Fostering Adaptive Leadership in an Organization: Key Strategies
Commanders are responsible for fostering the principles of adaptive leadership within the organization. The idea of adaptive leadership is to react to a shift that affects the sector where a leader operates in a way that promotes sustainability and growth. The act of adapting to the needs of the context and situation entails foreseeing the changes and getting the supporters ready to ensure they can meet the task at hand. Adaptive leadership is crucial in the military when adopting novel approaches developed from experience since there are vague instructions on applying innovation.
The Assessment and Integration Phase in Leader Development
The leader development process features the assessment and the integration phases. Leaders have challenging developmental experiences during the assessment and integration stage of the process. At this stage, possibilities for education are integrated with organizational leadership demands and personal goals (Karlin, 2022). The subordinate’s existing competence level, such as their strengths and deficiencies, and individual growth objectives and aspirations are essential for determining specific requirements.
The Meaning-Making Phase: Developing Adaptive Leaders
The meaning-making phase is also essential in leader development, which is the basis for developing adaptive leaders. The second and more difficult stage of the leader’s development process, the meaning-making phase, starts after this initial step of creating experiences by matching requirements with possibilities for learning (Karlin, 2022). An interpretation of the occurrence is necessary to establish an individual’s comprehension of a situation. Meaning-making procedure calls for observation, criticism, conversation, and thought (Karlin, 2022). The army struggles with this, which contributes to the perception among many younger officers that the chain of command has neglected its growth requirements.
Illustrating Adaptive Leadership: Two Case Studies from AOC Lessons
It is possible to illustrate the significant concepts of adaptive leadership with the following examples from the case study “Darker Shades of Blue” for the L406 lesson. First, the commander is responsible for developing others and creating opportunities for developmental learning (Karlin, 2022). Experience is a vital component of adaptive leadership, and the commander must pay special attention to the changes from real work (Karlin, 2022).
For instance, if the official protocol of actions does not show effective results in actual combat, the commander’s responsibility is to implement necessary changes to the protocol and adapt it to the needs of soldiers (Karlin, 2022). The inability to follow the regulations leads to the death of the crew in “Darker Shades of Blue,” which supports the idea that the commander should follow the protocol to preserve the lives (Karlin, 2022). Though these rules do not apply to all situations, the experience should change the requirements for military actions.
The second example of adaptive leadership in the military is the commander’s duty to explain the process of meaning-making to soldiers and officers. It is essential for all people serving in the army to understand the reasons for their work and to have the ideological basis for their actions, as the case study “Darker Shades of Blue” shows (Karlin, 2022). The right words inspire soldiers and motivate them to overcome difficulties (Karlin, 2022). Therefore, when the commander understands the meanings behind the actions, they must explain them clearly to others, supporting the soldiers’ cause.
The ability of an adaptive leader to solve underlying issues that face the military in general and their group, in particular, is essential. Therefore, adaptive leaders must be accountable to the community they serve. The increasing severity of the issue is typically a sign of the leadership’s incompetence. Due to the gravity of the unavoidable problems in the army command, passive leaders do not hold significant positions in the organization or any particular team they serve. To effectively deal with all the unavoidable issues in daily life, the government must follow the rules of an adaptive leader.
Reference
Karlin, M. E. (2022). The inheritance: America’s military after two decades of war. Brookings Institution Press.