One of the toughest times to be in a leadership position, either in the military or not, is during a crisis, let alone a major, world-wide crisis. Adaptive Leadership is encouraging others to have the ability to change their behaviors to better suit their environments. This leadership style “has been used effectively to explain how leaders encourage effective change across multiple levels, including self, organizational, community, and societal” (Northouse, 2016, p. 257). How many times were decisions made and then changed to adapt to the ever changing situation that is still evolving? An adaptive leadership approach to COVID-19 has been key to each country getting ahead of this virus. If they were not able to think on the fly and adapt to the changing environment, more people would have been effected. The leaders of the world have taught everyone how to adapt to our new environment in the best manner that they could have and we are now, hopefully, in a position to climb back to a normal sense of living. Six months ago, the Earth would never had guessed that we would completely close down the economic systems, crashed the markets, and raided stores in order to prepare for the end of the world. But, it happened, and here we are now, with our face masks on. “Adaptive challenges are problems that are not clear-cut or easy to identify” (Northouse, 2016, p. 262). COVID-19 is 100% an adaptive challenge and our leaders used their authority to combat it as best as they could. They forced everyone inside their homes, made them put masks on, and now we use the term “social distancing.”
The COVID-19 crisis has also been a major concern for the military. How do you successfully protect our country during a virus outbreak? Do terrorists still attack U.S. bases if they have the coronavirus? Even though the world stopped for a few months to let this virus pass over, the military did not. The leaders adapted to the new way of living in stride. They implemented the distancing measures and directed all of the members to wear masks to avoid spreading the disease as best as they could. An example of where the virus played a major impact was in basic military training. Less members were recruited in order to maintain more space in the dorm rooms, but without recruits coming into the military during this timeframe, there would be severe consequences down the road when it comes to promotion testing. This environment is where adaptive leaders, the Instructors, can thrive. We can consider basic training a holding environment. A holding environment is where the adaptive work is completed and plays a critical role in the adaptive process (Northouse, 2016). In this type of changing environment, the Instructors will have freedom to strategically interact with the followers (trainees) and have a grasp on the type of adaptive work that they want to accomplish. The term follower is used in the concept of adaptive leadership not as a subordinate, but rather as the individual that the leader is working with to complete the adaptive work (Northouse, 2016). Yes, basic trainees are very submissive when they first enter training, but after they are mentally striped of their normality, they become an adaptive follower that will be build back up in a few short weeks.
If our leaders had taken a different approach to this crisis, we may be in a very different environment now. Instead, we are looking at returning to normal, with a few contingencies, in a few months. The individuals that experienced this crisis will always remember it, just like the world remembers where they were when the U.S. was attacked on September 11th. We will eventually break away from our struggles and there is a light at the end of the tunnel because of the way our leaders helped us adapt to our new lifestyle.
References
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice, Seventh Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.