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Leadership Without Easy Answers

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If you're tired of the quick leadership fad books (10 steps to becoming a great leader, Leadership Lessons of So and So, etc) then this book is for you. We all take it for granted that we know what Leadership is. Heifetz does an excellent job of questioning our traditional assumptions of leadership by making a distinction between leadership and positions of authority. Too often we mistaken positions of authority as being leaders but in reality we all know many people who are leaders who aren't in positions of authority as well as people who are in positions of authority that we would never consider to be leaders.

Authority is confered power to perform a service - it's an expectation or a series of expectations. In this way, authority can be given and taken away. Heifetz describes two different kinds of authority: formal and informal. Formal authority is given to a person through a contract, job description, legislation, etc. Informal authority is given or taken away by the community to the person in authority - often its unspoken expecations. You can see this interaction all the time - for instance a teacher has the formal authority to instruct the class but students may not give the teacher the authority (informal) to do that and will not pay attention. Often you have to increase your informal authority in order to exercise your formal authority. In the work place you can see this play out too where a person may have positional authority but the subordinates don't respect that authority.

Heifetz explores leadership with a number of psychology tools. For instance, he makes constant reference to a "holding environment" which has it orgins in psychoanalysis. A holding environment consists of any relationship in which one party has the power to hold the attention of another party and facilitate adaptive work.

This is crucial in Heifetz's view of leadership in that a leader is someone who mobilizes a person or community to confront difficult issues/problems and to determine solutions. Often, people or a community will look to the leader to solve a problem but rarely are clear answers and solutions available. A leader must facilitate the community wrestling with the deeper issues rather than just simply trying to fix everything with simple answers. The issue of violence in schools is an example. While people look to positions of authority to solve the problem through gun control, school safety programs, etc. - those are all technical answers for something that is truly an adaptive problem for the community. It is a challenge to have the community question its own attitudes, actions, behavior, or beliefs.

Heifetz uses the rest of the book to describe adaptive leadership with examples ranging from civil rights to political decisions leading to war. It is an amazing exploration of leadership with Heifetz articulating different aspects of leadership that haven't been described before.

Again, this is not a step by step approach to leadership, but rather taking a step back and asking ourselves just what is leadership, what role does it play in society, what role should it play, and why are people resistant to it at times. From this understanding, you'll be better able to determine your own leadership strategies.

I do not want to repeat what the above Amazon reviewers have already said. Nevertheless, I think Heifetz's Leadership Without Easy Answers is the best book on the modern theory of leadership around.

Heifetz integrates "great man/great woman" (trait) theories of leadership with "great times" (situational) theories, and defines "leadership" as "an activity that fosters adaptive work and addresses the value conflicts that people hold." He distinguishes "technical" problems that may not require leadership (adaptive work) from "adaptive problems" which people experience as threatening to themselves or their group. (The conflict over abortion, for instance, can be seen as an adaptive problem, because it represents a value conflict that provokes work-avoidance--scapegoating, dishonesty, polarizing conversations, etc.)

Heifetz sees leadership as being "practical" and "authentic", and the leader is always working towards using authority (formal and informal) to help members of contesting groups arrive at solutions that promote fundamental values (such as democracy, equality before the law, freedom).

This book is not a "how-to" book and does not promote charismatic leadership (which the author would view as largely work-avoidance and dependency-fostering). Heifetz is an excellent writer and communicates well with both academics and interested citizens.

Do you doubt your insight? Are you worried that you don't know all the answers? Do you find you can't solve the hard problems alone? Are you - heaven forfend - a leader who lacks vision?

Good. That's the way you're supposed to be. For as Ronald Heifetz argues in this now-famous work, leadership is not an exercise in imposing one's vision and values on others, but the daily practice of clarifying the values already held by the community. Rather than inveigle or inveigh until people are seduced by a point of view, leaders must "engage people in facing the challenge, adjusting their values, changing perspectives, and developing new habits of behavior." In other words, a leader doesn't influence a community to follow his vision; a leader influences the community to address its problems.

This is a lot of responsibility, for leader and community alike. At the heart of Leadership without Easy Answers lies Heifetz's notion of "adaptive work." The true tough problems - civil rights, adjusting to cancer, factories that produce both jobs and pollution - require responses that everyone can accept, learning that enables them to face harsh realities and conflicts. Rather than coerce people into superficially easy remedies or pretend problems don't exist, leaders guide communities to articulate their own values, interpret them in the context of critical questions, test their realities, and discover solutions that will almost certainly require their values and behaviors to be adjusted. It is the people who must find the solutions that they will be expected to carry out; the leader (with or without authority) is the one who identifies the challenge, focuses attention, and puts pressure on the people to work on problems at a rate they can stand.

This is a facilitative notion of leadership, not a charismatic one. Readers accustomed to heroic expectations and Great Man theories of history are in for a shock. Yet Heifetz's writing - sober, cogent, contemplative - makes a successful case for his stance. Drawing examples from such figures as physicians, EPA officials, and Lyndon Johnson, he offers a perspective on leadership that skirts the increasingly hackneyed jargon of competencies, team-builders, and business impact. The principles of Leadership without Easy Answers are often elusive, and certainly difficult to emulate. But for those who long for an inspiring philosophy of leadership, this is the book to slake your thirst.

Heifetz creates a psychological-social-political theory of leadership, which he defines as "an activity" that allows for "adaptive work." Leadership is the work that points out discrepancies beetween what we say we do, and what we actually do; or between our values (democracy, inclusion) and our actions. Leadership ultimately involves reconciling our values to our behavior. Leadership is not merely finding "technical" solutions to "adaptive problems," but, instead, is about finding more congruence (for both leaders and followers) between what they say and hope, and what they do.

The author's writing is very clear.

I most liked his simple phrasing of complex issues; how the threads through the incomplete theories of leadership (Carlyle, James MacGregor Burns); his practical orientation; his emphasis on followers' responsibility; his way of describing how leadership fails; and his notions of leadership succession. I also liked that this is not a "how to do" leadership book (the "ten best ways to be a leader" genre) aimed at a particular audience (business leaders, educational leaders), but, instead, is a thought-provoking discussion of ideas about leadership.

In The Inferno, Dante reserves the last and worst ring in Hell for those who, when faced with a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality. I thought about that as I recently re-read this brilliant book, first published in 1994. Those who assume leadership responsibilities frequently encounter stiff resistance and sometimes place themselves at great risk. Two of the three great leaders whom Heifetz examines in this book, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. (The third is Lyndon Baines Johnson.) There are seldom easy solutions to the most difficult problems and seldom easy answers to the most important questions. Heifetz acknowledges that great leaders are guided by non-negotiable values, to be sure, and sustained by a deep faith in a worthy cause but they are also realists. That is, they have a clear-headed understanding of the perils they face. Draw up a list of the 10-15 greatest leaders in history. How many of them died of natural causes? On my own list, only Winston Churchill and he was twice voted out of office amidst ridicule and even contempt.

Heifetz organizes his material within Four Parts: Setting the Frame, Leading With Authority, Leading Without Authority, and Staying Alive. The book's final section is intended to be a "theoretical framework for understanding leadership and authority in the context of adaptive change." It is important to understand that Heifetz views the subject of leadership in a much wider and deeper context than one normally encounters in a business book. The world has never before needed leaders as much as it does today, in large measure because never before has the world been as dangerous as it is today. (Weapons of mass destruction can accomplish in only a few hours what once took plagues years and even decades to accomplish.) We desperately need effective leaders in all areas of human activity. According to Heifetz, such leaders will probably be ignored, at first, and then ridiculed. When they begin to attract others to their cause, they will be rigorously opposed. If and when they become sufficiently dangerous, either to their opponents or (yes) to those who once supported them, they will be "eliminated" in one way or another. Have we learned nothing from the past? Heifetz obviously has. After almost 15 years of research on those who provide leadership in all manner of organizations and institutions, he shares what he has learned. I wish a higher rating were available.

Readers who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out the more recently published Leadership On the Line which Heifetz co-authored with Marty Linsky; also David Maister's Practice What You Preach, James O'Toole's Leading Change, and Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan's Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.

I read this book in 1994 when it was first published and then again recently. It is excellent and establishes a philosophical approach to leadership that is grounded in problem solving rather than visionary mission. The visionary hero is a threat to democracy as evidenced by such leaders as Adolph Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte. Ronald Heifetz draws a portrait of the leader that is far different from the heroic leader who tries to convince society of easy answers and moves people to action through prejudice and stereotypes. The modern leader takes actions that allow people to adapt to challenge so as to survive. The modern leader recognizes that social problems are embedded in history, custom, special interests, and competing interests. This leads to the two analogies that Heifetz employs to draw a picture of his model. The first analogy is that of the balcony and the dance floor. Heifetz says the leader must emerse themselves in the lives and challenges of the people, experience the chaos and competing interests. They must dance on the floor. However the leader must also leave the dance floor and go to the balcony where they may observe the pattern of the waltz and thus reflect on the direction that the community/society is taking and how this may be adaptive or dangerous. The second analogy is the image of the pressure cooker. The leader must apply enough pressure to bring people together to solve problems even if they have competing interests and ideas. There must be enough pressure to bring people to the negotiation table and to keep them at the table while at the same time keeping the pressure from building to the point of blowing up. Adaptive leaderships is far different from visionary leadership.

I especially enjoyed the sections on informal and formal leadership and the way these two forms of leadership may join forces to move society to more adaptive strategies. The example of LBJ and MLK was masterful.

In some ways this book does support great men ideas of leadership in that there is considerable talent needed to reflect on adaptive strategies needed for societal survival and progress, bring opposing forces to the negotiation table, and play roles of informal or formal leadership.

In other ways the book supports challenging times approaches to leadership theory in that challenging times call for societal adaptation, never an easy step for any society to make.

If you come to this book with the idea that leadership is imposition of ideology on the masses; if you think Ronald Reagan or Lenin were great leaders, then this book is not for you. Leadership is messy business because it means solving real difficult problems in a world of conflicting interests.

If you come to this book with the idea that leadership is based in the ability to motivate the masses with slogans and simplified answers to complex problems; if you think George W Bush is a great leader, then this book is not for you. Social problems are complex and slogans and simple answers only increase the complexity.

Franklin Roosevelt would stand out as the type of leader that Heifetz would identify as adaptive and successful in his leadership. He moved a broken nation out of the depression and he moved an isolationist nation into a just war against Hitler. Both required that he reflect from the balcony and maintain the pressure on the pressure cooker without creating an explosion.

We are inclined to attribute our problems to our politicians and executives, as if they were the cause of them. We are scapegoating people in authority for their inability to quickly fix our problem without bothering us or involving us in the solution of our problems. Instead of looking for saviors, we should be calling for leadership that will challenge us to face problems for which there are no simple, painless solutions -- problems that require us to learn new ways. We have many such problems: uncompetitive industry, terrorism, drug abuse, poverty, poor public education, environmental hazards, and obstacles to constructive foreign and domestic relations.

People in authority cannot quickly resolve such problems as terrorism. They can rather give us a feeling of satisfaction by skillfully applying ready technical means: bombing known terrorists' camps in Afghanistan or applying "sleeping gas" and elite soldiers onto the guerillas in the "Nord Ost" theater in Moscow. But this is only cutting the symptoms, this is not enough to solve the problem with the deep roots. The whole world should be mobilized to work on these issues, and when every child on the world can be born into an atmosphere of happiness and freedom, in a society that encourages intellectual growth and humility rather than fanatism and suicide-bombing as a goal of life -- then and only then we can consider terrorism to be eliminated.

Mr. Heifets provides tangible guidance for a leader to solve complex issues without the risk of being scapegoated or assassinated. This book is a good manual without easy answers.

A must read for anyone who honestly wants to become a better, more caring leader. Be cautioned, however, there are no easy answers. This work does not include a list of "silver bullets," rather it will cause you to think very deeply about a very complex subject--leadership. This book is important becauses it causes one to reflect on their own role as a leader (whether formal or informal). It causes one to look within themselves and evaluate difficult, personal areas--such as values and personal practices. Dr. Heifetz draws on years of research and experience in organizational theory and psychology to explain that there are no easy answers. Everything about leadership is becoming more complex. The environment is fluid, every situation is different. We can no longer rely on old paradigms to manage new problems. The best any leader can do is approach problems with a sound "tool box" from which to draw solutions. This book will provide a number of new "tools," if the reader is open-minded enough to take them. I had the opportunity to stundy under Dr. Heifetz during a leadership seminar at Harvard. His lessons inspired a defining moment in my leadership style. Anyone who reads this book should have a similar experience.

Heifetz' definition of leadership revolves around the concept of influence rather than subordination or coercion. Using contrast to sharpen his own definition of leadership, he wrote that there is an important difference between imagining that a leader influences a community to follow her vision and influencing a community to face its problems.

In the first instance, influence is the mark of leadership; a leader gets people to accept his vision, and communities address problems by looking to him. If something goes wrong, the fault lies with the leader. In the second, progress on problems is the measure of leadership; leaders mobilize people to face problems, and communities make progress because leaders challenge and help them do so. If something goes wrong, the fault lies with both leaders and the community (pp. 14-15.

It is the second description that Heifetz defined as leadership, which is simply put as "mobilizing people to tackle tough problems" (p. 15). Heifetz was less willing than Peck (1977/2002) to say that the task of leadership is spiritual growth of self and others. Rather, he put the problem into a depth psychology perspective with practical organizational implications, and he used "four criteria to develop a definition of leadership that takes values into account":

"First, the definition must sufficiently resemble current cultural assumptions so that, when feasible, one's normal understanding of what it means to lead will apply. Second, the definition should be practical, so that practitioners can make use of it. Third, it should point toward socially useful activities. Finally, the concept should offer a broad definition of social usefulness"(p. 19).

By inserting values, Heifetz argued, he created a "prescriptive concept of leadership" (p. 19) rather than a descriptive or proscriptive one. Using his four criteria, Heifetz was able to state that Hitler, for example, was not a leader because he "exercised leadership no more than a charlatan practices medicine when providing fake remedies" (p. 24).

Later in his book, he defined the task of addressing "tough problems" in the clearest terms:

"Leadership, as used here, means engaging people to make progress on the adaptive problems they face. Because making progress on adaptive problems requires learning, the task of leadership consists of choreographing and directing learning processes in an organization or community. Progress often demands new ideas and innovation. As well, it often demands changes in people's attitudes and behaviors. Adaptive work consists of the process of discovering and making those changes. Leadership, with or without authority, requires an educative strategy" (p. 187).

Heifetz identified the principal limitation of his book when he wrote that his book was concerned with the "short-run task of making progress on an adaptive challenge" and not about the "long-term task of leadership--developing adaptive capacity" (p. 129). This is a fruitful area to explore for scholars of servant-leadership because a major focus of Greenleaf's was precisely the development of this adaptive capacity.

Heifetz also provided leaders with a "seven practical suggestions for bearing the responsibility that comes with leadership without losing one's effectiveness or collapsing under the strain. These included "getting on the balcony"; separating yourself from your role; externalizing conflict; utilizing partnerships; listening; "find a sanctuary"; and keeping your purpose clear (p. 252). Leaders under stress would do well to remember to read through these pages, which essentially offer some tips about resilience.

The following includes several key concepts through direct quotation.

* The concept of adaptation arises from efforts to understand biological evolution. Applied to the change of cultures and societies, the concept becomes a useful; if inexact, metaphor. Species change as the genetic program changes; cultures change by learning. Evolution is a matter of chance--a fortuitous fit between random variation and new environmental pressures' societies by contrast, can respond to new pressures with deliberation and planning. Evolution has no "purpose"--survival is our only measure of its success; societies generate purposes beyond survival. (pp. 30-31)
* The mix of values in a society provides multiple vantage points from which to view reality. Conflict and heterogeneity are resources for social learning. . . . Leadership will not consist of answers or assured visions but of taking action to clarify values. (p. 35)
* I define authority as conferred power to perform a service. This definition will be useful to the practitioner of leadership as reminder of two facts: First, authority is given and can be taken away. Second, authority is conferred as part of an exchange. (p. 57)
* A holding environment consists of any relationship in which one party has the power to hold the attention of another party and facilitate adaptive work. [italics original] (pp. 104-105)
* Attention is the currency of leadership. (p. 113)
* The pitfall of charisma, however, is unresolved dependency. (p. 247)

I thought the book was good when I read it first. It took me a second read to realize how exceptional it is. The book's reviews on Amazon site range from 5 star to 1 star, from people who were amazed by its brilliance to those who could not despise it enough. I think this is the best accolade that a leadership book can ever get - it takes a stance, it provides direction, and it chooses to be for a great cause irrespective of whether it is loved or hated. This book cannot and must not be ignored.