Leadership without Easy Answers by Ronald A Heifetz: A Book Review

Dr. Shalini Jebasingh, Leadership Scholar and Founder of Eirene Group, reviewing Ronald Heifetz’s "Leadership Without Easy Answers." This review explores how the SCRIBE Framework and value-based leadership can close the gap between current reality and adaptive change.

In the opening pages of his book, Heifetz (1994, p. 17) showed that age-old theories of leadership, such as the Trait, Situational, Contingency, and Transactional theories of leadership, may appear to be value-free, leaning only on the influence of the leader and his positional power. However, even in these approaches to leadership, both leaders and followers hold on to values – they are simply hidden from examination in the study of leadership. As leaders and followers hold on to values that are important to them, Heifetz introduced a new concept, “adaptive work,” in the practice of leadership. It is a concept that would enable leaders, with or without authority, to drive effective value-based change. Heifetz understood problems as a gap between circumstances and values and defined adaptive work as the work done to close the gap between reality and values (1994, p. 31). In this concept of adaptive work, he defined leadership as “taking action to clarify values” (1994, p. 35). 

While examining leadership with authority, Heifetz stated the difference between adaptive work and technical work. While the former is the dynamic closing of the gap between circumstances and values, technical work is simply the exercise of technical expertise to identify a problem and propose its solution (Heifetz, 1994, p. 75). Heifetz gave two examples, one from the medical field and another from the public domain, to illustrate the process of adaptive work and the learning that takes place for the leader who has authority and the follower in the process. Both examples involved crisis situations in which the leader and followers went through a learning curve before equilibrium was restored. Heifetz (1994, p. 105) also introduced the concept of a “holding environment,” or the manner in which the leader helps the followers to manage stress and generate work. In both examples, the followers looked to the leaders to exercise their authority to manage and relieve the pain they felt. The result was not the restoration of the old equilibrium but the formation of a new one.

Heifetz (1994, p. 134) illustrated the partnership between Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. that gave birth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to show the hand-in-hand workings of leadership with and without authority. While Johnson led the nation with authority, King led those desirous of equality in rights without authority. King’s lack of authority allowed him to be flexible in his decision-making, helped him focus on a single issue, and enabled him to obtain frontline information (Heifetz, 1994, p. 188). Not only King, but all leaders who lead without authority also have these advantages as they work with the public. Heifetz cited Gandhi and Sanger as examples of those who brought transformational change even though they led without authority.

Finally, towards the end of his book, Heifetz gave sound advice to those who, as leaders, seek to practice adaptive work. He reminded the leaders to practice compassion and to be keenly aware of when to push and when to let go while managing the holding environment. He also encouraged leaders to understand how stressful the problem is for followers and how resilient they are. A successful leader will understand the challenge he faces in adaptive work, help his followers manage their distress while they are in the holding environment, constantly draw their attention to the issue, and give them the task of finding a solution. In such an environment, a simple question that points to a problem may give birth to a leader.

Review

Collective leadership is an underlying function in Heifetz's concept of adaptive work. In this process, both the leader and the followers are active learners, moving towards a new equilibrium. The concept of the “holding environment” where leaders, be it doctors, lawyers, or public officers, can understand the amount of stress the followers can bear while moving towards an equilibrium has great value for practitioners, particularly to those who are in crisis situations. In the global economy today, this book will be applicable to leaders and citizens of nations like Egypt and Ukraine as they seek to raise their people toward a new equilibrium. Similarly, closer to home, the book holds value to church leaders, moral philosophers, and advocates of alternative lifestyles in the debate over the definition of marriage, end-of-life medical ethics, abortion, and other similar moral issues. Individuals who are interested in collective leadership and crisis management will greatly benefit from Heifetz’s book.

However, in more recent scholarship on leadership, there are some glaring weaknesses in Heifetz’s proposal for adaptive work. In all the real-life illustrations used by Heifetz, an examination of the followers showed that all followers were “Participants,” who participated in the processes of collective leadership, or “Activists” who were deeply committed to the task that they were willing to sacrifice their time, efforts, and money to achieve equilibrium (Kellerman, 2008, p. 92). Some like Malcolm X and Lafayette were “Diehards” (Heifetz, 1994, p. 222, 226; Kellerman, 2008, p. 92). In his collective leadership, as leaders engaged in adaptive work using a holding environment, Heifetz focused on followers who were either “Participants” or “Activists.”  While Lafayette was a Diehard follower engaged in moving towards an equilibrium with Martin Luther King Jr., it was a movement away from this equilibrium that was stirred by Malcom X. New scholarship is needed to examine how different types of followers, as classified by Kellerman, can engage in adaptive work. This will help leaders understand how to manage, and even engage, Diehards who are committed to the same cause but follow an antagonistic strategy.

At times, Heifetz used simplistic molds to describe the success or failure of adaptive work. Therefore, he simply observed that the Russians were unable to manage their power and freedom when Gorbachev introduced perestroika, as they were too dependent on the “old system”. However, if the citizens of other former communist countries, such as Poland and Romania, were able to adapt and thrive in their newfound democracy, is it possible that it was not a simple reliance on the old system that has prevented democracy from taking root in Russia? Could other underlying economic factors have prevented the establishment of a robust democratic system in Russia?

Conclusion

The human brain, with its wrinkled folds and ridges, has about 1011 neurons, and each neuron has 10³ connections (DeHaan & Johnson, 2003, p. 8), with the potential to perform 10¹⁵ operations per second (Horgan, 2008, p. 37). The human mind has an enormous capacity not only for computation but also for the creation of ideas. In the study of leadership, most leaders had ignored the untapped human potential in followers' hands. It is to Heifetz’s credit that he has understood leadership as a teacher who raises questions and then pushes through as the community, with its immense capacity for creativity, works towards a solution. As new knowledge has emerged in followership, personality theories, and neuroscience, there is ample opportunity to build on this pioneering idea of adaptive leadership.

References

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers.

De Haan M.  & Johnson M. H. (2003). Mechanisms and theories of brain development. In M. de Haan & M. H. Johnson (Eds.), The cognitive neuroscience of development (pp. 1–15). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Heifetz, R. A. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Horgan, J. (2008). The consciousness conundrum. IEEE Spectrum, 6, 6-41.

Kellerman, B. (2008). Followership: How followers are creating change and changing leaders. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Dr. Shalini Jebasingh is a trauma-informed Critical Stress Management Coach, Values-Based Organizational Trainer, Biblical Workplace and Leadership Scholar, Developer of the proprietary theoretical SCRIBE Framework for Critical Stress Management, Developer of the proprietary, research-based, validated Love in Leadership Assessment, Founder of Eirene Group, and Founder of Bible at Work.