Heifetz, in part four of his book, “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World,” insightfully explains how to “See Yourself as a System” in the practice of adaptive leadership. Part four encompasses six chapters in which the author shares with the adaptive leader the importance of seeing yourself as a system, identifying your loyalties, knowing your tuning, broadening your bandwidth, understanding your roles, and articulating your purpose. “You are a complex individual with competing values and interests, preferences and tendencies, aspirations and fears.” It is a leader’s complexity that necessitates the need to understand the system that is yourself. Part four explains how understanding
