Adaptive Leadership | A definitive reading list
| A curated list of foundational Adaptive Leadership (AL) readings |
There’s a ton of stuff that’s been written about AL over the past 40+ years. Much by the framework’s originators. Much more by actual practitioners on the ground.
Like the proverbial iceberg, the deep stuff tends to get submerged. The surface level articles, which I often see in Forbes and other mainstream outlets, are generally, and shockingly, at odds with AL’s core leadership message and practices. Having read them all, here are my recommendations.
Articles (in order of recommended reading)…
The Leader of the Future — Good, digestible introduction to the philosophy. An oldie but goodie.
Harvard Business Press: Best Practice Briefing and Tactics for Tough Times — Executive summary to a webinar. Gets a bit deeper into the leadership ideas than the above but is still digestible. Hard to find, but I can help you track it down.
Survival Guide for Leaders — A classic. Good grounding in the work. A bit old but still relevant.
Harvard Business Review: The Work of Leadership— Seminal article on Adaptive Leadership. Denser and longer but a very good grounding in the core ideas if you have don’t have time to read the books.
Harvard Business Review: Leadership in a Permanent Crisis — Written at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. Longer read, applicable even to today’s crises.
Books (in order of recent publication)…
Your Leadership Moment (2020). A compelling distillation and expansion of AL by Eric Martin touching on social justice, clean energy and gender equity.
Adaptive Capacity (2014). A robust analytical take on AL written by and based on the corporate and academic research of Juan Carlos Eichholz in Chile.
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (2008). A comprehensive field guide by Grashow, Linsky and Heifetz with practices and lots of helpful diagrams.
Leadership Can Be Taught (2005). A pedagogical overview by Sharon Daloz Parks about AL’s Case-in-Point pedagogy.
Leadership on the Line (2002). A case study based narrative by Linsky and Heifetz.
Leadership Without Easy Answers (1998). An academically dense, but groundbreaking seminal book on AL.
…and some short pieces I’ve written…