Adaptive leadership is a leadership model that focuses on mobilizing individuals to adapt to changes in organizations brought about by internal or external factors that may negatively impact organizations (Lewis, 2014). However, adaptive leadership helps in effectively preparing individuals to respond and accommodate any changes or challenges affecting an organization. This has enabled organizations to triumph over diverse challenges that may have brought down the organizations (Lewis, 2014). An advantage of using adaptive leadership is that this leadership model focuses on the followers who are responsible for performing different roles in an organization. Leaders can take advantage of this leadership model to prepare their followers to address any problems in their area of work (Lewis, 2014).
Organizational leaders can also provide the required support to employees to motivate them to cope with change as well maintain high performance. This encourages teamwork as employees can collaboratively develop effective solutions to address any challenges affecting an organization (Lewis, 2014). However, adaptive leadership has a weakness in that it requires a shift in individual values, attitudes, and behaviors. This may negatively affect the employees who may not be adequately prepared as changes may be unsuccessful if not done using appropriate change models (Northouse, 2015). Another weakness of this leadership model is that it requires many resources to ensure that employees can effectively address the new changes.
These resources include time, financial resources, and support services. Inadequate resources may lead to set backs or failure of an organization to successfully address new challenges (Northouse, 2015). One challenge that an adaptive leader may encounter in encouraging his/her followers to solve their own problems or challenges is unresponsive followers who may be unwilling to adopt new attitudes and values. This is because this leadership model requires a shift of values where followers may be hesitant to shift their behaviors and values to meet the needs of an organization (Northouse, 2015).
References
- Lewis, S. (2014). Positive Adaptive Leadership and Key Principles of Practice in a Time of Uncertainty. AI Practitioner, 16(1), 20-24.
- Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
