Coaching practices for Adaptive Leadership After a Loss
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Adaptive Leadership After a Loss, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- When I push my team on the hard stuff they either shut down and start blaming each other or just nod and carry on as before
- I keep selling this change as a clear win and can’t understand why people are dragging their feet
- Everyone brings their problems to me to solve, I jump in and fix each one, and now I’m the bottleneck for everything while my people never grow
- I raised the hard truth nobody wanted to hear and now the whole pushback has turned on me
- When something goes wrong my first move is to find who dropped the ball, and when it goes well I quietly feel it was mostly me
Practices that may help
- Regulate the level of distress in the system
Keep productive pressure high enough to motivate change but low enough to prevent shutdown.
Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical - Name the loss the adaptive challenge requires
Explicitly acknowledge what people must give up — not just what they will gain.
Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical - Give the work back without abandoning people
Resist taking ownership of problems that belong to the people facing the adaptive challenge.
Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical - Hold steady when the system pushes back
Expect displacement, scapegoating, and pressure to return to the old equilibrium — and stay the course.
Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical - Look out the window for credit, in the mirror for blame
When things go well, credit others; when things go wrong, look at yourself first.
Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders - Apply the Stockdale Paradox to teams and leadership
As a leader or team member under pressure, model the simultaneous holding of faith and brutal facts — it is contagious in both directions.
The Stockdale Paradox, Made Practical - Distinguish your self from your role
Separate who you are from the authority position you occupy — your role takes the heat, not you.
Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical - Coaching — high direction and high support for the disillusioned learner
When early enthusiasm dips but skill is still forming, combine clear guidance with active encouragement.
Situational Leadership, Made Practical - Take extreme ownership
When the team fails, the leader looks first at what the leader did or failed to do.
Extreme Ownership, Made Practical - Recognize and recover from stage regression
A team that was Performing can drop back to Storming — and the recovery move is different from the original ascent.
Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
Related concerns
- Adaptive Leadership After A Setback
Expect displacement, scapegoating, and pressure to return to the old equilibrium — and stay the course.
Hold steady when the system pushes back
- Adaptive Leadership During Conflict
Competing — high assertive, low cooperative — is appropriate when the decision is urgent, high-stakes, and not open for debate.
Use Competing when speed or safety matters more than buy-in
- Adaptive Leadership When Burned Out
Maintain relationships and practices outside the organizational system that restore perspective and capacity.
Build sanctuaries for renewal outside the system
- Servant Leadership After A Loss
Accept the person fully even while refusing to accept poor performance.
Lead with empathy and acceptance
- Servant Leadership After A Setback
The aim is people who need you less over time, not more.
Build people’s autonomy and capability
- Situational Leadership After A Loss
When early enthusiasm dips but skill is still forming, combine clear guidance with active encouragement.
Coaching — high direction and high support for the disillusioned learner
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.