Coaching practices for Adaptive Leadership with Friends

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Adaptive Leadership with Friends, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I lead a team and I’ve realized the people I lean on most are the ones who remind me of myself or are just easy to be around
  • 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
  • Where I come alive is in the human glue
  • I keep handing my team finished plans and then can’t understand why they nod along but never really own it
  • When I’m facing a big decision I realize I have no one wise and honest to think it through with

Practices that may help

  1. Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
    Adaptive leadership, developed by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky at Harvard, distinguishes between technical problems (solvable with existing expertise) and adaptive challenges (requiring people to change their values, beliefs, or habits). The core skill is resisting the pull to apply technical fixes to adaptive problems — and instead helping people do the hard work of change themselves.
  2. Manage LMX differentiation fairly as a leader
    Acknowledge that you develop different relationships with different people — and ensure the differences are earned, not arbitrary.
    Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical
  3. 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
  4. Lead from the relationship building domain — hold the team together
    People strong in relationship building are the glue that holds a team’s cohesion under pressure.
    Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical
  5. Invite clients or reports to contribute insight to your approach
    Asking someone you lead for their input increases their investment in the outcome.
    The Ben Franklin Effect, Made Practical
  6. Build a personal board of advisers
    Curate a small group of diverse, trusted people who know your work and challenge your thinking.
    Never Eat Alone: Building a Real Network
  7. 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
  8. Distribute leadership rather than centralizing it
    Develop leadership capacity throughout the team, not just in the designated leader.
    Transformational Leadership, Made Practical
  9. Leading from behind — the servant leader stance
    Influence others more through example, listening, and restraint than through assertion and command.
    The Tao Te Ching, Made Practical
  10. Lead from the strategic thinking domain — absorb and analyze information
    People strong in strategic thinking keep the team focused on what could be, not just what is.
    Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical

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