Adaptive Leadership: Building Leadership Capability for Organisational Transformation

Many transformation challenges appear technical at first. A new operating model needs implementing, AI needs integrating, decision-making needs accelerating, or a culture needs to shift. Yet the harder work often sits beneath the technical solution: leaders and teams need to change how they interpret problems, make decisions and behave when the answer is unclear.

Adaptive Leadership provides a useful framework for understanding this challenge. Developed through Ronald Heifetz’s work at Harvard Kennedy School, the approach distinguishes problems that can be addressed through existing expertise from adaptive challenges that require learning, experimentation and changes in behaviour. Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky's work on Adaptive Leadership describes an approach to leadership designed for difficult challenges where people need to move beyond familiar ways of thinking and working. Harvard Kennedy School

For organisations undertaking transformation, that distinction has significant implications for leadership capability. New strategies, structures and technologies can establish the conditions for change, but leaders still need to make sense of ambiguity, work through competing priorities, engage others in change and adapt their own behaviour.

Coaching can support this work when it is connected to the organisation's wider transformation strategy, leadership expectations and operating environment. The value comes from helping leaders translate insight into action and sustained behavioural change, while recognising that coaching is one component of a broader organisational system.

What is Adaptive Leadership?

Adaptive Leadership emerged from Heifetz's work on leadership and complex systems and was developed through Leadership Without Easy Answers (1994), Leadership on the Line (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002) and The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009). A central idea within the framework is that leadership is a practice, rather than simply a position of authority.

This shifts attention away from the assumption that leaders are expected to have every answer. Instead, leadership involves helping people and systems make progress on difficult challenges, particularly when existing expertise is insufficient. Several principles are particularly relevant to organisations navigating transformation.

Leadership involves mobilisation

Adaptive Leadership places emphasis on mobilising people to engage with difficult work. The leader's role can include surfacing assumptions, helping groups engage with competing perspectives and creating conditions in which people take responsibility for solving problems.

Adaptive challenges require learning

One of the framework's most useful distinctions is between technical problems and adaptive challenges.

Technical problems can largely be addressed using existing knowledge, expertise or processes. Adaptive challenges require learning, experimentation and shifts in behaviour, assumptions or relationships.

Adaptation requires new capability

Progress on an adaptive challenge may involve retaining what continues to work while changing behaviours, capabilities or ways of operating that no longer serve the organisation.

This makes Adaptive Leadership particularly relevant to organisational transformation, where established practices often need to evolve while leaders continue running the business.

Technical problems and adaptive challenges are different

Consider the difference between implementing technology and changing how people work with it. Selecting and configuring a new technology platform involves substantial technical complexity, but much of that work can be addressed through expertise, planning and execution.

Getting leaders and teams to change established workflows, decision-making patterns or assumptions because of that technology is different. The destination may be less certain, people may disagree about what needs to change, and progress may require experimentation. That is adaptive work.

The distinction can be applied to many organisational challenges:

• introducing AI while redefining roles, decision rights and ways of working;
• changing leadership behaviour as part of a cultural transformation;
• moving towards more agile or distributed operating models;
• integrating organisations following structural change;
• increasing accountability or autonomy across management layers; and
• shifting from directive management towards a stronger coaching culture.

A challenge can also contain both technical and adaptive elements. The purpose of the distinction is not to categorise every transformation neatly into one or the other. It helps leaders recognise what kind of work is required and avoid applying an exclusively technical response to a challenge that also requires people to learn and change.

Core principles of Adaptive Leadership

Several concepts within Adaptive Leadership are especially useful for leaders working through complexity.

Get on the balcony

Leaders can become absorbed by the immediate demands of transformation. "Getting on the balcony" describes the practice of creating enough distance from the action to observe patterns across the wider system.

What behaviours keep recurring? Where is resistance appearing? Which voices dominate decisions? What assumptions are shaping the organisation's response?

The capacity to move between participating in the work and observing the system can improve the quality of diagnosis before leaders act.

Regulate the heat

Transformation creates pressure. Too little pressure may produce limited movement; excessive pressure can reduce people's capacity to engage productively with change.

Adaptive leadership therefore asks leaders to consider the level and pace of challenge they are creating, and whether people have sufficient support and capacity to engage with it.

Give the work back

Leaders can inadvertently reinforce dependency by solving problems that others need to engage with themselves.

Adaptive Leadership encourages leaders to distribute responsibility appropriately, enabling teams and stakeholders to participate in diagnosing problems and developing responses.

Protect voices from below

Perspectives that challenge the dominant view can contain important information about how a system is functioning. Adaptive leadership encourages leaders to create conditions in which different perspectives can be surfaced and considered, particularly when they reveal uncomfortable information about the organisation or proposed change.

This connects with wider organisational research on learning. Amy Edmondson's study of 51 work teams found an association between team psychological safety and learning behaviour, highlighting the importance of conditions in which people can take interpersonal risks associated with learning. Sage Journals

Why Adaptive Leadership matters for organisational transformation

Organisational transformation usually contains both technical and adaptive work. The technical work might involve introducing technology, redesigning structures, establishing governance, defining processes or developing new systems. These elements matter. Yet transformation also asks people to change how they make decisions, collaborate, lead, prioritise and respond to uncertainty.

A transformation may therefore have a clearly articulated strategy while still creating questions that cannot be resolved through expertise alone. Leaders may need to relinquish established ways of working. Teams may need to navigate competing priorities. Managers may need to operate with greater autonomy. Employees may need to experiment with unfamiliar technology while roles and expectations continue to evolve. These are behavioural and systemic challenges as much as technical ones.

Related research on complexity leadership conceptualises leadership in complex systems as an interactive dynamic through which adaptive outcomes such as learning, innovation and adaptability can emerge. This reinforces the value of looking beyond leadership as an exclusively top-down activity when organisations are dealing with complex change. DOI For senior Talent, L&D, OD and Transformation leaders, the implication is significant. Leadership capability needs to be considered alongside strategy, systems, structure, communication, incentives and governance.

Developing leaders who can operate effectively through ambiguity can strengthen an organisation's capacity to execute transformation when the path forward cannot be completely prescribed.

How does Adaptive Leadership compare with other leadership approaches?

Adaptive Leadership can sit alongside existing leadership frameworks.

Transformational leadership, for example, has traditionally placed significant emphasis on vision, motivation and change. Adaptive Leadership adds a particular lens for diagnosing challenges where the solution is unclear and learning needs to occur across the system.

Situational approaches focus attention on adapting leadership behaviour to circumstances and follower needs. Adaptive Leadership asks an additional question: what type of problem are we actually dealing with?

Servant leadership places strong emphasis on service, humility and the development of others. Adaptive Leadership focuses particularly on mobilising people through difficult work, including the tension and competing interests that can accompany change.

The practical value for organisations is therefore less about choosing one leadership theory over another. Adaptive Leadership can provide an additional diagnostic lens within an existing leadership framework, particularly when transformation involves uncertainty, competing priorities and behavioural change.

The role of coaching in building adaptive leadership capability

Understanding Adaptive Leadership conceptually is different from applying it under pressure. Leaders need opportunities to work with real situations: making decisions with incomplete information, responding differently to resistance, involving others in problem-solving, experimenting with new behaviours and reflecting on the consequences. Coaching can create structured space for that work.

Evidence supports coaching as a developmental intervention while also encouraging appropriate caution about what it can claim to achieve. A meta-analysis of organisational coaching research identified positive individual-level effects across performance and skills, wellbeing, coping, work attitudes and goal-directed self-regulation. These findings concern individual outcomes; they should not be interpreted as evidence that coaching alone causes organisational transformation. Taylor & Francis Online

The organisational context still matters. Leadership expectations, structures, incentives, culture, governance and the behaviour of senior leaders can reinforce or constrain the behaviours someone is developing through coaching.

Coaching can improve diagnosis

Leaders are frequently expected to provide answers quickly. Coaching can create space to examine whether the issue actually has a known solution or whether progress requires learning and behavioural change across the system. That distinction can alter the leadership response.

Instead of immediately prescribing a solution, a leader might need to involve different stakeholders, surface conflicting assumptions, create conditions for experimentation or reconsider their own contribution to the problem.

Coaching creates space for reflection and behavioural experimentation

Adaptive leadership asks leaders to examine their own role within the systems they are trying to change. Executive and leadership coaching can help leaders step back from immediate operational pressure, recognise patterns in their decision-making and relationships, and identify behaviours they want to test differently.

The value lies in connecting reflection with action. Leaders can experiment between coaching conversations, observe the effect on the system and use subsequent sessions to make sense of what happened.

Team and group coaching can address collective challenges

Many organisational challenges cannot be resolved by developing individual leaders in isolation. Leadership teams may collectively need to improve decision-making, work through competing priorities or establish different ways of collaborating.

Team and group coaching can create a structured environment in which leaders examine these dynamics together and take shared responsibility for changing them.

Designing coaching to strengthen adaptive leadership

For Heads of Talent, L&D, OD and Transformation, the practical question is how coaching should be designed around the adaptive work the organisation needs leaders to undertake.

Four considerations can help.

1. Start with the organisational challenge

Begin with the transformation rather than the coaching programme.

Where is the organisation experiencing ambiguity, competing priorities or significant behavioural change? Which leadership populations have the greatest influence over whether the transformation is adopted? Where are leaders encountering challenges for which established expertise and processes are insufficient?

This helps connect coaching investment to genuine capability requirements.

2. Translate adaptive capability into observable behaviour

"Become a more adaptive leader" is too abstract to guide meaningful development.

Organisations need to define what adaptive leadership looks like in their context.

Depending on the transformation, this might include recognising systemic patterns, seeking different perspectives, making decisions with incomplete information, distributing problem-solving, working productively with disagreement, experimenting with new approaches or changing course when evidence suggests it is necessary.

Coaching goals can then connect individual development with these wider organisational expectations.

3. Match the coaching approach to the need

Different challenges and populations require different forms of coaching.

Human executive and leadership coaching can provide relational depth, challenge, judgement and contextual understanding for complex leadership situations. Team and group coaching can support adaptive challenges where change depends on how people work together.

AI coaching can provide an additional layer of accessible, in-the-flow reflection and reinforcement. Within an appropriately governed coaching ecosystem, human and AI coaching can therefore play complementary roles. AI can extend access, reflection and consistency, while human coaches provide the relational depth and contextual judgement required for more complex developmental work.

4. Design the organisational conditions around coaching

Coaching does not operate independently of the organisation.

A leader may be encouraged through coaching to distribute decision-making, for example, while the organisation continues to reward centralised control. A leader may be working on experimentation while organisational processes penalise failure. Managers may be expected to create a coaching culture while workload and performance systems leave little space for developmental conversations.

These tensions matter.

Senior HR and Transformation leaders should therefore consider how coaching connects with leadership expectations, operating rhythms, incentives, decision rights, capability frameworks and transformation governance.

Measurement should follow the same principle. Participation and satisfaction data can help organisations understand the coaching experience, but evaluating contribution to transformation requires looking at whether priority behaviours are changing and how those changes connect with broader organisational objectives.

Adaptive Leadership turns leadership development towards the work of transformation

Adaptive Leadership provides organisations with a useful way of understanding why some leadership challenges resist straightforward solutions. When progress depends on learning, experimentation and behavioural change, leaders need capabilities that extend beyond technical expertise.

For organisations undergoing transformation, the practical value lies in applying this thinking to the work leaders actually face. Which problems genuinely require adaptive work? What behaviours need to change? What conditions will allow leaders and teams to experiment, learn and make better decisions? How will the wider organisational system reinforce those behaviours?

Coaching can contribute to this capability when it is designed around those questions. Its role is strengthened when individual development connects with organisational priorities, leadership expectations, culture and the broader transformation system.

How BOLDLY supports Coaching for Organisational Transformation

BOLDLY approaches coaching as part of the organisational system in which leadership capability and behavioural change need to occur. Our Coaching for Organisational Transformation approach brings together evidence-based human coaching, AI coaching through momentLeader, and technology-enabled coaching operations.

Human coaches provide relational depth, challenge, judgement and contextual understanding. AI coaching can extend access to reflection and development in the flow of work. Technology-enabled coaching operations provide the governance, coach quality, workflows and infrastructure required to deliver enterprise coaching effectively and at scale.

BOLDLY's coaching approach draws on evidence-based coaching psychology, behavioural science and adult development, supported by screened and vetted coaches and global delivery capability. As part of the Bendelta Group, BOLDLY can also connect coaching with broader expertise in leadership, culture, organisational design and transformation. Slice of proposal slides This integrated approach allows organisations to consider coaching within the wider system influencing whether new leadership behaviours take hold.

If your organisation is considering how coaching could support a transformation, leadership capability or behavioural change priority, talk to BOLDLY about designing the right coaching ecosystem for the work ahead.

Frequently Asked Questions about Adaptive Leadership

What is Adaptive Leadership?

Adaptive Leadership is an approach developed through the work of Ronald Heifetz and colleagues. It focuses on mobilising people to address difficult challenges where existing expertise or established solutions are insufficient. A central feature of the framework is the distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges that require learning, experimentation and changes in behaviour, assumptions or relationships. Harvard Kennedy School's overview of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership provides further background on the framework. Harvard Kennedy School

What is the difference between a technical problem and an adaptive challenge?

A technical problem can largely be addressed through existing expertise, processes or technology. An adaptive challenge requires people to learn and change.

Organisational transformations frequently contain both. Implementing a new system, for example, involves technical work. Changing how leaders make decisions, how teams collaborate or how employees operate because of that system may involve adaptive work.

Recognising the distinction helps leaders decide whether the organisation primarily needs expertise and execution or whether it also needs learning, experimentation and behavioural change.

Why is Adaptive Leadership important during organisational transformation?

Transformation frequently requires organisations to operate while aspects of the future state remain uncertain. Leaders may need to navigate competing priorities, mobilise people around change, experiment with new approaches and adapt their own behaviour.

Adaptive Leadership provides a framework for diagnosing these challenges and recognising situations where leaders need to create the conditions for learning and adaptation, alongside the technical work of transformation.

How can coaching develop adaptive leadership capability?

Coaching can help leaders examine complex challenges, recognise systemic patterns, surface assumptions and translate insight into behavioural experiments.

Executive and leadership coaching can provide individual depth, while team and group coaching can address challenges that sit across a leadership system. Coaching is more likely to contribute meaningfully when development goals connect with organisational strategy, leadership expectations and transformation priorities.

How should organisations measure adaptive leadership development?

Measurement should begin with the leadership behaviours and organisational objectives the development is intended to support.

Depending on the context, relevant indicators might include observable changes in leadership behaviour, decision-making, collaboration, experimentation, change adoption or stakeholder feedback.

Coaching participation, utilisation and satisfaction can provide useful operational information, but they should not be treated as evidence of organisational transformation on their own.

AUTHOR: Alisa Sukdhoe

Alisa is Head of Product at BOLDLY, where she leads the design of coaching and career development experiences for global organisations.

With a background in systems and human-centred design, Alisa works at the intersection of technology, behavioural insight and professional development. At BOLDLY, she partners with coaches, researchers and enterprise clients to translate coaching theory and evidence into practical solutions that can operate effectively at scale.