Adaptive capacity is “the ability to process new experiences, to find their meaning and to integrate them into one’s life, the signature skill of leaders and, indeed, of anyone who finds ways to live fully and well.”

The book is based on interviews with 43 leaders, ranging in age from 21 to 93, and including both geeks (heads of dot-coms and other information-based organisations) and geezers (‘grandparents of geeks’).

An effective way to understand good leadership is to study bad leaders, suggest the authors. They cite as example the Bard’s tragic Roman general Coriolanus. “A great warrior, a man with a strong moral compass, Coriolanus has only one flaw – his utter inability to reach out to people of Rome and engage them in his vision.”

Leadership is one of the performing arts, and the leader always has to sell himself or herself to the audience, urge Bennis and Thomas. Elsewhere in the book, they describe adaptive capacity as applied creativity. “It is the ability to look at a problem or crisis and see an array of unconventional solutions. Adaptive capacity includes the quality Keats found essential to the genius of Shakespeare – negative capability.” Those with such a capability realise ‘the wisdom of entertaining opposing views at the same time’.

Those with well-developed adaptive capacity are not paralysed by fear or undermined by anxiety in difficult situations, explain the authors. Apart from adaptive capacity, the book discusses other leadership competencies such as: engaging others by creating shared meaning, voice, and integrity.

Lifetime lessons.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

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