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

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.

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

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.

Stay diagnostic even as you take action.

Values are shaped and refined by rubbing against real problems, and people interpret their problems according to the values they hold.

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