Assistant Director, Division of Wildlife Conservation
Alaska Department of Fish & Game • Fundamentals Cohort 3
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
The impacts of WCLDP are broad — participants take away tools that shape them both professionally and personally.
“I practice the skills and concepts of adaptive leadership every day, everywhere; it has become a passion of mine. I have a greater capacity for discomfort, speaking to courage, assessing risk, and am empowered to embrace uncomfortable conversations.”
Sky also applies the technical concepts directly in her role at Alaska Department of Fish and Game:
“I observe technical versus adaptive challenges all the time and that has been very useful in problem solving. I can observe when people are practicing leadership — many who have never had any formal training — and it excites and inspires me.”
BUILDING ALLIES
As the community of adaptive leadership practitioners grows, so does a network of shared language and mutual support.
“The best part is I have allies and I’m so excited about that; I can push them and they can push me and it makes us better. There’s enough trust there to have hard conversations. When I volunteer to assist on various projects, I find other adaptive leadership trained colleagues are also showing up.”
WHY IT MATTERS
Adaptive leadership practitioners are having an outsized impact on their organizations — transforming stress into strategy.
“I now see hard challenges as that — and not overwhelming. My job can be incredibly stressful and practicing adaptive leadership is how I can do the job; it changes the stressors into an intricate puzzle to work through.”
“Adaptive leadership keeps me resilient and happy. The natural consequence of showing up authentically is developing strong and brave relationships. I’m letting other people be authentic even if it means others won’t like me.”
THE POWER OF “WE”
Sky reflects on the most meaningful sign that adaptive leadership is truly working — the disappearance of “I.”
“I struggle with talking about ‘I’ because when adaptive leadership is in action you know it’s working because ‘we’ are working together, when nothing feels like yours and it’s hard to identify who gets credit for it.”