What do you think?
Rate this book
Leadership Without Easy Answers
The economy uncertain, education in decline, cities under siege, crime and poverty spiraling upward, international relations we look to leaders for solutions, and when they don’t deliver, we simply add their failure to our list of woes. In doing do, we do them and ourselves a grave disservice. We are indeed facing an unprecedented crisis of leadership, Ronald Heifetz avows, but it stems as much from our demands and expectations as from any leader’s inability to meet them. His book gets at both of these problems, offering a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers. Fitting the theory and practice of leadership to our extraordinary times, the book promotes a new social contract, a revitalization of our civic life just when we most need it.
Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge, His strategy applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority―activists as well as presidents, managers as well as workers on the front line.
Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge, His strategy applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority―activists as well as presidents, managers as well as workers on the front line.
348 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 1994
161 people are currently reading
2073 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
May 2, 2013
You get a full synthesis & summary here: http://bit.ly/14eV9j1
Ronald A. Heifetz provides a discussion of just how complicated leadership is and how challenging it can be to lead in a responsible, ethical fashion. The book analyzes a number of leaders who faced not just crises, but transformational situations. As the book’s title promises.
True Adaptive, Social Leadership doesn’t take shortcuts; he carefully looks at the complexities that leadership, power and authority involve. His examples range from Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson to Adolf Hitler. To make his point, he uses metaphors from biology, music and the military and draws lessons from history. Heifetz has developed a great angle to look at leadership that will force you to reject the easy, superficial answers that make up so much of leadership literature. In their place, Heifetz offers approaches for observing contexts, balancing various factors and monitoring growth.
Ronald A. Heifetz provides a discussion of just how complicated leadership is and how challenging it can be to lead in a responsible, ethical fashion. The book analyzes a number of leaders who faced not just crises, but transformational situations. As the book’s title promises.
True Adaptive, Social Leadership doesn’t take shortcuts; he carefully looks at the complexities that leadership, power and authority involve. His examples range from Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson to Adolf Hitler. To make his point, he uses metaphors from biology, music and the military and draws lessons from history. Heifetz has developed a great angle to look at leadership that will force you to reject the easy, superficial answers that make up so much of leadership literature. In their place, Heifetz offers approaches for observing contexts, balancing various factors and monitoring growth.
June 27, 2020
The best book on leadership I’ve read - I appreciated that it talked about being a leader with formal or informal authority and how that’s different.
I’ll continue to reflect on adaptive challenges, holding environments, and how to get to the balcony / create sanctuaries as a leader — especially with everything going on right now.
I’ll continue to reflect on adaptive challenges, holding environments, and how to get to the balcony / create sanctuaries as a leader — especially with everything going on right now.
December 1, 2023
Read this for class this semester. Definitely provided an interesting lens to understand leadership. I do not think it is as universally applicable as he asserts, but definitely gave me some new things to think about and explore.
December 1, 2023
read this for school. Not bad for required reading. Would not recommend to the every day leisure reader
June 27, 2018
Quite fascinating -- intelligent, with many applicable insights, this is not a book of kitsch psychology.
August 1, 2022
I read chapters of this book for an Adaptive Leadership course and enjoyed them so much I ordered a second hand copy.
Despite being published in the 90s, the principles and case studies are very insightful and relevant.
Despite being published in the 90s, the principles and case studies are very insightful and relevant.
September 8, 2007
This is one of the most powerful books that I have ever read. It is a must read for all leaders and change agents which will help identify and attack adaptive challenges (the BIG problems without simple, technical solutions.)
December 31, 2016
I find myself drawn back to Heifetz work as a trusted guidepost for leadership, particularly leading without authority
February 22, 2019
Best book I've ever read on change management. Wish I'd read it 30 years ago.
October 15, 2023
Book: Adaptive Leadership
Left: Math, Planning (deliberate), Waterfall (sequential), Porter
Right: Art, Unplanned (emerging), Agile (adaptive), Mintzberg
Leadership: Adaption and Authority
This book is very good, five star already. As I read the table of content it say about important concept, first: death, as he mention that leadership is dangerous as the stress of adaptive work can be severe to the death literally. second: authority. Although the book also examine the balance between adaptive vs routine work. But introduction of these death and authority concept is the very important message of this book.
page 2: Crisis in leadership in many areas of public and private life such as uncompetitive industry, drug abuse, poverty, poor public education, environmental hazard, ethnic strife, budget deficits, economic dislocation, obstacles to constructive foreign relations.
page 3: The first is a belief that many problems are embedded in complicated and interactive systems.
Most professionals have a systems bias. Car mechanics, business executives, and urban planners think systemically about problems, focusing on the interacting parts of a car, business, or city. The second bias from biology is to assume that much of behavior reflects an adaptation to circumstances. As a third bias, I think of authority relationships in terms of service.
page 5 As a psychiatrist, I believe that many adaptive and communicative processes are unconscious, and I learn about them by inference.
page 8 My view of leadership is organized around two key distinctions: between technical and adaptive problems, and between leadership and authority. The first points to the different modes of action required to deal with routine problems in contrast with those that demand innovation and learning; the second provides a framework for assessing resources and developing a leadership strategy depending upon whether one has or does not have authority
Notes:
Dominance, Authority, Culture
Attention is the currency of leadership
We have problem with authority, we have problem with attention
Politics of inclusion, interesting
Left: Math, Planning (deliberate), Waterfall (sequential), Porter
Right: Art, Unplanned (emerging), Agile (adaptive), Mintzberg
Leadership: Adaption and Authority
This book is very good, five star already. As I read the table of content it say about important concept, first: death, as he mention that leadership is dangerous as the stress of adaptive work can be severe to the death literally. second: authority. Although the book also examine the balance between adaptive vs routine work. But introduction of these death and authority concept is the very important message of this book.
page 2: Crisis in leadership in many areas of public and private life such as uncompetitive industry, drug abuse, poverty, poor public education, environmental hazard, ethnic strife, budget deficits, economic dislocation, obstacles to constructive foreign relations.
page 3: The first is a belief that many problems are embedded in complicated and interactive systems.
Most professionals have a systems bias. Car mechanics, business executives, and urban planners think systemically about problems, focusing on the interacting parts of a car, business, or city. The second bias from biology is to assume that much of behavior reflects an adaptation to circumstances. As a third bias, I think of authority relationships in terms of service.
page 5 As a psychiatrist, I believe that many adaptive and communicative processes are unconscious, and I learn about them by inference.
page 8 My view of leadership is organized around two key distinctions: between technical and adaptive problems, and between leadership and authority. The first points to the different modes of action required to deal with routine problems in contrast with those that demand innovation and learning; the second provides a framework for assessing resources and developing a leadership strategy depending upon whether one has or does not have authority
Notes:
Dominance, Authority, Culture
Attention is the currency of leadership
We have problem with authority, we have problem with attention
Politics of inclusion, interesting
September 22, 2017
In his seminal book, Heifetz outlines his theory of adaptive leadership. That is, how leaders educate society about the need for change. The book centers on LBJ and his success in bringing about the Voter Rights Act, and his failure in the Vietnam War. In the former instance, LBJ gradually educated society about the need for the change, in the latter matter he pursued a technocratic response and neglected to inform the American public about the purpose of the war. This book, overall, improved my understanding of the importance of messaging to the public to obtain change and the need for successful leaders to communicate.
May 1, 2018
This book explains the adaptive leadership theory using examples from the twentieth century. It also explains how one might lead in this style even if you do not have positional authority. Heifetz does a good job explaining what must happen if a leader wants to help her followers adapt to a new situation. He gives examples from history and he explains each step along the way. Even if one does not use all the parts of this leadership theory, there are good ideas for helping yourself and others adapt to situations that have no easy answers and/ or no known answers.
March 15, 2017
Very interesting analysis of some well known folks in leadership positions up to the early 1990s so many of the examples may seem dated. My main takeaway is that there are different types of leaders and leadership. There is adaptive work where learning is required to address conflicts in order to change values, beliefs, and behavior. Leadership is defined as mobilizing people to tackle tough problems, providing a vision, and influencing others. This is an activity, not traits.
The author goes through his theory from the roots of authority, mobilizing adaptive work, applying power with formal authority versus informal authority, and cites examples including LBJ during the 1960s, civil rights and Vietnam; MLK-civil rights and Selma, Ghandi and India-non violence; Sanger with birth control.
It was interesting to understand the theory behind leadership, particularly if you've ever been or will be in a leadership role. I just wish there were other examples of leaders who were not of the left wing liberal persuasion. I know most of these authors are in academia, and it detracts from getting the point across. Not sure these authors understand that or that they care. I would love a non partisan look at issues, but I am not holding my breath.
The author goes through his theory from the roots of authority, mobilizing adaptive work, applying power with formal authority versus informal authority, and cites examples including LBJ during the 1960s, civil rights and Vietnam; MLK-civil rights and Selma, Ghandi and India-non violence; Sanger with birth control.
It was interesting to understand the theory behind leadership, particularly if you've ever been or will be in a leadership role. I just wish there were other examples of leaders who were not of the left wing liberal persuasion. I know most of these authors are in academia, and it detracts from getting the point across. Not sure these authors understand that or that they care. I would love a non partisan look at issues, but I am not holding my breath.
May 26, 2017
Very well researched book which gives an excellent framework for approaching leadership. Emphasizes that leadership is adaptive and ongoing. Enjoyed many of the historical anecdotes particularly those about Lyndon Johnson. Definitely can tell Heifetz approaches leadership from a very thoughtful perspective and his psychiatric training background comes through.
December 7, 2018
I like the history and the academic approach, but the end result is that those examples of leadership (presidencies, wars, civil rights injustices that shape a century) are so extraordinary that it doesn't feel like the daily forms of leadership most experience in the workplace or in local communities are fully addressed.
January 27, 2019
Took me a long time to read, but absolutely worth it. All the examples of leadership used in the book gave me different such perspectives than I’ve ever had before. A well crafted book that uses narrative to make a point that I normally wouldn’t remember, but makes it so memorable that it’s hard to forget. Especially great for a young, inexperienced leader like me.
September 1, 2024
The author highlights Margaret Sanger, a vile racist who expoused eugenics that led to the holocaust and created an organization that has murdered millions of black babies, but the rest of the book was good, so 2/5 stars
December 21, 2024
An absolute must read for anyone interested in developing leadership. Heifetz does a masterful job at building a leadership type that can navigate the complexity of leadership. The concepts of the holding environment and putting one’s self on the balcony are imperative to any leader.
Read
June 25, 2025“Leadership takes place every day. Every time we face a conflict among competing values, or encounter a gap between our shared values and the way we live, we faced the need to learn new ways. Leadership requires a learning strategy. One may lead, perhaps with no more than a question in hand.”
June 21, 2017
Not as easy to read as I would like but have used the basics in the book many, many times in mediation and facilitation.
January 4, 2018
I gave this book full marks not because I think it was necessarily amazingly written, but because the ideas contained within it have changed my view of social interaction and change significantly.
November 13, 2018
Strong, and clear. I pick it up every couple of years and read it again.
July 13, 2020
An essential book that explores leadership as an activity, not as an inherent trait or an acquired position.
March 26, 2021
One of the better leadership books I've read, probably because of the clear message and memorable examples. As relevant now as when it was written 30 years ago.
August 1, 2021
Not impressed
April 1, 2022
Best leadership book I’ve ever read.
June 20, 2022
unique and valuable leadership paradigm
January 31, 2023
Useful, but repetitive.
August 10, 2024
Well written with some value that remains relevant today regarding leadership v. authority, but the perspectives are outdated regarding racial and social justice, trauma-informed practices, and human rights.
Want to read
October 31, 2024From Dean Rose
Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews