WEBINAR:  Adaptive Leadership 

This webinar was held on Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 3:00pm Eastern

Adaptive leadership is a collaborative, responsive way to lead in modern times that has special relevance for leadership teams charged with guiding and developing loosely-coupled, professionally dominated trial courts. This webinar is the second in a series of leadership methodologies, presented in concert with the National Center for State Courts, on how to constructively influence and overcome conflicts, challenges, long-held beliefs, and demands confronted by leaders in advancing new, better ways of doing things where top-down, command-and-control actions have never worked well. 

This approach, developed by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, faculty at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, debuted in their seminal book, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading. It focuses on cooperative processes where leaders solicit and identify beliefs and ideas held by broad groups of people inside and outside an organization, methodically study the problems targeted and potential solutions, and facilitate collective techniques to help those affected by a desired change adapt and grow. Among the questions explored will be: How do leaders determine what they’re up against? What can leaders do to stimulate change? And what are common ways that leaders are shut down? 

Adaptive leadership represents a fundamental paradigm shift from leadership as an individual responsibility to a social, collective process. It’s an ethos that Heifetz and Linsky, and others have described as “leading without authority.” It is not about exercising power over others. Rather, it’s a responsibility bestowed upon a leader, so they can help the organization (court) overcome nuanced challenges while keeping everyone’s best interests at heart. 

Facilitator

  • John Meeks, Vice President, Education and Professional Development
    National Center for State Courts, Williamsburg, Virginia

Panel

  • Hon. Toria J. Finch, Trial Judge; Former Presiding Judge 
    Criminal Courts of Law in Harris County, Texas (Houston) 
  • Mary C. McQueen, President Emerita 
    National Center for State Courts, Williamsburg, Virginia 
  • James “Dan” Wallis, Trial Court Administrator 
    Circuit Court of Illinois in McHenry County (Woodstock) 

Video

Documents