Adaptive Leadership: Addressing Challenges in Industrial Relations

Adaptive leadership 0
Adaptive leadership
Student’s Name
10/5/2019

Adaptive leadership 1
The increasing complexities in the business environment have developed the emerging need
for the business to adapt and thrive in challenging environment. To address the above
challenges the organizations adopts the framework of adaptive leadership under which the
company diagnose, interrupt and innovate for creating the capabilities that meets the
aspirations of organization (Obolensky, 2017). The adoption of adaptive leadership theory
allows the union to improve the industrial relations and develop win-win approach for all the
members in the organization. The additional paragraphs will provide the insight about the use
of adaptive leadership in addressing the challenges of industrial relation.
In accordance to Heifetz and Laurie (1997), adaptive leadership framework aids the
organization in actively responding towards the changing environment and the recurring
problems that occurs in the organization. It allows solving the challenges faced by the
employer by providing them the flexibility to incubate innovative ideas and allows taking the
decisions that improves the productivity of the organization. The theory of adaptive
leadership allows the leader to lead with empathy and influence the co-workers and
stakeholders. It helps the employers in rewarding the employees with autonomy and provides
them the opportunity to conduct activities and cooperate the efforts to achieve the desired
result. This aids in improving the industrial relations and creates positive working
environment (Heifetz and Laurie, 1997).
Adoption of the adaptive leadership allows the employer to create win-win situation and
attracts the stakeholders. The adaptive leaders are able to focus more on the employees and
their professional growth. They navigate the environment and analyses the challenges that lie
in the external environment to properly handle them and do not create hurdle in the progress
of the employees. This theory allows to Union to concentrate more on the employees and in

Adaptive leadership 2
turn increases the employee satisfaction. It promotes good industrial relation and allows the
organization to gain competitive advantage (Senge, Heifetz and Torbert, 2000).
These leaders encourage the employees to embrace the uncertainties and develop creative
approaches that will provide new insight to the business and will allow the employees to
develop their skills and advance their professional growth. These leaders focus on leading
with empathy and provide the extrinsic and the intrinsic motivation for increasing the
employee’s commitment and in turn increasing the productivity of the company (Obolensky,
2017).
The unions face the challenge of negative attitude of the management towards their muscle
and money power. Unions are commonly perceived as the one who will destroy the relation
between the managers and the workers because of the restrictions and power of the decision
making. The Unions are perceived as the individuals who will restrict the freedom of the
managers and will destroy the harmony at the workplace. Considering the above scenario the
theory of adaptive leaders encourages experimentation. They allow the managers to self-
reflect of the failures and the success and develop the understanding of the employees and
their actual efforts. These leaders focus on providing the opportunity to manage
independently and develop coordination in the activities. They also focus on rewarding the
employees with the autonomy to motivate them and create win –win situation for all
(O'Brien, 2017).
Through the adoption of the above mentioned framework the unions can address the
challenge of collective bargaining under which it involves the employees to participate in the
collective bargaining and negotiate with the employers through the help of unions. It is
analysed that the unions are often perceived as conducting favouritism in negotiating and
turning the communications into aggressive ones. The introduction of the new technologies