MC59 Action-centred leadership: a truly useful model

Management Café

Continuing with our discussions on leadership frameworks, Pilar and Tim discuss John Adair's Action-Centred Leadership which was first introduced in 1973. Adair uses three overlapping circles to illustrate that effective leadership happens at the intersection of the task, the team and the individual.

And it is this deceptive simplicity which is a big part of the appeal. The model doesn't rely on a particular leadership style or organisational culture. Instead it reminds us that if we "zoom out" of our current situation we can identify which of the three areas needs our attention.

00:00 mins (yes, we went straight into it this time!) Pilar shares a story of when she applied Action-Centered Leadership at her theatre company. The model suggests we focus on leading on three different levels: the team level, the individual, and the task.

3:50 Pilar quotes Judy Rees: frameworks are helpful because "they direct our attention to something". As managers we rarely have all 3 focus areas in balance all the time. We can use the Action-Centred Leadership framework to guide us to the area needing the most attention.

5:00 Tim has tended to focus on individual and task while neglecting the team dynamic.

6:00 These 3 elements are interconnected and interdependent. If you try to shift one element it will inevitably also change the dynamic in the others.

10:00 Tim goes down a long rabbit hole talking about how management thought-leadership tends to show things as simple. But management is actually really hard and complicated. We speculate how this real world complexity would influence the menu and service in our Management Café.

11:30 Pilar recalls going to a training session which didn't have a set objective. Instead the facilitators asked the attendees what problems they needed to solve. She loved it, but noted that this approach didn't work for all attendees.

13:45 Prescriptive theory and processes are great in a book or training session. But when you get back to your actual job, things rarely play out the same way. People are unpredictable!

What about you, dear listener? What do you think of Action-Centred Leadership? Are there other leadership frameworks we should discuss? We'd love to hear about your experiences!

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