Adaptive Leadership: responding to and recovering from failure

If I ask a leader what holds them back, they will tell me that they fear failure. The fear stops them trying something new, speaking up or going for what they want.

As a leader or facilitator, we can only encourage others to do something that we are prepared to do ourselves. Whether we call it ‘walking the talk’, ‘leading by example’ or ‘role modelling’ - when we want to encourage others’ growth we need to risk failure. Theirs and our own.

We all know how to fail. What we need to do better is respond and recover.

My most recent failure was when facilitating a group of 30 leaders.

As a facilitator I apply the Heifetz Adaptive Leadership process of Observe - Interpret -Intervene.

Observe

I observe what is going on with a group, what their energy is like, how engaged they are. To do this I take ‘a balcony perspective’ so I can see the bigger picture.

Interpret

Then I will interpret what I have observed - make some meaning from my observations. My interpretation in this instance was that the post lunch energy was low and that thinking had stagnated.

Intervene

I moved to an intervention - in this case I asked the group to get in touch with their bodies. I started to lead them in some self-massage with the intention of grounding them, to re-energise their problem solving. And then I noticed the look of horror on one leader’s face. She really was not engaging with the self-massage at all. As I looked around I could see that it wasn't just her. 80% of the group were not engaging with what I was proposing.

And so now I was back at the Observe part of the process. What I observed was discomfort. I had to adapt my intervention to get the desired outcome of grounding and energising the group – some simple stretching was much more effective.

So, when we ‘fail’ we need to respond and adapt interventions based on what we observe.

We talk about Leader Impact – being aware of the impact of our interventions and adjusting where necessary is key.

And so to recovery. I’m not sure I’ve totally nailed that one yet. As I get older I am much more forgiving of my ‘humanness’. I’m much less hard on myself when I fail. Part of the recovery is taking in the learning. I’m constantly learning to be aware of my impact. 

So go ahead and risk failing. Use the Adaptive process to increase your awareness and change tack when necessary.