Gavin Slater likens being a leader to his experience as an open-water swimmer. In a swimming pool, there are lanes to guide you, and you stay in your lane. In open-water swimming, you have a general idea where you are heading and you lift your head now and again to sight your destination, be it a marker, a pier, or a boat. Then you put your head down and take another 10 strokes before bringing your head up again, and so on.
Gavin emphasises the importance of constant reorientation. When he is open-water swimming, he has found he needs to take account of the currents, feel the water, and adapt to the circumstances. Sometimes he has to go with the current and accept it, or he will be worn out trying to swim against it. When the tide is going out and you are coming in, you will not swim as fast. It’s all about picking your moments.
Leadership, he suggests, is ultimately about dealing with people, which is why he likes the open-water swimming analogy. There are things you can see, things you can’t see; sometimes you can influence them, sometimes not. You are pursuing a general direction, with a broad intention in mind; you have to work out the rest of it as you go. It is critical to maintain your belief that you will reach your destination. You have done the training and developed your skills, and that is what will get you through the tough times.
Gavin’s open-water swimming analogy is supported by the theory of adaptive leadership, which was first defined by Ron Heifetz in his 1998 book Leadership Without Easy Answers. Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers and politicians, Heifetz noted the different leadership required to deal with routine technical problems that can be solved through expertise, compared with adaptive problems, such as crime, poverty and educational reform, which require adaptive leadership using continual learning and consideration of values.
These leadership insights from Gavin Slater are outlined in more detail in the new book, which Dean Phelan and I co-authored – The Gentle Art of Leadership. The perspectives we gathered from our interviews with 50+ leaders from around the globe and the original research we drew on, form the basis of the book.
🙋♀️ How could you apply the principles of adaptive leadership to your challenges? 🙋
PS: Discover your inner superpower, increase your influence and enhance your ability to get to “yes” faster in the Personality and Behaving Transactionally Program. Get in touch if you would like to find out more.
Best regards, Brian