Advantages And Disadvantages Of Adaptive Leadership

The adaptive leadership model was designed to assist organizations and individuals in dealing with consequential changes in uncertain times, when no clear answers are forthcoming. Adaptive leaders identify and deal with systemic change, using techniques that confront the status quo and identify adaptive and technical challenges (Adaptive Leadership, n.d.).
There are many strengths associated to this form of leadership style. Adaptive leadership takes a process approach to the study of leadership in which it underscores that leadership is not a trait or characteristic of the leader, but rather a complex interactional event that occurs between leaders and followers in different situations. The second strength of this leadership style is that

There is unfortunately very little empirical research that has been conducted to test the claims of adaptive leadership theory even though the conceptual framework for this approach was set more than 20 years ago. Adaptive leadership is based on ideas and assumptions, but not on established research. Another weakness of this leadership style is that the process needs further refinement. Adaptive leadership was designed intentionally as a practical approach to leadership and is composed of a series of prescriptions about what leaders should do to help people engaged in adaptive work. The major factors in the adaptive process and the way these factors relate to one another to facilitate adaptive work are not clearly delineated. The third weakness is that it can be called out for is being too wide ranging and abstract. For example, the approach suggests that leaders should protect leadership voice from below, but it is difficult to interpret what these means. The last criticism of adaptive leadership is that it hints at but does not directly explain how adaptive leadership incorporates a moral dimension. This leadership style focuses on how people evolve and grow through change, but the way evolution of value leads to a greater common good is not fully explained (Northhouse, 2016). Overall, adaptive challenges are complex, multi-dimensional and difficult to

I have learned many years ago that there is no shame when admitting you’re wrong and that you need help. I would rather ask for help then do waste time, effort, and resources going about something the wrong way just to show I do not need others help. Lastly, adaptive leadership is reflexive of me because I understand how critical it is to set aside time to reflect. As individuals and especially as leaders, it is important for us to sit down and identify what we do well and where we fall short once we complete the assigned task. It is important to review what you excel at as a leader and where you need to improve upon to make you more successful. For example, I was the team lead in a group project at work where I was working with individuals from different age groups and different job titles. I thought it would be best to ask for everyone’s input to best complete this project and divide the assignments into individual sections. For working on this project, we were to meet every other day to ensure the assignment was completed on time. Eventually we finished the assignment and I sat down with the team to review our hard work and to seek input from their experience. This insight was extremely helpful for I learned that if we could meet virtually, this would have allowed people the time and effort spent commuting into work to use that valuable time to work on the