Facing Change Series: Thriving Through Adaptive Change

In our third installment in the Facing Change Series, we turn to look at a challenge all leaders and churches face as they engage the hard realities of change. Too many Christ-centered efforts fail as they ignore the importance of tending to the health and well-being of those engaging adaptive leadership.

Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky may be the leading scholars who write on adaptive leadership. They define wide-angled adaptive leadership as “the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive.” To be clear the tough challenges Heifetz and Linksy refer to are not simply technical in nature. Rather they are adaptive challenges that, “can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties.”

But as you can imagine, leading adaptive change is an uphill challenge. In their book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, co-authored with Alexander Grashow, the conclude with a chapter focused on how leaders can care for themselves and the system so as to ensure thriving is a result of the change process. It is simply too easy for leaders and churches to burn themselves out as they address the challenges that surround deep change.

They write:

“All the predictable consequences of burnout can result from poorly deploying your passionate commitments: bad judgments, losing connections with family, and your health…”

To help steward yourself and avoid burnout one of the practices they encourage is the creation and maintenance of sanctuaries:

“A sanctuary provides the opportunity for you to get away from conflict and recalibrate your own internal responses. It enables you to move through your reactive triggers, quiet your hungers, and reflect on events rather than be dominated by them… Sanctuaries not only help you process your professional challenges, they enable you to restore yourself… Sanctuaries are spaces where you can hear yourself think, recover yourself from your work, and feel quieter inclinations of your spirit.”

(The call to engage in sanctuary spaces is quite striking coming a book published by Harvard Business Press)

The Community of Churches is intended to serve as an ecumenical space that provides these kinds of sanctuary spaces for leaders and congregations as they navigate these hard challenges. If you are interested in learning more or would like to take the next step for you and your congregation we invite you to engage the links below.

It is our hope that together we might create a learning community that can provide these kinds of safe and restorative space so that leaders and churches can thrive.

In Hope,

The Better Together Team