The Importance of Adaptive Leadership

Architects are familiar with big challenges. The sheer complexity of creating large structures is often magnified by the type of challenges that the profession is often asked to address – those that involve significant change to environments, communities, and individual lives.

An architectural project is a system that itself always takes shape within a much larger system.

Today’s systemic challenges, however, are getting so much bigger. We are officially living in what’s commonly known as a VUCA world – one where volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are the norm.

We need only consider two such challenges to understand why system change is where we need to be focusing our energies.  One of these is the climate debacle, which will require more than new building technology and design principles to shift the course of a global system of policies, technologies, and human behaviors that are directly or indirectly contributing to the mess.

The other is the challenge of diversity & inclusion. Often believed to be caused by a gap in skills or mentoring for minority professionals, it is in reality caused by cultural norms and organizational processes that are minimally impacted by spot fixes. Like climate change, diversity and inclusion must be tackled at a systems level.

As a frame of reference, Ronald Heifetz, the Founding Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, makes a distinction between “technical challenges” and “adaptive challenges”. Technical challenges are well understood and can be addressed by applying deep expertise and familiar techniques. Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, are emergent and unfamiliar; they require collaboration and mutual learning more than individual mastery.

The problem is, we often treat adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems.

To illustrate, Heifetz uses a medical analogy – a person having a heart attack who may be treated with a defibrillator, surgery, and medications. But these technical solutions do not solve for the larger adaptive challenge – the need to address the wider biological, behavioral, environmental, and cultural systems that can contribute – and perpetuate – poor health, even after initial treatment. 

Tackling such challenges at a system level requires humility (being willing to admit lack of knowledge), respect (seeking to understand alternative perspectives) and deep collaboration (productively engaging in teamwork). In other words, it requires the ability to establish and nurture relationships with other people.

Architects intuitively know this. While serving on the AIA Strategic Council I helped lead a study group focused on the topic of transforming architectural education. My colleagues and I led an interactive workshop on the eve of of their 2018 National Conference in New York City that was intended to discover, through dialogue with current students, emerging professionals, and mid-career practitioners, the deficits in formal architectural education. What we heard was clear: “strong interpersonal communication skills”, “tenacity training”, “pivoting under pressure” and “crisis management” were some of the often-repeated requests.

Precedent is being set in the allied design professions. Foundational leadership skills of self-awareness, observation and empathy, active listening, facilitating open, generative discussions to engage divergent perspectives, framing the right problem to solve, rapid prototyping as a tool for collaboration, tactfully engaging with conflict, and working in teams are taught in several progressive design programs. Unfortunately, most of these subjects are absent from an architect’s formal education, which still tilts towards technical, rather than adaptive, approaches to problem solving.

As an illustration, the Master of Design (UX/UI) program at the California College of the Arts where I am an adjunct faculty member has been refining its leadership pedagogy for more than a decade. Notable requirements include full semester courses focused on experiential learning of communication skills, facilitative leadership and peer coaching. These are viewed to be of equal importance to developing the “technical” side of digital craft, and students are trained to be influencers within the organizations they join as interaction designers, researchers, and strategists.

There’s no way of knowing what kinds of challenges the future holds, but the need to prepare for them is clear. In order to fully and effectively engage with the systemic challenges of today and tomorrow, architects need to train and continually develop new kinds of leaders.

Ron Heifetz refers to leadership as “an improvisational act”. Indeed, it is to be associated with activity not title or rank. With the right education there are opportunities everywhere, for anyone, to lead. Investing in this level of leadership may ultimately define the future of the architectural profession.