PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH
I was asked recently to speak on the topic of "Practical leadership approaches during uncertain times" at a webinar hosted by KCA University's Institute for Capacity Development (ICAD), and in preparing I thought immediately of the approach I have written about before in these columns: that of adaptive leadership.
It was Ron Heifetz, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, who co-developed the concepts of adaptive leadership, and I was introduced to them a few years ago when I was running leadership workshops through the World Bank for our deputy governors and for those managing a $500 million environmental improvement project the World Bank was funding in Nigeria.
I have been referring to aspects of adaptive leadership ever since, each time I engage with leaders in helping them deal with our VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world.
The second characteristic of adaptive leadership I mentioned in my talk deals with knowing how to keep people in the "productive zone".
In a recent issue of Time, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, surely a great example of adaptive leadership, revealed that his company has "gone through two years' worth of digital transformation in two months".
