Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
Lecture Notes
Chapter 11: Adaptive Leadership
Learning Objectives
11-2 Explain how adaptive leadership works.
11-4 Discuss the criticisms of adaptive leadership.
11-5 Recognize the applications of adaptive leadership.
Annotated Chapter Outline
I. Description
A. As the name of the approach implies, adaptive leadership is about how leaders
encourage people to adapt—to face and deal with problems, challenges, and changes.
i. Adaptations: Changes required of people to deal with changing environments.
B. Most writing on adaptive leadership has been prescriptive.
i. Based on anecdotal and observational data rather than rigorous scientific inquiry.
C. Rather than seeing the leader as a savior who solves problems for people, they
conceptualized the leader as one who plays the role of assisting people who need to
confront tough problems.
i. Leader challenges others to face difficult situations, providing them with the
space or opportunity they need to learn new ways of dealing with the inevitable
D. Adaptive Leadership Defined
i. Although seemingly leader-centered, in reality it is more follower centered.
a. Focuses primarily on how leaders help others adapt to challenges.
ii. Adaptive leadership: The practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges
and thrive.
iii. Adaptive leaders engage in activities that:
a. Mobilize.
b. Motivate.
iv. Additionally, may help others to explore and change their values.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
v. In short, adaptive leadership is the behavior of and the actions undertaken by
leaders to encourage others to address and resolve changes that are central in
their lives.
vi. Process of adaptive leadership incorporates ideas from four different
perspectives:
a. Systems perspective: Assumes many problems people face are actually
complex, multifaceted, and dynamically embedded in complicated
vii. Has also been conceptualized as an element or subset of complexity leadership
theory.
a. Complexity leadership theory: A framework designed to explain
leadership for organizations of the 21st century that concentrate on
II. A Model of Adaptive Leadership
A. Situational Challenges
i. Technical challenges involve problems in the workplace, community, or self that
are clearly defined, with known solutions that can be implemented through
existing organizational procedures.
a. Solvable with experts or those with a skill “repertoire.”
b. For technical challenges, people look to the leader for a solution, and
ii. When challenges have both technical and adaptive elements, they do not have
distinct, straightforward solutions within the existing organizational system.
a. The responsibility of tackling this type of challenge is shared between
iii. Adaptive challenges involve problems that are not clear-cut or easy to identify.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. Cannot be solved solely by the leader’s authority or expertise, or
B. Leader Behaviors
i. Six leader behaviors are pivotal to adaptive leadership, and act as general
prescriptions for leaders.
a. Although there is a general order, many of these behaviors overlap with
each other and should be demonstrated simultaneously.
ii. Get on the balcony: A metaphorical term that requires leaders to remove
themselves from the fray and find perspective on a challenging situation.
a. Enables a view of the big picture, where the noise, activity, and chaos of
d. Leader should not, however, dissociate entirely from the conflict.
iii. Identify the adaptive challenge: The process of analyzing and diagnosing a
challenge, including differentiating between technical and adaptive challenges.
a. Leadership failures often spring from diagnosis errors, and approaching
challenges with the wrong style of leadership is maladaptive.
iv. Regulate distress: The practice of maintaining consistency for individuals
uncertain or distressed by the process of change.
a. Challenge of helping others recognize the need for change, but
v. Maintain disciplined attention: The actions of a leader that encourage people to
focus on the tough work they need to do.
a. Avoidance behaviors such as ignoring, blaming problems on authorities,
blaming coworkers, attacking those attempting to address a problem,
and working hard in unrelated areas are common.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
vi. Give the work back to the people: Leaders provide needed direction and
structure to people in challenging situations, but they also want to participate in
problem-solving so leaders must be able to step back.
vii. Protect leadership voices from below: Adaptive leaders must be open to ideas
from people who are at the fringe, marginalized, or even deviant.
a. Tends to upset social equilibrium to give out-group members equal
viii. Archetypes of behaviors in need of change:
a. Archetype 1: Gap Between Espoused Values and Behavior.
b. Archetype 2: Competing Commitments.
ix. Three ways of maintaining productive stress levels:
a. Creation of a safe holding environment which nonetheless requires
confronting the problem.
x. Specific ways of managing uncertainty and distress:
a. Providing direction involves identifying the adaptive challenges that
others face and then framing these so they can be addressed.
b. Protection refers to a leader’s responsibility to manage the rate of
C. Adaptive Work
i. Adaptive work: Process toward which adaptive leaders direct their work.
a. Focus and intended goal of adaptive leadership.
ii. Holding environment: The place where adaptive work is conducted, real or
virtual.
iii. Followers: Individuals who are not the leader.
a. Often avoided due to its implication of a submissive and subordinate
role.
iv. In adaptive leadership, leaders do not use their authority to control others;
rather, leaders interact with people to help them do adaptive work.
III. How Does Adaptive Leadership Work?
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
A. Complex multidimensional process including situational challenges, leader behaviors,
and adaptive work.
i. Overriding focus: engaging individuals in adaptive work.
B. A short summary of adaptive leadership processes:
i. Step back.
ii. Initial assessment of challenges.
a. If technical: Address with authority and expertise.
b. If adaptive: Move on to leader behaviors to continue adaptive process.
C. Role of adaptive leadership in response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2019–2020:
i. Outbreak created a worldwide need for adaptive leadership.
ii. Decisions had to be made based on available data, which weren’t always
consistent, and information from many different spheres, including health care,
natural resource management, military planning, international development, and
humanitarian efforts.
iii. Collective ability to identify which interventions—or combination of
IV. Strengths
A. Unlike many other theories, takes a process approach to leadership study.
i. Underscores that leadership is not a trait or characteristic of the leader, but
rather a complex transactional event that occurs between leaders and followers
in different situations.
a. Highlights reciprocal influence between leaders and followers.
ii. Follower participation is an important component.
B. Unique due to a follower-centered approach.
i. Other-directed, stressing follower involvement and growth.
ii. Primary obligation is to provide interventions to enable progress and regulate
C. Directs authority to help followers deal with conflicting values that emerge in changing
organizational environments and social contexts.
i. Confronts head-on the inevitable changes and learning of organizational life.
ii. According to complexity theory, the requirement for adaptive leadership often
emerges from the tension between an organization’s need to innovate and its
need to produce.
D. Provides useful, direct, and practical prescriptive approach.
i. Suggests that followers should learn to adapt and leaders should set up a context
where this is most likely to occur.
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
ii. Describes the kind of work (i.e., technical or adaptive) that followers should
E. Prescriptive approach becomes more valuable as organizations are faced with increasing
levels of disruptive change that challenge organizational structures, and they must
develop an adaptive response to address these challenges.
F. Contributes the valuable construct of a holding environment to leadership studies.
i. Few leadership theories discuss how leaders are responsible for creating a safe
V. Criticisms
A. Little empirical research supports the model.
i. Originally intended as a practical framework.
ii. Preliminary research is promising but remains in its infancy.
B. Concept requires more refinement.
i. Adaptive leadership was designed intentionally as a practical approach to
leadership and is composed of a series of prescriptions for leaders to help people
engage in adaptive work.
C. Too wide-ranging and abstract.
i. Interpreting these prescriptions and their relationship to being an adaptive
leader can be overwhelming because of the breadth and wide-ranging nature of
these prescriptions.
D. Uncomfortable for followers due to its emphasis on conflict.
i. Concept of holding pattern is central, but difficult to enforce.
a. Those who question the leadership may be penalized for their views.
ii. The theory needs to address how to guard against manipulation by an autocratic
leader.
E. Framework does not directly explain how adaptive leadership incorporates a moral
dimension.
i. Focus on growth and evolution implies the evolution to a greater good, but does
not fully explicate the path to a greater common good.
VI. Application
A. On the individual level:
Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Adaptive leadership provides a conceptual framework made up of a unique set of
ii. Widely applicable.
B. On the organizational level:
i. Can be used as a model to explain and address a variety of challenges that are
ever present during change and growth.
ii. Applicable at any level in any organizational type.
C. Most widely researched in healthcare.
i. Research contends that health professionals who practice from an adaptive
leadership perspective would view patients as complex adaptive systems who
face both technical and adaptive challenges.
ii. Physicians also need adaptive skills that will enable them to help patients process
and learn to live with the challenges resulting from changes in their health and
well-being.
iii. Adaptive leadership can be used to help patients and family members confront
health care challenges.
iv. Useful particularly for family members of patients in hospital intensive care units.
a. Assists in coming to terms with loss and change and making decisions
consistent with the patient’s goals.