23 Quotes by Ronald A. Heifetz

Exercising leadership is an expression of your aliveness... But when you cover yourself up, you risk losing something as well. In the struggle to save yourself, you can give up too many of those qualities that are the essence of being alive, like innocence, curiosity, and compassion.

Exercising adaptive leadership is about giving meaning to your life beyond your own ambition.

Attention is the currency of leadership.

What people resist is not change per se, but loss.

Conflict is the primary engine of creativity and innovation. People don’t learn by staring into a mirror; people learn by encountering difference.

The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges.

The improvisational ability to lead adaptively relies on responding to the present situation rather than importing the past into the present and laying it on the current situation like an imperfect template.

But to practice leadership, you need to accept that you are in the business of generating chaos, confusion, and conflict.

Conflict is the primary engine of creativity and innovation.