Joiner.ffirs 8/30/06 3:21 PM Page i Bill Joiner Stephen Josephs Q Leadership Agility Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Joiner.ftoc 8/30/06 3:22 PM Page iv Joiner.ffirs 8/30/06 3:21 PM Page i Bill Joiner Stephen Josephs Q Leadership Agility Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Joiner.ffirs 8/30/06 3:21 PM Page ii Copyright © 2007 by Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs. All rights reserved. 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Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002. Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Joiner, Bill, 1950- Leadership agility : five levels of mastery for anticipating and initiating change / Bill Joiner, Stephen Josephs. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-7913-3 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-7879-7913-9 (cloth) 1. Leadership—Psychological aspects. 2. Organizational change—Psychological aspects. 3. Maturation (Psychology) 4. Leadership—Psychological aspects—Case studies. 5. Organizational change—Psychological aspects—Case studies. 6. Maturation (Psychology)—Case studies. I. Josephs, Stephen, 1945- II. Title. HD57.7.J649 2007 658.4'092—dc22 2006020996 Printed in the United States of America FIRST EDITION PB Printing 10987654321 Joiner.ftoc 8/30/06 3:22 PM Page iii Q Contents Introduction: The Master Competency v Part One: What Is Leadership Agility? 1 Agility in a World of Change and Complexity 3 2 The Five Eds 13 3 Four Competencies for Agile Leadership 31 Part Two: Five Levels of Leadership Agility 4 Expert Level: Solve Key Problems 43 5 Achiever Level: Accomplish Desired Outcomes 64 6 Catalyst Level: Mobilize Breakout Endeavors 91 7 Co-Creator Level: Realize Shared Purpose 123 8 Synergist Level: Evoke Unexpected Possibilities 155 Part Three: Becoming a More Agile Leader 9 Assessing Leadership Agility 193 10 Developing Leadership Agility 203 Appendix A: Research Behind This Book 227 Appendix B: Stages of Personal Development 235 Notes for Inquiring Readers 249 References 295 Resources 307 Acknowledgments 309 The Authors 311 Index 312 iii Joiner.ftoc 8/30/06 3:22 PM Page iv We dedicate this book to Debbie and Noah, Alice and Sean, and to our parents: Frances (Bunny) Joiner (1921–1999) Billy Joiner (1920– ) Teddy Josephs (1914–2006) Israel Josephs (1904–1981) Joiner.flast 8/30/06 3:21 PM Page v Q Introduction: The Master Competency Leadership agility isn’t just another tool for your toolkit. It’s the mas- ter competency needed for sustained success in today’s turbulent econ- omy. This book, richly illustrated with real-world examples, shows what leadership agility looks like in action. It will confirm your best instincts and introduce you to new forms of leadership currently prac- ticed by only a small percentage of highly agile leaders. Leadership Agility draws on a strong research base and three decades of experience consulting, coaching, and training leaders in companies based in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Although most of our stories and examples come from the business world, this guide is also designed for managers in the government and nonprofit sectors, in professional firms, in academic and religious institutions, in fact, for anyone interested in developing as a person and becoming a more effective leader. If you’re a leadership development professional, and you sense that our global economy demands new personal capacities as well as new leadership competencies, this book is also for you. It not only provides the first in-depth examination of leadership agility, it also describes five distinct levels that leaders move through as they master this much- needed competency.1 Strikingly, the research reported in this book indicates that less than 10 percent of managers have mastered the level of agility needed for sustained success in today’s turbulent business environment.2 AN INTEGRAL APPROACH The prevailing approach to leadership development moves from the outside in: You identify a leader’s external challenges and then deter- mine the competencies required to meet these challenges effectively. v Joiner.flast 8/30/06 3:21 PM Page vi vi INTRODUCTION An inside-out approach has also emerged in recent years, focusing on the mental and emotional capacities needed for effective leadership.3 Leadership Agility is based on an integral perspective that approaches leadership development from the outside in and from the inside out.4 From an outside-in perspective it highlights the skills needed for agile leadership in complex, rapidly changing environments. More specif- ically, it identifies agile leadership competencies in three distinct action arenas: • Pivotal conversations: Direct person-to-person discussions where important outcomes are at stake. • Team initiatives: Initiatives intended to improve a team and/or its relationship with its larger environment. • Organizational initiatives: Initiatives designed to change an orga- nization and/or its relationship with its larger environment. This book also approaches leadership agility from the inside out: It identifies the mental and emotional capacities that work together to enable agile leadership in all three action arenas. These capacities, which we describe in Chapter Three, make you more agile in antici- pating and initiating change, working with stakeholders, solving chal- lenging problems, and learning from your experience. STAGES OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT From an inside-out perspective, this book reveals a significant set of findings about the relationship between personal development and leadership effectiveness: As adults grow toward realizing their poten- tial, they develop a constellation of mental and emotional capacities that happen to be the very capacities needed for agile leadership. For example, as adults develop, they get better at understanding and appreciating viewpoints that conflict with their own. This capacity is an essential ingredient in what we call “stakeholder agility,” the abil- ity to lead successfully in situations where stakeholders have views and interests that conflict with your own. Our understanding of the capacities that emerge as human beings develop is so central to leadership agility that we want to explain where it comes from. At the beginning of our careers, we studied and trained in a range of disciplines, both Eastern and Western, that enabled us to Joiner.flast 8/30/06 3:21 PM Page vii The Master Competency vii help managers develop both as human beings and as leaders. We also had the good fortune to discover a field called stage-development psy- chology, which shows that, as people develop, they evolve through a series of recognizable stages. Take a moment to imagine the full spectrum of human growth, from humans at their most infantile to those who are the wisest, most mature, most fully developed on the planet. For more than eight decades, stage-development psychologists have researched and clari- fied this continuum. Studying this field and testing it against our real- world experience, we found that it provides an exceptionally useful map for understanding the journey of human development. The fol- lowing sections present a brief overview of this map.5 The Pre-Conventional and Conventional Stages By the end of the 1950s, psychologists including Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson had mapped the stages through which infants evolve into adults. These begin with the so-called pre-conventional stages, which mark the process of growth from infancy through the end of the grade school years.6 Then come the three conventional stages, which we call Conformer, Expert, and Achiever, respectively.7 Most children enter the Conformer stage about the time they start middle school. At this stage, preadolescents develop the ability to engage in the most basic level of abstract thought and the ability to vividly imagine how they’re seen by others.