that they believe so much in what you are doing that they won't leave you when there is pressure to do so or when their other commitments take priority to your change.
Short-term leaders make the mistake of thinking that they have enough power or authority to lead without partners, that is usually their downfall and why they only stay in an organization for a short-term, even if their ideas of change are mandated and supported by their authorities.
I recently facilitated a multiple fire department team meeting. The team had MANY items that they wanted to cooperate on to produce cost-savings for their communities, but the monthly team meetings were not moving toward accomplishing their goals. It was time for a team review to align their collective intention by defining their mission, specific goals and objectives with completion timelines. Since they had so many items that they wanted to accomplish, I helped them prioritize and organize subgroups to work on projects in between their monthly meetings.
If your team is not accomplishing your team goals, take a regularly-scheduled meeting to review the following:
1 - Is every team member committed to the team and its goals?
2 - What are the team's goals (long-term and short-term)? Are individual goals different?
3 - How am I contributing to the team's success? What can I improve or change in myself?
4 - What has worked for the team in the past?
If your team is having trouble communicating effectively, an unbiased third-party facilitator, like myself, can help keep the conversation honest and productive. Please contact Rogers Consulting at www.RogersConsulting.us to discuss your organizational needs and develop customized training or coaching for your team to reach its best potential.
Have you ever been in a team that is actively meeting, communicating, working collectively and individually toward the team's goals, and yet the team is not moving forward in accomplishing the goal?
It is time for a team reality check. Ask questions to get honest answers from all team members (do this anonymously for newly-formed teams that have not established a high level of trust yet). The questions may include:
- What is our team goal?
- What is your intention toward the team?
- What effect are you having on the team?
- What adjustments can you personally make to align with the team goal?
- How do your past and future actions move away/toward the team goal?
- Do you or others have other goals that differ from the team goal?
- How has the team been more aligned in the past? What changed?
- What would make the team more aligned, combine individual intentions?
The purpose of this exercise is to get the team aligned in the same direction toward a collective goal. Often team members don't know why their team is not performing well together, or they may blame others -- which doesn't help align the team, but they can answer questions about themselves to be aware individually and to be accountable to the team to resolve their own issues.
Once this exercise is completed, agree as a team to start each team meeting by everyone stating his/her individual intended meeting outcome, align into one outcome and redirect any divergent intention during the meeting. This should keep the team intention aligned going forward and working toward accomplishing the team goal.
