Learning to Lead

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A yellow post-it note with a light bulb draw on it, posted to a cork board

Photo by G. Crescoli on Unsplash

From September 2017 through May 2018, I was part of a group of leaders around my state as a Community Leadership Program participant. Together, my cohort of colleagues explored what it means to lead, build community, and inspire others. It was an intense 10 months of learning, unlearning, and discovery. When it was all over I thought I was ready to share, but I realized that I needed to take a step back and reflect on some of the things I’d learned while putting others into practice.

My colleagues came from a broad and inclusive spectrum of individuals ranging across age, ethnicity, gender. We also had different levels of experience and authority. Some of us were community leaders, others nonprofit executives or board members, others were government and business leaders. There were no lectures or projects in the program. We had group facilitators who helped guide the conversation and a set of guiding topics and the occasional reading to undertake.

Our learning model was experiential. We had collective goals as a group, but much of the learning that was personal. When working in the group, the pacing and space allowed us to not only talk about new skills, but also practice the techniques for ourselves. Sometimes, this led to answers to our questions right during a session. Other times it required a lot of soul-searching. Ultimately, it was up to us as a group and as individuals to craft the outcomes of our sessions.

So, what did I learn about leadership?

Our discussions centered around adaptive leadership. This style of leadership uses the process of observing, interpreting, and designing interventions to address adaptive challenges. Adaptive challenges are the complex problems where the parts are always in flux. These are the challenges requiring innovation and constant learning since even the way you attempt to tackle a problem can change it. Think about the type of complex problems that communities and individuals face like markets, any of the -isms, poverty, etc. These problems can’t be fixed all at once. The approach is gradual, but has deep and lasting impact.

To lead is demanding and complex. Whether leading comes from the top, or is born from the bottom, or the grassroots, there are steps that can help cultivate our ability to lead. I look forward to sharing the tools I learned over the next few blog posts and further explore ideas of leadership practice.

You can also follow along with some of the concepts I’ll discuss, by reading The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World by Ronald Heifetz. It is one of the texts that we used to guide discussions and is a great resource for learning more about adaptive leadership.

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