Leadership is Not About YOU

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We often misidentify leadership by focusing on the wrong elements. Traditional perspectives equate leadership with charisma and influence - or authority, position power, and technical expertise used to accomplish tasks. In other words, leadership tends to be about you and what you bring to the table.

But leadership is not about you. It is about "the work".

The Real Definition of Leadership

Adaptive leadership, as conceptualized by Harvard's Ron Heifetz, reframes our understanding by centering leadership on "the work" itself. This work isn't about implementing known solutions (technical challenges) but rather mobilizing people to tackle problems that require changes in their values, habits, and beliefs (adaptive challenges).

True leadership focuses on the adaptive work that communities must undertake—work that cannot be solved by expertise alone and that requires learning, experimentation, and loss.

Why "The Work" Matters More Than "The Hands" or "The Tools"

When leadership fixates on "the hands" (who does what) or "the tools" (how things get done), several problems emerge:

1. It creates dependency on authority figures rather than distributing responsibility.

2. It mistakes management techniques for actual progress on complex challenges.

3. It values positional power over the capacity to mobilize collective learning.

By contrast, leadership centered on "the work":

• Engages stakeholders in confronting reality and clarifying what matters most.

• Helps communities distinguish what to preserve from what to discard.

• Creates a holding environment where difficult but necessary change can occur.

• Distributes ownership of both problems and solutions.

  
  

Case Study: Memorial Hospital's Patient Safety Initiative

Memorial Hospital had consistently poor patient safety metrics despite implementing cutting-edge protocols and tools. The CEO initially responded by hiring safety consultants and purchasing sophisticated monitoring equipment—focusing on tools. When that failed, she reorganized departments and replaced several directors—focusing on hands.

Success only came when the leadership team recognized the adaptive challenge: a culture that valued individual physician autonomy over collaborative safety practices. The real work wasn't about better checklists or different people but addressing the competing commitments within the hospital culture.

The breakthrough occurred when the CEO stopped providing technical solutions and instead created forums where uncomfortable realities could be discussed openly. By giving the work back to the staff—having them confront their competing commitments around autonomy versus safety—the hospital achieved what new tools and personnel changes couldn't accomplish.

The Path Forward

Effective leadership requires distinguishing technical problems from adaptive challenges and focusing attention on the latter. It means orchestrating conflict rather than resolving it prematurely, regulating distress without eliminating it, and protecting voices of dissent.

Leadership, at its core, isn't about personality types, who has authority, or what methods they employ—it's about mobilizing people to confront their most difficult challenges and thrive through adaptation. When we center leadership on "the work," we unlock the collective capacity needed to address our most pressing problems.