Leadership Institute

Adaptive Leadership

Learning Format: Classroom

Order No. IMEX115

Leaders can’t take a cookie-cutter approach to managing people. A leadership style that motivates and inspires one individual might plunge another into poor performance.

Adaptive Leadership raises leaders’ awareness of the differences among people and situations. It teaches leaders how to tailor their approaches based on their team members’ motivations, personality styles, the organizational environment, and the situation. By better meeting the needs of each individual, leaders create higher levels of engagement and organizational results.

Do You Face Any of These Issues?

  • Do your leaders misjudge how people will respond or react in certain situations, resulting in negative outcomes?
  • Are leaders unable to tailor their approach with each person and situation to achieve the desired results?

Performance Objectives

Helps leaders:

  • Adapt the leadership approach they take in each situation to effectively achieve results through people.
  • Maximize the effectiveness of their interactions by flexing interaction skills and other actions.
  • Successfully gain a person’s or team’s understanding, buy-in, or ownership of an issue or task.
  • Improve people’s productivity by focusing on and addressing the situational factors that can affect results.

Primary Competencies Developed

  • Building Strategic Working Relationships
  • Inspiring Others

Secondary Competencies Developed

  • Building a Successful Team
  • Coaching
  • Communication
  • Gaining Commitment
  • Valuing Diversity

Course Overview

  • Open -- Do Your Discussions Get Results?: Learners are introduced to the Adaptive Leadership Model. They discuss challenges faced in their own workplace discussions and why the outcomes might not have been as effective as they would have liked.
  • The Adaptive Leadership Process: The group walks through the example of a leader who effectively uses the Adaptive Leadership Process with a team member. They review how the leader diagnoses the situation, chooses a discussion goal, and plans a strategy with the help of a robust job aid.
  • The Discussion Goals -- The Benefits of Ownership: Learners identify and discuss the benefits of using empowerment to gain ownership of the leader, the people involved, and the organization.
  • Getting Personal: The leaders learn to identify personal tendencies typically seen in the workplace and the opportunities/challenges those behaviors present. Learners plan an adaptive strategy, using targeted interaction skills and other actions, for a prepared situation in which personal tendencies are demonstrated.
  • Planning Your Adaptive Strategy: Learners use a diagnosis worksheet, a Discussion Planner, and the job aid to plan and adapt a leadership strategy for their own situations. They then exchange feedback and insights on their strategies.

Video Segment Summaries

  • A leader in a delegation discussion faces challenges aligned along three common factors -- issue/task, person/team, and environment.
  • As a leader considers how best to approach each team member with news of a significant change, she reflects on how each of them reacted to similar news in the past.

Course Details

  • Target audience: Informal and formal leaders at all levels.
  • Course length: 3 hours, 30 minutes. Course can be lengthened with optional activities.
  • Learning formats: Classroom.
  • Facilitator certification: DDI-certified facilitator required.
  • Prerequisites: Essentials of Leadership.
  • Series: Suitable for all environments.
  • Group size: 8 to 16 people.
  • Prework: No.

Related Courses

  • Adaptive Leadership augments the learning from nearly every course and is a highly recommended enhancement to all leadership programs.
  • It is recommended to follow a DDI leadership curriculum of 3-6 courses.