We all have our internal made-up stories about what should happen and what shouldn’t. What circumstances and outcomes are okay and which ones aren’t.
Heather, a young supervisor, early in her career, gets noticed and promoted more often and quickly than others, because she does a good job of controlling her area of accountability, just getting stuff done. She is smart, ambitious, and driven. She can be relied on.
As she moves up in the corporate world, her assigned tasks become more complex. More variables, more people, and functions involved. Controlling her new world is near impossible now. Her habit of always being in control, often doesn’t work like it did when work projects were simpler. Her world has become more interconnected. Her team of reports are a system operating within other systems, both inside and outside the organization, all randomly and unpredictably interacting with each other.
As smart and driven as she is, she now realizes she is no longer capable of controlling these more complex working environments and systems. She can no longer make what is supposed to happen, happen, through her own smarts, will, and agency.
Ironically, leading more complex change projects, requires a leader to often, let go of control, rather than trying to maintain control.
The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply outdated technical solutions to new adaptive challenges.
Ron Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
Applying historically successful technical solutions to a current challenge may now be outdated and inadequate. The attitude of “this shouldn’t happen” is not helpful. Forcing something through will not work. What is required is for the leader to determine how she and her team have to personally adapt to the current situation, regroup, in order to meet it and respond to it successfully. This requires Heather, and her now more senior team, to look in the mirror and shift their perspective on the situation. Reality happens on its own terms; not on ours.
A leader responding to a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) reality must develop the mindset that she and her team need to adapt and exploit the emerging potential of the present. The team needs to be mentally prepared to respond to whatever shows up in their world, from day to day, while still maintaining an intention for the future.
So, what emerges as a surprise in our work lives and environments, does not have to be held as a problem to be solved, something that shouldn’t have happened, that needs to be fixed. How does your team pay attention to what is happening, without judgement, without emotional reactivity, and out of the pause and silence craft and propose the right response? Rather than fruitlessly trying to force a change, how do WE change ourselves to best respond to the new conditions?
As a leader your silence creates a vacuum for the team to fill. The key is to pause with the change, stay present and keep listening what’s changed. The silence of holding steady is different from the silence of holding back.
Ron Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
Heather and her team just got hit with something unpredicted. They pause with collective quiet minds, egos, and bodies, staying in the moment, with reality. They listen to each other as they craft their response.
