About the Series
At Change Matrix, we have been practicing training in, coaching around, and incorporating into our work adaptive leadership for the last 25 years. Based largely on the work of Ron Heifetz and Martin Linsky, we feel this practice is an especially equitable type leadership. We wanted to create this particularly timely podcast series to share what we have learned about and are learning as adaptive leaders. Learn more about the inception of the Living Adaptive Leadership series.
What We Discuss in this Episode
Change Matrix Founding Partner Elizabeth Waetzig is joined by colleagues Monica Caldwell and Scott Caldwell to discuss adaptive leadership amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a time of unforeseen change and uncertainty. The three discuss key concepts and guideposts of adaptive leadership, particularly how it has supported their work at a nonprofit that provides medical services and providing consultation to provider organizations through the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, respectively.
Transcript of the Conversation:
Elizabeth
We are gathered together today to talk a little bit about adaptive leadership at a time of unforeseen change and challenge. And my name is Elizabeth Waetzig, I am joined by Monica and Scott Caldwell who will introduce themselves in a moment. I am a Founding Partner at Change Matrix. We’ve been doing work in Adaptive Leadership for 20 years. We have read all of the Heifetz books, we have been practitioners as leaders, and we’ve also done a lot of coaching and training for leaders in Human Services, in education, and mental health in systems and communities who are working hard to bring about complex change so that the lives of children and families within their communities can be better.
So, we’re very excited to be talking with two of those leaders today! And I would love to kick it off to Monica to introduce herself who can then kick it back to Scott to introduce himself.
Monica
Hi there my name is Monica Caldwell and I am the director of mental health programs at a smallish nonprofit called rise I’ve been in this role for about 10 months so I’m a new leader in that organization I come from an opportunity to have been coached in adaptive leadership by Elizabeth and change matrix for a period of five years on a federal grant that I was working on so I’m looking forward to talking to you about how adaptive leadership has continued beyond my coaching in state service to this local nonprofit I’m working for. Scott?
Scott
Well it’s great to be with you Elizabeth. And I am with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and I do consultation with provider organizations in Human Services in forming, and adopting, and implementing evidence-based practice. And my main area of consultation is in the evidence-based practice called Motivational Interviewing. I happen to be a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. And as part of my work as a consultant, an external consultant with provider organizations, I work with agency-level implementation teams – so teams that are designated to do the work of implementation – and part of that is doing one to one coaching with leaders in those organizations.
Leaders are often on the implementation team as well, so I do kind of team-based leadership work, and then one to one-based days the leadership work. And adaptive leadership is actually a driver it is a critical driver of successful implementation. Which look forward to getting into and elaborating on during this conversation.
Elizabeth
Great, thanks, Scott and Monica!
I’ve been excited about this conversation. I’ve been excited about adaptive leadership for a long time, specifically within the context of different theories of leadership. There are so many books, and articles, and ways of thinking about leadership. One of the things that strikes me is that a lot of those books and theories and articles really focus on the leader as an individual, who has the responsibility on their own shoulders for guiding others through change.
What I love about adaptive leadership, is that Heifetz talks about the work defining what kind of leader you need to be. So if the work is something that is not really well defined, that people with different values and beliefs can come together and may not completely be able to define what’s going on or what needs to happen, that coming together as a collective group to lead through change is a hallmark of adaptive leadership.
He’s laid out a number of steps and one of them is “getting on the balcony” and it’s hard for leaders these days to get beyond their day-to-day work and get up on a balcony, take a look around, think about the context, think about where partners, and look at the trends. And so Heifetz talks about getting on the balcony as a way for leaders to get beyond that day-to-day to consider the context and consider what’s the work
He also talks really specifically about the holding environment. What I love about the holding environment is that it requires that other people come into it with diverse voices, who can contribute to the work, who can identify the kind of work we’re talking about. So, in the language of leadership, without easy answers or the practice of adaptive leadership, he might talk about engaging others in the work with you. Protecting or making sure we’re including diverse voices.
One of the things that I think is a real hallmark of adaptive leadership is that it’s not going to be easy, that there will be distress and managing that distress so that it doesn’t get too overwhelming for the group to move forward. But it’s also recognized an embraced, because it’s never going to be comfortable or easy to engage in true adaptive change.
Then he talks a little bit about stepping into the void and taking risks and maintaining a focus maintaining disciplined attention on the work as it moves forward. This has been a journey a personal journey for me and I know it has for others it’s we think about ourselves as leaders, and by that I mean anybody who’s doing work who thinks change is important is a leader, not just the formal authorized titled leader, but anybody who is in a community or in an organization can lead.
So I’ve thought about this a lot and the work that it’s taken to think adaptively as a leader in the current situation we find ourselves in in 2020 with the coronavirus changing the way that we work, changing the way that we interact with one another, changing the way that we serve.
I wanted to talk a little bit with Monica and Scott about their adaptive leadership journey and the way that this crisis has called on them to think about what’s important to hold on to and what may have to change as we think about leading in the days of COVID.
Monica
So as a leader in a nonprofit that does medical services, we are also making those adaptations to telehealth. I think that the two essential questions, Elizabeth, that you brought up, have grounded at least my reflections on adaptive leadership. Related to what are the essential elements that have to stay in place? Our values, Our competencies, Our identity. And What is it that we’re going to have to adapt in order survive and thrive?
What I’m noticing in the COVID context, is that with this urgency that we’re experiencing, a lot of the leaders that I’m working with and staff feel almost constricted. They’re moving very quickly, they want to check box of answers, they want to know how to do electronic signatures, or a zoom platform, and those are the technical things. And so we’ve had to slow down to adapt and think about the values, the attitudes, the beliefs, the skills that are going to be required to be with people virtually – whether it’s a psychotherapy session or a meeting – we’ve had to reflect on our values, and whether we’re able to, in the tension of this environment, get to those collective solutions we know are most valuable.
Elizabeth
You know, I think you said a really important thing. Actually, two things that are distinct from one another: you talked about urgency, and you talked about slowing down. And things needed to change quickly when we all were told we had to stay at home. And it sounds like the inclination was to shift, and make decisions, and make changes in a very urgent way.
But Monica, you talk a little bit about slowing down. And I’m curious how you managed the distinction or the tension between needing to make things change quickly, with urgency; and slowing down to make sure that you were aligning with your values and your beliefs. And most importantly, it sounds like, making sure that you provided space for everyone to have that conversation, to be in that space of: What are my values? What do I believe? And how does my practice align with that?
Monica
One of the core adaptive questions that is useful as is “What do people stand to lose in this transition to a COVID environment?” And you know, what they’re afraid of losing is their jobs. So when I think about the biggest challenge I’ve had as a leader, is trying to figure out who’s going to stay working, and who’s going to have to be laid off, or do we need to be thinking about family medical leave, or can we continue to afford payroll? And because we’re an agency that small, that is used to very collaborative decision making, I saw people moving very quickly to “What is this act that is passed going to mean for us?” “Do we have to adjust payroll?” “Do we have to make those decisions now?”
And so, some of us were saying you know what, let’s pause. Let’s stop and wait until we have sufficient information. Are we really thinking about the impact across the organization if we make those decisions to move to layoffs, or unemployment, or those kinds of things. And so, by slowing down we were able to decide and get more information to keep everybody fully engaged in our payroll, so that while we were making the adaptations to the virtual environment, we had the time to pause and to think about what would be required to support people to do that. And so, so far we’ve been able to retain our whole staff, but that was the one where I was seeing a lot of urgency. And the impact on people’s lives was tremendous.
Elizabeth
Thank you for that. Scott, I’m sort of wondering how that tension may have shown up for you, as your coaching state leaders in best practices and other that show up for you in your consultative work with leaders?
Scott
It’s shown up a number of ways. Just to extend what Monica was describing, it’s one of the foundations of adaptive leadership. For leaders to recognize the adaptive work to work of change and differentiate that from the technical problem solving.
In my observations with a handful of organizations that I’ve been in contact with, right through this crisis, I’m hearing from the implementation teams that I’m working with and the leaders that I’m working with, is that, what they are getting handed down from kind of their senior leadership level are list of things to do, protocols, procedural changes, policy changes, are all coming down from high, with the message “Just do it.”
And the adaptive work means OK, wait, hold on a second, let’s slow down. We’ve got to understand the staff’s perspectives on the nature of the work.
So for example, telehealth, there’s all kinds of technical aspects or provider to shift from how they’ve been doing business for the entire time that they had a career in Human Services to this new way of working. To not understand, to not take time out… The adaptive leadership perspective is to take the time out and to understand what staff experiences are, what their perspectives are.
Come to find, Elizabeth, is that there is a lot of distress. So it’s not just differentiating adaptive from technical work, but it’s also understanding the distress involved. And there’s so much ambient distress right now in the context of COVID-19.
What I have been guiding is stick with the distress. When you interact with your staff, just find out how they’re doing. And like you were describing, that holding environment create a mini holding environment, if you’re interacting with a team of staff, if you’re interacting with individual employees, take time out to find out how the person is doing; to engage, to connect, and to really understand the personal emotions involved in the larger professional context.
I think that is something that adaptive leadership really offers in this time of crisis right now, is to pay attention to the personal emotions that people are bringing in. To not be too down the rabbit hole of the technical policies, procedures, and protocols.
Elizabeth
That is so helpful. What I think I’m hearing from both of you is that in this environment where the tendency is to get urgent drives our tendency to get really technical, and if you are not at the very top of leadership, you may be subject to technical responses maybe based in fear, that are being handed down, so that – assuming that people will act on that – you two are seeing the distinction between the adaptive work or the need for the adaptive work within that technical response to chaos, to fear, that feeling like leading in the moment too.
Elizabeth
I’m wondering if one of you has a story or an example of how the adaptive leadership model or particular skills have been useful to you as you are working with either state leaders or consulting with or other leaders in your organization? Who are seeing things through that technical lens? Who are succumbing maybe to the urge to make decisions quickly? How have you used the adaptive leadership modeler skills to help them see the adaptive path?
Scott
Well here’s a quick story from my perspective. This just happened last week: I had a scheduled call with a supervisor of one of the agencies with which consulting. We had developed the agenda over email, and I called right at the scheduled time, and we’re going to have one hour to do a consultation call with this supervisor.
She answered the phone and she’s in tears. and what adaptive leadership taught me was to just be there with her in the emotions and so again I go back to that holding environment concept I created a mini holding environment right there on the phone she had just heard from her senior leadership what she perceived as it is very judgmental very harsh very kind of authoritarian like you’re not measuring up you need to do more of course senior leadership is in crisis and just kind of putting that on this supervisor and she just wanted to kind of Buck up and just get on with the consultation cost but we spent the 1st 20 minutes of the hour just in the emotion so these after leadership skill for me was accurate empathy very, very careful listening; putting aside the agenda for a moment; to just create that many holding environment for the emotions that really just kind of come up for this person to be able to regulate their distress.
At the end of the call I asked her if she’d be willing to debrief it with me and I said hey how did that go you know in the beginning when we just kind of stuck with the emotion and she was so grateful that she had that element of adaptive leadership to get a handle on her distress she felt so much better and then we were able to really get down to business much more productively.
Monica
I’ve got a couple of quick ones for you.
I was noting that our Executive Director, Finance, and HR folks were, what I perceived to be some premature focusing. [They] were beginning to talk about who was going to need to be off of work during this time.
So what we did was we asked our director to get up on the balcony. We knew it was going to be windy up there, because that’s not an easy place to be right now. And we said, “will you please go in and look at the political landscape here,” “what are other agencies that look like us doing right now – are they able to keep everybody engaged in work and in full payroll?”
I think that we had to unpack some enculturation around, you’re only worthy if you’re working to get paid, and while we’re adapting people were very nervous about open calendars. So, I said wait let’s see what other organizations are doing and he did that he took the challenge to get on the balcony and see how other organizations were operating, and took some comfort in seeing that the colleagues at his level were fully committed to full payroll, as long as possible. So that felt like a win to pause and get multiple perspectives from our agency partners.
Secondly, my folks in the Wrap-around Services Department were saying to me, “We can’t imagine what this work looks like. We go to families were in the community. Wow will we do this virtually? Our provider network is shut down, how are we going to make referrals?”
So, my initial conversations with them were very focused on “no.” And were very focused on barriers, and not being unable to manage. And I just leaned in and held that. And we talked about losses. And we talked about the difference between ideal practice and what was possible. So, it turns out that the values around ideal practice were almost getting in the way of being able to find solutions.
So, again, careful listening, you know holding the tension of two ideas at once, ideal practice, and what’s possible, got the Wraparound folks – at the end of the first meeting, I thought “boy were in trouble, I don’t know how this is going to go” – but by listening to that duality that they were experiencing and letting them come to the conclusion that maybe “good enough” services in this COVID environment was the way to go, got us to where we needed to go.
Elizabeth
Thanks for sharing those. Those stories just bring to life the holding environment, the importance of the balcony work, the importance of coming together an really collectively exploring the values in the beliefs that drive both the parts of the practice that you want to hold on to – because they are important to you – and the parts of the practice that might have to shift and change because the environment around us is shifting, and therefore our values police need to be re-examined. And that’s a hard thing to do in the middle of crisis, in the middle of this need to move forward, with a sense of urgency that drives us towards the technical.
You know, I started this conversation by suggesting, in my observation, that adaptive leadership, because of the way the elements fit together, because it’s a shared process, because it’s rooted in values and beliefs, because it also stands on the frontier of the unknown, is the most important leadership theory application that we could possibly employ in a time like this. That we didn’t see coming. That we couldn’t have prepared for.
Scott
Yeah, I would absolutely agree, Elizabeth. Adaptive leadership is a driver of successful implementation of evidence-based practice. So I come to this work through that perspective – what is going to help a provider organization, help their staff engage new ways of working?
I think that one of the elements of adaptive leadership which, is at first a little counter intuitive, but with experience and the experiences that I’ve been having for the past few years with agency implementation and then in the COVID context, it’s just deep wisdom. And it’s kind of engaging with others in the work of change and making adaptation.
Here’s another recent story: With the implementation team, I was facilitating a meeting. We, as the implementation team, were providing guidance on how to implement Motivational Interviewing into routine practice via telehealth. So, it’s not only telehealth which is new, but how to integrate this evidence-based practice into that modality, that’s also new.
And we were some really smart leaders on this team. And we were listing out all these recommendations, and all these guidelines, and we were having this wonderful brainstorm. And then I realized, that, “Oh my gosh we’re doing the work. We’re doing the work that the provider staff really ought to be engaged in.” And that is coming up with ways to integrate Motivational Interviewing into this new way of working via telehealth.
And what’s counterintuitive about it, is that we like to see ourselves as experts. Leaders like to see themselves as having that authorized leadership. To be able to say OK this is the right way to do things and this is how we’re going to go about doing it. And thanks to the learning that I’ve been doing adaptive leadership, I was able as a facilitator, to pause the group validate; hey great ideas, and how can we connect with staff to find out their ideas. To give this work back to them.
Monica
So what I want to jump in, you know sort of related to that, very related to that actually, is being in the void like this with so much uncertainty – the goodness of it with adaptive leadership – is experimental mindset.
So, the text and other resources explicitly encourage us to use an experimental mindset when change is at hand, recognizing that changes iterative. That we can actually experiment with change and give a small pilot or small test to try.
I found that for the cautious folks among us, when they heard that we were going to undo some of these changes to telehealth as experiments, and what if I had a pioneer to open a new case, to give it a try, or two or three pioneers to try it. That really mattered to people. And opened people up to think that we could be experimental and pioneers in this environment.
At the same time, it was critical that mistakes were allowed, and that nobody would be marginalized or receive any consequences for like coming back to the group and saying “hey I’m a pioneer, but I got my butt handed to me” “this didn’t go well, and “it was awkward,” and all those things. So, I think with the experimental mindset and inviting people to be pioneers, understanding that mistakes can be made, was an important part of us adjusting to new practice.
So it included giving the work back as Scott is talking about, and sharing the work amongst us, but also creating those conditions where mistakes were opportunities for learning.
Elizabeth
That is so important and so hard. And I heard from both of you, that leaders become leaders often times because they are competent and viewed as confident, and they’re rewarded for the competence. And so to give that away, to actually be experimental, to be innovative, to stand on the edge of the frontier and take a risk, and maybe be wrong, particularly in a time of crisis, I have to imagine is really hard.
And standing on the edge of the frontier yourselves and maybe not knowing what the outcome is going to be.
Elizabeth
At some point we’re going to come out of COVID-19. I think there’s been a lot of indication that we may not be the same, as a society, as a provider network, maybe even as human beings, we may be changed by this.
I’m wondering if you think that there any lasting changes to your adaptive leadership practice based on the experience that you had in March and April of 2020?
Scott
Well it’s a pretty profound question. I would say yes, to that. I think there are going to be lasting impacts and thinking about the nature of adaptive work, the nature of change work.
One of the types of adaptive challenges that Heifetz identifies is when there is a gap between the values that an organization espouses and talks about; and when there’s a gap between that and actual organizational functioning and behavior; and how leaders show up, how leaders behave, how leaders be – so being in doing from leaders; and I think that in a time of crisis, it is really bringing to the four that gap. If there is a gap that exists, and I think there are a lot of these gaps in provider organizations – and I think that coming out of COVID-19 – there’s going to need to be from the astute and practical leaders, some repair work, some evolution work, that’s going to need to happen in evolving organizational culture to kind of catch up to what had been espoused values, but in time of crisis, had laid that gap bare, kind of laid for all to see: that the values that we’ve talked about for all these years are a little different, and how we show up in a crisis.
Monica
You know, I’m thinking about, “one-size-fits-all” solutions, that in COVID make no damn sense. So you talked about espoused values, Scott, and sort of differential impact. It reminds me: There’s two arms to our organization, one is mental health services and the others early childhood services. And early childhood services are under-resourced because we simply don’t value young children as we should. So, when we we’re trying to do one-size-fits-all solutions on payroll, or managing staff stress, or putting more support in place, we recognize that there would be differential impact across the organization, and we had to be really honest with ourselves about that.
So there was some speaking the unspeakable that we weren’t starting at the same place when COVID hit, that mental health services have more certainty because they have third party billing and Medicaid. And early childhood situations are mostly funded with soft money. So I think one-size-fits-all solutions, without a pause and a good examination about differential impact and disparities that would happen, our staff in the early childhood tends to be more diverse, tends to work with lower wages, and so that’s just real and honest to be reflected in COVID, in general the differential impact on different neighborhoods, different groups of people. So that will linger. I believe that we have to be paying attention to how different people are impacted who’s at the table when we’re making important decisions for our agencies and for organizations.
I think the other thing that will happen is that, I certainly hope that we’ll have more experimentation in the delivery of mental health services. That we’ll have a new normal. That we can be more flexible and go to where people are to have services that makes sense.
I also hope that we, our shared leadership model that says “everybody has a stake in this.” I know for me, I’ve been facilitating a ton of meetings and a ton of learning opportunities and support opportunities for the staff. And I was like “Monica, why are you facilitating them all? That isn’t necessary. You know, rotate this let’s practice our facilitation skills, and our gathering and convening skills during this time.” So, it’s just a reminder that the work can be shared, that diverse perspectives are essential, that we have an opportunity for new normal, let’s not waste it.
Elizabeth
That’s great. So when COVID happens, when the unforeseen chaotic change is handed to us, it shines a light on disparity, it shines a light where there are gaps between values and practice, it shines a light on the difficult ways in which we have to make decisions.
Elizabeth
One of the things that I think about, on the journey that the three of us have been on together,
is that – when we were doing the adaptive leadership work at the Academy in Wisconsin for Project Aware with the sites – what we were wrestling with were changes that we could see that were necessary and we were trying to help others see were necessary.
So, for example, we could see that social and emotional learning with an essential part of educating students. We had to help other people see that because they weren’t necessarily there. They didn’t think it was the place of schools to support social and emotional well-being for their students. So this was change that we came to them with.
This COVID situation feels different to me because the change got handed to all of us at once, and we had to respond to it. So if you could think about one piece of advice that you would give an emerging adaptive leader to anticipate the big chaotic changes, to be ready, what would you say to them?
Scott
I would say don’t forget to take the time that’s needed on the balcony. Feel urgent, feel the pressing demands of action, and slow down, as Monica was talking about earlier. Pause, bring people up on the balcony to see the big picture and to kind of gather one’s senses before making decisions. That would be my advice for an emerging adaptive leader.
Monica
So the quote “Necessity is the mother of invention.” We would not be adjusting in the ways that we are without this crisis hitting us blind side. So, I think my advice would be to lean into our mother of invention and to adopt the experimental mindset that’s required, so that we can make adjustments, and course correct, and make change iterative, and mistakes can be made, so that we can evolve as the environment evolves.
This isn’t over by any stretch. Once we do reconvene as communities, the economic impact is going to be potentially devastating for some. So that necessity will remain. Take this opportunity to use your experimental, in the void, kind of skills. Recognizing you don’t have to be expert, you don’t have to be answers. Deconstruct the old view of leadership as managers or experts, just let that go. Take people with you and use the experimental mindset to make some changes that are certainly going to be needed.
Elizabeth
I was thinking about maintaining disciplined attention, as Monica was talking. There is the crisis phase where slowing down, engaging others, making sure that you’re up on the balcony every couple of days, makes a ton of sense. And I think about the fact that, what felt like an emergent or in a crisis of chaos in the moment actually is going to be with us for a very long time.
As we get back to “normal” there may be, for some, a tendency or even a desire to get back to the way things were because that feels comfortable, then we can say that we’ve recovered. And so maintaining a disciplined attention on that adaptive work – that where the chaos and the challenge shone the light on disparity and suffering, we have to continue to shine the light on that. Keeping telehealth, keeping the things that make services accessible to people, making sure that we are mindful of the values that drove us into this work in the first place, keeps us with disciplined attention on the work that will be with us for a long time.
We should always be standing on the frontier of the unknown. Always be willing to risk for the people that need us to do that the most.
Elizabeth
Anything that you wanted to share that you didn’t get to?
Scott
Well not, just but to say, as I’m listening to you, and this conversation between the three of us, I think there are so many opportunities in crisis for leaders to develop as adaptive leaders. There’s no shortage of opportunities for that right now.
Monica
I guess my concluding thoughts are don’t go it alone I think that the other uh temptation in leadership is to isolate and think you have to have some things figured out and so not only surround yourself with other leaders coaches who can bring you to be better leadership and sharing the work with your staff seems like a wise way to maintain this marathon that we’re in.
Elizabeth
I so appreciate the work that the two of you are doing as leaders in a very important time supporting the work of other really important leaders in Wisconsin and if we continue to have conversations like this I think we’re going to turn leadership on its head at least I can only hope so I want to thank you for joining me in this conversation.
Scott & Monica
Thank you.
