Salus Forum: January 7, 2026

Bill B

I’ve just finished writing a book about anticipation. It builds off of the work we did earlier about allostasis. My book has to do with the fact that we are living into the near future. That is, each of us is now considering not what just happened, but what’s about to happen. How do we anticipate it. Walt, there is some anticipation of that baseline regarding the people with whom we’re working. You’re asking for a 5% change in the way things are operating. Is your staff willing to go along with it? And part of this decision about supporting the change concerns what you, the adaptive leader, anticipate their reactions to the change. And is that anticipation accurate?  And I think a point that you’re making and that gay is making, is concerns that anticipation. It is not just cerebral, but it’s also very much at the gut level. When, as a leader, we are ourselves afraid of the change, then what are we projecting onto other people with whom we are working? So, how do we deal with our own fears? When there’s a 5% drop in federal funding, how do we deal with our own fears about it–as we anticipate how other people are going to feel?  As I said earlier, I don’t think I was a very good leader; I think in many ways, I was working at the cerebral level.  I was dealing with all the strategic planning processes that I knew about or had even written about.

However, I think that change, the anticipation of change, and the acceptance of change often operate at another level. Walt, it might ultimately be a bit about love. And I remember it was years ago, when I read the work of Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote about love as the fundamental element in leadership.  I think that’s very important and very challenging. Or put another way, how do we anticipate the love of other people, their love of us, and our love of them?  And I think maybe part of it is trust. I’m reading a book right now about trust and the issue of trust residing fundamentally in the trusting of other people’s love of us, our love of them, and the notion that we can get through this together through this connectedness.

Jeremy

This is particularly poignant for our current times.  There are people who appear to be amplifying fear intentionally. I think all of us have probably experienced that in our workplaces. There are people who prefer an environment of low trust because they actually can get their way. It does work temporarily. And it can be mistaken as leadership, whereas really it’s just self-absorbed, like narcissistic fearmongering. And so the remedy for that, I think, as Bill B. and others have pointed out, is coming together. And love seems to be the force of nature that brings us together. Love and trust.

And it can be very hard to manifest love when we’re feeling frightened. So, it does seem to me that one of the core aspects of leadership is courage. It’s just that people will follow the one who demonstrates the most courage, even if they’re wrong about a lot of things. Because I know I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, but I think that’s an important element for adaptation. Because you cannot be paying attention and adapting if you’re in a fear mindset. We go right to our sympathetic nervous system, just like everybody else. And we want to dash for safety, hunker down mentality. This is very compelling right now, I think, for a lot of people in leadership roles.

Jack

I want to push back on something Jeremy just said, but then I want to get back to this adaptive piece. Jeremy, you said that people will follow the person who shows the most courage. I disagree with that wholeheartedly. I don’t think that people necessarily follow the person with the most courage. They follow the person with the most influence. And that may be because they’re acting courageously, or it may be because they’re acting in a way that looks like they’re working on behalf of their followers. So that’s my disagreement.

Getting back to the adaptive piece, Walt, I’d like to hear you talk about this concept and the difference between authority and influence as a leader. Sometimes, as a leader, you have authority. And sometimes, as a leader, you have influence, but not authority. How do you mix those? And how do you adapt those so that they help lead?

Walt

That’s a great point, Jack.  And when you start really studying leadership, you do start realizing there’s the official title and then there’s real leadership. And the evidence is that it’s the latter that is the most potent and most powerful. There’s a book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. I alluded to it. 40 years ago, the concept of adaptive leadership was first introduced at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ronald Heifetz, a Harvard faculty member who’s an MD, offers a framework for overcoming challenges and creating productive change where traditional approaches fall short.

We’ve just talked a little bit about the traditional approach, resulting in a leader who’s got a title but may not be a real leader. Adaptive leadership is a style of leadership focused on empowering teams to navigate complex challenges and change. This concept should resonate with us in the Salus Forum. Adaptive leadership is a member of the same family of leadership as Salus: change through collaboration, innovation and flexibility. We’re talking about something unlike traditional leadership that relies on top-down control–what we have alluded to as top-down control: We’ve elected you to be the president, the CEO, the CMO, the whatever. This is top-down control. Unlike the traditional model, adaptive leadership involves creating a culture.  Ah, culture, we haven’t really had a chance to use that word this time around: Culture.

Jeremy

I think of culture as a collective narrative that demonstrates the mythology and meaning of a group of people, mostly people, I guess it could be other than people.