Ronald Heifetz Type of Leadership

Heifetz presents a form of leadership that involves leaders providing leadership when the organization they are leading is under siege from external factors. Changes and transformations in todays markets, clients, competitors, and technology all over the world are necessitating organizations to restructure their modes of operation (Heifetz, 2001, pg.124).

According to Heifetz, companies are faced with adaptive challenges where they are required to effect changes by guiding people working in their respective organization to perform adaptive work. It is the work of leaders to guide the organization and lead from the front. Dialogue, on the other hand, is appropriate for situations where people involved have different views or frames of reference. The main purpose of dialogue is to provide a means of communication and link the different views. Dialogue works at building trust (Gerzon, 2006, p.169).

According to Heifezt, business leaders have to be in a position where they can see the bigger picture instead of being swept away in the field of action; they act as if they were viewing the action from a balcony and this means that leaders should see an environment for change or create one. Dialogue comes in handy at this point because the leader is in a position to guide the dialogue and the process of mobilizing people to do adaptive work (Heifetz & Laurie, 2001, p.124). Dialogue is fit for this type of leadership as presented by Heifetz because in dialogue, the leader guides the process.

In this type of Leadership, adaptive challenges are identified which involves listening to ideas and concerns within and without the organization and looking at conflicts as symptoms of adaptive challenge (Heifetz & Laurie, 2001, p.126). Dialogue is highly recommended for situations that involve high conflict settings and where the teams involved operate on different assumptions or have varying interests. Dialogue will foster the organization to understand its systems, the human resource involved, and any probable source of contravention that might arise within.

Adaptive work generates distress according to Heifetz and to reduce the amount of distress, the leader needs to strike a balance between having people feel the need for change and having them feel overwhelmed by change. According to Northouse, the leader needs to provide a holding environment, direct, protect, manage any conflict, and shape norms (2010, p.69). In dialogue, it is easier for the leader to provide direction and protection since he/she is in a position to raise questions without getting anxious which is fundamental to ease stress. When it comes to conflict, it is far more effective to build trust than to deplete it (Gerzon, 2006, p.171). Drucker says, Organizations are no longer built on force but on trust, thus building trust should be the priority of leaders in organizations (1999, p.106).

The leaders responsibility is maintaining disciplined attention. Scapegoating, denial, focusing only on todays technical issues, or attacking individuals rather than the perspectives they represent all forms of work avoidance are to be expected when an organization undertakes adaptive work (Heifetz & Laurie, 2001, p.130). Providing an environment in which this issue is ironed out goes a long way to maintaining disciplined attention as incase of any of these distractions and a dialogue situation avails an environment to address these issues and face them.

According to Heifetz and Laurie, giving a voice to all people is the foundation of an organization that is willing to experiment and learn&they generate disequilibrium, and the easiest way for an organization to restore equilibrium is to neutralize those voices& (2001, p.130). This phenomenon is an exact template of dialogue where everyones view considered.

This argument shows that dialogue is appropriate for this form of leadership presented. The two are exactly compatible and the principles followed by dialogue complement the type of leadership presented here.