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You can’t lead others where you aren’t also going.

Prescriptive vs Adaptive Leadership

Jeffrey L. Tanner

Apr 1, 2022

You can’t lead others where you aren’t also going.

If you hear in this statement, “You can’t lead someone where you haven’t been,” you’re mistaken, and you’re wrong. You can lead someone where you haven’t been. It’s called adaptive leadership, and that’s the only form of leadership that really exists for any length of time anymore.

Leading requires being on the journey with others. Leading requires the messy vulnerability of entering into newly complex and never before seen situations. And this, by the way, is pretty much every situation in life. The world is the most complex it’s ever been, and that is only increasing.

A prescriptive leader directs a definitive course of action based on what they did in a “similar” situation to the one they’re hearing about. An adaptive leader says, “I might have some experience that we can use right now. Follow me, and we’ll face this challenge together.”

Do you tend to be a prescriptive leader or an adaptive leader? Which kind do you want to be?