Adaptive Leadership: Deepening Awareness of Self and Systems as Peacebuilders
“This course will be a kind of compass in my peace building activities.”
Leading change and disrupting the status quo can be dangerous, deeply challenging work. As peacebuilders lead change and transformation in an increasingly violent, complex, and uncertain world, being adaptable, courageous, and reflective are evermore necessary.
Through the Peace Practice Alliance (PPA), peacebuilders are well-familiar with the challenges and complexities of leading change and the need for courage, empathy, adaptability, continued reflection, and more. Also in the PPA, peacebuilders learn through systems thinking that we often need to disrupt the status quo to spark change and shift systems towards peace. How do we really do that? Adaptive leadership is “specifically about change that enables the capacity to thrive” (Heifetz, Linsky, & Grashow. 2009). How can we, as peacebuilders, address adaptive challenges to enable individuals, communities, and societies to thrive? Similar to how we believe everyone can be a peacebuilder, leadership is not a job, a position, or an authority - it is simply a practice that can be done by anyone. How can we each step into our leadership capacity? How can we further understand and regulate ourselves and our relationships to address adaptive challenges with honest awareness and action?
To support our community of peacebuilders, and to explore these leadership questions, Euphrates collaborated with Marc Manashil of CoInnovate Consulting to provide a 12-week course Adaptive Leadership: Deepening Awareness of Self and Systems as Peacebuilders. The purpose of this course was to deepen understanding and practice of adaptive leadership ideas by guiding through a process of addressing an important challenge in one’s peacebuilding work. We used peacebuilders’ identified challenges, including 30 peacebuilders from 16 countries, to focus on real-life practice and application, and gain real-time insights on how to address these challenges. The course aimed for participants to strengthen insights of self and systems to effectively build allies, anticipate resistance, and take informed action steps that will help them achieve progress on their adaptive challenges over time.
We examined the differences between authority and leadership, explored the need for and practice of adaptation, evaluated the differences between technical and adaptive challenges, and framed our own adaptive challenges. We learned how to diagnose the system, identify and understand stakeholders, and reflectively evaluate ourselves and our own internal narratives. We learned tools for disrupting the status quo and moving change forward with care and curiosity, and planned and tested interventions to address our challenges, learn from what happened, and thoughtfully plan what’s next - creating a committed and evolving process of awareness, action, and learning.
100% of peacebuilders reported that after this course they feel they can better determine when, where, and how to take a risk, that they learned strategies to help manage discomfort in others and resistance to their peacebuilding efforts, and they strengthened their awareness of other stakeholder perspectives in order to take more informed action steps. 95% evaluated the course as successful in supporting them in addressing an important challenge they’ve been facing in their peacebuilding work.
Through a case consultation process, peacebuilders were tasked to take small actions on addressing their identified adaptive challenge, and return to the group to share, reflect, and support each other in continuing to plan next steps. To apply the adaptive leadership practices, peacebuilders tried on various actions including but not limited to convening multi-stakeholder forums, identifying key individuals and holding honest conversations with them to learn more about their values, speaking with community members to distinguish between the technical and adaptive components of their work, and identifying and learning about new partners to collaborate with. Peacebuilders shared:
“One way I applied the ideas of adaptive leadership was during a recent engagement with a church we support that was hesitant to address internal conflict. Instead of offering quick solutions, I used adaptive leadership tools to help them surface underlying fears, competing values and loss narratives that were fueling resistance. I intentionally created a space where discomfort could be acknowledged without judgment. By slowing down the process and inviting the leaders to reflect on what was at stake for them, the church began to have honest conversations about their identity, expectations, and hopes. Initial progress was seen in the way most of the leaders started listening to each other differently and even seeking reconciliation. ”
“Instead of only focusing on technical solutions, I became more attentive to the emotional and relational landscape — identifying where people felt their positions, identities, or comfort zones were being challenged. This allowed me to create space for dialogue, address resistance with empathy, and support smoother transitions. While it’s an ongoing journey, I do feel I’ve made initial progress in building trust, fostering buy-in, and navigating resistance more thoughtfully, thanks to this adaptive leadership lens.”
“I applied the adaptive leadership ideas in my peacebuilding work and it helps me address complex and evolving challenges by focusing on learning, experimentation, and adaptation rather than predetermined solutions…I make initial progress by understanding the difference between the technical approach and an adaptive approach where adaptive leadership emphasizes collaboration, shared responsibility, and a willingness to learn and adjust to the needed change. So, we went in the community to diagnose the problems of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors before we can call all parties to get involved for collective change. It involves active listening to diverse perspectives, embracing uncertainty, and continuously refining strategies to foster sustainable peace.”
After the course, 100% of peacebuilders reported that adaptive leadership will help them improve their peacebuilding work, and that the course led them to think about leadership differently than they had before attending. Peacebuilders shared:
“Leadership isn’t just about solving problems — it’s about guiding people through the emotions and adjustments that come with them.”
“Leadership is an activity that needs to be undertaken and demonstrated. Before the training, I had believed that leaders are born, and therefore, not everyone can be a leader.”
“Before attending the course, I saw leadership mostly as a position or title. Now, I see it more as a responsibility to serve others with empathy, courage, and purpose. The course helped me understand that true leadership is about building trust, creating space for others to grow, and leading by example—especially in times of uncertainty and conflict.”
“There used to be a kind of confusion between leadership and authority in my mind. Now it's clear.”
“This course has deeply expanded both my mindset and my toolkit for peace work moving forward.” With expanded perspectives and tools, the practice of adaptive leadership encourages us to take responsibility and to find joy in the process. We each need to tend to our capacity for peace and adaptation. Rather than be paralyzed by fear, shy away into complicity, or become overwhelmed by the waterfall of complexity and violence, we can prioritize enhancing our capacity to stand strong in the face of it all, to build trust and allies, to actively self-reflect, and tend to relationships. While there are no easy answers or technical solutions to adaptive challenges, we continue to not only imagine a better world, but take active steps towards it. We need the courage to step into the unknown, and the trust of ourselves, our relationships, and communities that we can do it together. We all can practice adaptive leadership and, with distributed power, we can do better, together.
As one peacebuilder shared, “This course will be a kind of compass in my peace building activities.” We believe peace is a practice, and adaptive leadership is a practice; and we hope that through combining these two we can support peacebuilders to thrive. We hope for these practices to serve as an anchor and a compass. We commit to widening our circles of community to continue this courageous practice together with integrity, accountability, authenticity, curiosity, and transformation at heart.
Participant Reflections
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Euphrates has a growing community of peace leaders through the Peace Practice Alliance (PPA) program, with currently 164 alumni across 50 countries. This is a community of seasoned, passionate, and evolving peacebuilders, committed to continued learning, practice, and individual and collective growth. To support them beyond the PPA program, Euphrates offers additional courses, serving as deep dives into specialized peace leadership topics and practices.