Adaptive Leadership in Donation and Transplantation

This is an experiment. I don't know if I have this right yet. It is a way to bring some of my favourite and most used leadership ideas together in one place, on a topic I deeply love: organ and tissue donation and transplantation.

Adaptive leadership is not a set of steps to follow. It is a capacity to grow: curiosity, courage, and the ability to sit in the heat when the work gets hard. Donation and transplantation ask that of us every day, at the bedside, in our programs and across the system.

Each unit has a short video and a handout, and most have a worksheet. The first units work from the outside in: authority, adaptive work, the balcony, the holding environment, loss. The later units turn inward, to the person doing the work. Take them in order or go where you need to.

If it works, you will leave not with answers, but with new ways to see.

Start here

Units

• Unit 1: Leadership and AuthorityWhy authority is not the same as leadership, and what people expect from those who hold it.
• Unit 2: Technical and Adaptive WorkTelling problems that have known fixes apart from challenges that require people to learn and change.
• Unit 3: Getting on the BalconyStepping out of the action to see the patterns, then stepping back in.
• Unit 4: The Holding EnvironmentBuilding enough trust and structure for people to stay in hard work together.
• Unit 5: People Resist LossPeople do not resist change so much as the losses that come with it.
• Unit 6: From the Inside OutTurning the same diagnostic eye on ourselves: the loyalties and voices we bring into the room.
• Unit 7: Facing the FireRegulating the heat, and staying alive and well when the work turns on us.
• Unit 8: Non-Defensive DefenceMeeting challenge and criticism with curiosity rather than armour.
• Unit 9: A Deep Dive, Inside OutAn additional unit that goes further into voices, waters, lines of code, loyalties and hungers.

Everything here is free to watch, download and share. Handouts open as PDFs and always reflect the latest version. Comments and suggestions are welcome.