Adaptive leadership is a style of leadership that focuses on empowering individuals and organizations to adapt and change to address complex problems. It's a mindset that highlights collaboration, innovation, and flexibility to complement top-down authority. In today's dynamic urban landscape, it's more important than ever to cultivate this kind of leadership among city leaders.
Working Across Departmental Silos
One of the biggest challenges faced by city governments is working across departmental silos. Many departments have their own agendas, budgets, and goals, which can create barriers to collaboration and communication. To overcome these barriers, adaptive leaders need to be skilled at building bridges between departments, breaking down barriers, and jointly creating public value. Adaptive leaders can facilitate cross-departmental collaboration by creating a culture of open communication, establishing shared goals, and emphasizing the importance of teamwork. Leaders can also promote the use of technology and data to create a more collaborative environment and encourage sharing best practices between departments.
Equipping Millennials and Gen Z to Thrive within Traditional Hierarchical Offices
City governments are increasingly being staffed by Millennials and Gen Z employees, who enter the workforce with different expectations and priorities than their predecessors. Being digital natives, these young public servants see the world as connected, dynamic, technology-enabled, and full of possibilities.
Adaptive leaders need to be aware that these perspectives are likely to clash with traditional bureaucratic cultures in some city hall departments. Adaptive leaders can proactively equip Millennials and Gen Z staff to operate on dual modes, enabling them to survive office politics by code-shifting between hierarchical culture and power dynamics, while at the same time retaining the optimistic and innovative digital-first mindsets that they grew up with.
Leveraging the Innovation Capacity of Local Universities
City colleges are a valuable resource for city governments, offering a wealth of talent and expertise in various fields. With thousands of students doing academic projects - all connected to the latest ideas through online learning resources - adaptive leaders can leverage this human capital by forging partnerships with city colleges to create research partnerships, joint prototyping, internships, mentorships, and industry-academe partnerships.
By working with local universities, city governments can gain access to cutting-edge research and technology, as well as a pipeline of talented young professionals. Adaptive leaders can also encourage the development of entrepreneurship and innovation programs at city colleges, which can cultivate a sense of civic engagement and democratic values among the young citizens.
Synergizing with Business Leaders
City governments and business leaders have a shared interest in the economic prosperity of the city. Adaptive leaders can leverage this shared interest by forging partnerships with business leaders to promote economic development and job creation. Fostering collaboration between the department heads and businessmen may also unlock innovative and entrepreneurial approaches to problem-solving at city hall. A Startup-in Residence program may also produce local solution-providers.
Futures Thinking: My City 2050
Discussions on future scenarios of a city in 2040 or 2050 can help enrich discourse and reframe conversations beyond short- to medium-term managerial and firefighting concerns by providing a long-term vision that can guide decision-making and policy development. These discussions can also help generate new ideas and perspectives on how to address current challenges and shape the future of the city.
Life Purpose and Work at City Hall
Discussing the life purpose of individual public servants can help deepen and broaden leadership conversations in several ways. It can introduce more perspectives into coaching conversations, allowing coaches and leaders to better understand the motivations and values that drive the behavior of public servants. This understanding can help leaders better connect with their employees and create a more positive and supportive work environment.
Discussing life purpose can also help leaders understand how their employees' personal and professional goals intersect. When leaders have a deeper understanding of their employees' motivations and aspirations, they can work to align organizational goals with individual goals, creating a more engaged and motivated workforce. This can lead to increased productivity, higher job satisfaction, and reduced turnover.
Employee Relations and Flourishing of their Families
Life Purpose and Work at City Hall
Discussing the life purpose of individual public servants can help deepen and broaden leadership conversations in several ways. It can introduce more perspectives into coaching conversations, allowing coaches and leaders to better understand the motivations and values that drive the behavior of public servants. This understanding can help leaders better connect with their employees and create a more positive and supportive work environment.
Discussing life purpose can also help leaders understand how their employees' personal and professional goals intersect. When leaders have a deeper understanding of their employees' motivations and aspirations, they can work to align organizational goals with individual goals, creating a more engaged and motivated workforce. This can lead to increased productivity, higher job satisfaction, and reduced turnover.
Employee Relations and Flourishing of their Families
Parenting and household roles are an integral part of an employee's life, and that supporting employees in this role is essential for their well-being and productivity. This means creating policies and practices that accommodate the needs of working parents, such as flexible working hours, parental leave, and childcare support.
Low-income and contractual city hall personnel (such as street sweepers and garbage collectors) may also be engaged to actively cultivate the hopes of their children. Introducing conversations like Family Vision Boards and futures thinking will help their households thrive and prosper within the city.
Climate Action and Energy Transition
Leaders need to mobilize their constituents for climate action. This means developing a clear vision for the city's future and identifying strategies that can help the city reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change, including doable actions at the household, school, firm and community levels.
Leading Upwards: City x National Leadership
Engaging bureaucrats and politicians outside of the city may be critical for strategies such as redistricting, large investments, long-term infrastructure projects, and other structural changes that influence the city. Effective leadership in this context requires a combination of strategic thinking, collaboration skills, and a deep understanding of the political landscape beyond the city.
Image credits: https://www.sunstar.com.ph/uploads/images/2022/10/03/385561.jpg
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