SBS Endorsed – Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics

Program Overview

Built on the adaptive leadership framework developed by Ronald Heifetz and colleagues, this programme equips managers to lead when problems have no known answer and require people to change values, habits or loyalties. Participants learn to distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges, get on the balcony to observe system dynamics, regulate the heat of productive disequilibrium, and give work back to the people who must own it. The tactics are practised on live cases such as digital transformation, restructuring, nationalisation of roles and shifting stakeholder expectations in Gulf public and private organisations.

Learning Outcomes

• ✓Classify current organisational problems as technical or adaptive and justify the appropriate leadership response.
• ✓Map the competing values, loyalties and losses held by stakeholders in a selected adaptive challenge.
• ✓Design a holding environment that keeps tension within a productive range during a change effort.
• ✓Apply the balcony-and-dance-floor practice to interpret group behaviour in meetings and decisions.
• ✓Plan small adaptive experiments with clear hypotheses, learning measures and review points.
• ✓Identify personal default responses and vulnerabilities that can undermine leadership under pressure.

Target Audience

• Middle and senior managers leading change initiatives
• Transformation and strategy office leaders
• Department heads facing restructuring or new mandates
• Human capital leaders supporting culture change

Detailed Program Modules

Training Methodology

Applied Project & Assessment