Leader as Convener Not Problem Solver
By Deborah Gilburg
Last week, my consulting colleagues and I worked with a group of high-level policy makers from a federal agency. They are not part of an intact team, yet they are routinely tasked with working together on joint projects that impact all the regions they represent. They ranked themselves as “average” when it came to productivity and efficiency—somewhere around a C+. The question they were exploring was whether they had a purpose beyond these tasks: Could they collectively have greater influence on their agency’s future and mission? Did they have the capacity to even go there?
We shared a model based on the work of Ron Heifetz 
that breaks down the differences between “Technical” and “Adaptive” challenges. Technical challenges are those easily solved by experts through logic and intellect, whereas adaptive challenges cannot be solved by experts but instead require changes in people’s values, beliefs, behavior, roles, relationships, or approaches to work.
Our tendency is to avoid or deny adaptive challenges because they are hard to solve, take time, and the solutions cannot be implemented by edict the way a technical solution can. Rather, they require the collective will of the stakeholders involved to make the required changes.
This model shifted the conversation: Are we trying to find a technical solution to an adaptive quandary? Can we agree on an ultimate purpose when we are unclear about what we can actually accomplish with the will/time/resources we have?
Rather than focus on a solution (a declaration of their collective purpose), the group agreed to experiment with a process to help them make efficient decisions about where and how they might jointly invest the small amount of discretionary time they had. The process required someone to serve as convener, responsible for framing the issue and posing the questions whose resolution would lead to the next step.
The group practiced using the process for the remaining two days of the meeting and became increasingly proficient in its use. They left the meeting with clarity about what additional information may be needed to make a decision, the level of investment and capacity of each member for that issue, a record of follow-up actions and timeframes, and much stronger sense of being part of a team.
This kind of outcome is becoming more common in our work. Adaptive challenges dominate the workplace, as we struggle with changing and uncertain times that require us to adjust our ways and become more innovative, efficient, and inclusive in how we do our work. Leaders who rely on their authority to mandate this kind of change are not seeing the payoff—there may be a new org chart or mission statement, but has the culture shifted? Have people changed their behavior? Is the team really performing at its best?
As our federal group learned, adaptive challenges call for a different approach. Leaders must be conveners, not problem solvers. Their role is to bring together the people affected by the problem to do the work of solving it together. And the focus of a convening leader is not on the solution, but on the process by which the assembled group works together to discover possible solutions and commit to experimenting with them.
Watching our group work last week, I saw an important shift—perhaps slight—in how the members saw their role. It will take time for changes to take hold, but the upfront effort will be worth it in the end. For it is as conveners that leaders can start to restore trust, generate fresh thinking, and create the shared commitment needed to solve critical, adaptive challenges.
Deborah Gilburg is a principal of Gilburg Leadership Incorporated, a second-generation family-owned consulting firm specializing in helping leaders and their people increase their individual and collective capacity to thrive in increasingly diverse, complex, and interdependent environments. Together with her business partners (and siblings), Deborah strives to inspire leaders at all levels to fully embrace the human systems that power their organizations—amplifying strengths, illuminating blind spots, and discovering the wisdom and possibility within the collective. She is currently an organizer of a Boston Art of Hosting workshop in January.
photograph of Moher, Ireland, by Nancy Daugherty